Launch Out Into the Deep: The Joys of E-Commerce

By Emily McHugh

March 2003

We’ve all probably seen the TV commercial where a company just launched its e-commerce and the orders start out small and then mushroom out of control. Well, most of us might say, if that could only happen to me…! The reality of the matter is, will you be ready, not only logistically, but psychologically.

It is amazing how quickly one’s mood can shift from sheer exhilaration to utter despair within moments when the realities of e-commerce become all too apparent. My company recently launched its e-commerce site. We expected it to be a relatively gradual transition, an order here, an order there, but the launch coincided with an article about us in Daily Candy, a very popular online newsletter. As a result, we were somewhat deluged. We were thrilled with the emails coming in and the phone ringing, but then our e-commerce system went berserk. We started to panic and wonder what in the world had we gotten ourselves into.