Sandy, Jim and Jason Koch have discovered the Internet — and the Internet has discovered them.
Downstairs, in the basement below Second Love’s retail store at 706 Commercial St., on-line business is booming.
“This is a war zone right now,” said Jason Koch, one of the store’s three owners and son of co-owners Jim and Sandy. “It may look like a mess but it’s all organized.”
Jason Koch was surrounded by the papers, boxes, packing supplies and computer equipment that constitute an online business that has doubled each year since Second Love ventured into cyberspace in 1999.
“I’d hate to tell you what our goal is this year, but it’s high,” Jim Koch said.
The store is a key outlet for Woven Moments, Signature Housewares products, Willow Tree angels and Nativity scenes, Fiesta Dinnerware and other items that also are popular at the downtown store. The advantage lies in the vast number of buyers who frequent Internet stores.
“We may sell 10 to 12 a year (of an item) in Emporia. We’ll sell 500 on the Internet,” Jason Koch said.
The younger Koch built the Web page, wrote programs and designed the business process that serves on-line customers from order to shipment. Much thought has gone into ensuring that Second Love’s Web site comes up early on the various search engines, and the company’s close work with some suppliers has put it at an advantage over many larger competitors.
Jim Koch used Signature Housewares as an example. Signature does not sell to individuals from its Web site. Instead, it posts a list of Web sites for stores that carry its products. Secondlove.com is the third story on the list for the products, which also are offered by Betty Crocker and Yankee Candle Co., he said.
“Still, we’re above them, too,” Jim Koch said of the bigger retailers. “We come up first.”
A Willow Tree Nativity scene also is one of the online shoppers’ favorites, with an 18-piece scene selling from 10 to 20 percent off store prices — $244 — with shipping thrown in at no extra charge. The Kochs estimate they will sell about 650 of the sets during the holiday season.
The Nativity scenes are in stock; some products are shipped directly from the manufacturers.
Second Love’s fax connections, with invoices and shipping papers generated in downtown Emporia, allow staff to fax orders and documents to manufacturers, who in turn ship them to the buyers with Second Love’s invoice enclosed with the packing.
“We’re just selling five or six major products, and we sell a ton of them,” Jason Koch said, adding that “we have some little things” like Farkle dice games and numerous other smaller items shoppers can find in the Web store.
“I think we’re going to have to get some more space,” Jason Koch said, mentioning a shortage of storage space.
Jim Koch said that the store will not move, though, despite its growing success and need for a warehouse.
“She’ll never move this store,” he said, referring to his wife, who still runs the retail store upstairs.
The company has evolved beyond what Sandy and Jim Koch imagined when they opened about 1990. Sandy Koch was house supervisor at Newman hospital when she decided to open the store downtown. She said then that her first love was her family and that the crafts that dominated the original store were her second love.
“And boy, I tell you what, this is her second love,” said Jim Koch, whose career until retirement was as area manager with Kansas Power and Light Company and the gas and electric service divisions that later split from KP&L.
The Kochs, and eventually all of their seven children, have worked at the store, though the older two were young adults when the store opened. Only Jason Koch remained to make online retailing his career.
He joins his parents downtown about 11:30 a.m. and works until about 5:30, takes a little time to eat and take a break, then returns to his basement office around 8 p.m.
“And I’ll stay ’til 1, 2, 3, 4 in the morning,” he said. “This is our busiest time of the year, so I’m down here a lot longer.”