I met Matt Jacobs by chance. I ordered something from Amazon and it turned out, his company in California was the actual seller. Upon receiving the item, I called his company to share my satisfaction with his product and to see if he would be willing to offer a bulk purchase price.
That conversation started a new, bi-coastal friendship. As I learned more about Matt, his family and his business, I thought his story would be a good one to share. Sometimes, all a person needs to take a leap of faith in business is to know that another already has and it worked out for them.
Jacobs is a Veteran. He is also a business owner who found his path after the military. I hope other Veterans read this and are inspired to also take a leap of faith in the business world.
Truth be told, with Christmas on the way, I emailed Jacobs a series of questions to expedite his answers. It is quite a good story and I hope you enjoy reading it. – Ray Richardson
Q: Tell us a little about you, your family, your military service and so on.
A: My dad was an aerospace engineer who helped design anti-ballistic missile satellite simulations for the Strategic Defense Initiative. In 1975, when I was five years old, he taught me how to use a computer. He had found a home computer kit for sale in the back of a ham radio magazine. The computer was made of several bulky components and used a cassette recorder where modern computers use disk drives. Throughout my childhood I continued to learn to use and program computers. We had an Apple II+, an original Macintosh and early PC’s.
Then, when I was a teenager I aced my computer lab class in junior high and went to night classes for computers that my Dad taught at community colleges in Los Angeles.
My first computer job came when I built a website for one of my Dad’s students at about fifteen years old. Shortly after that, I worked at the “Penny Saver” free newspaper, making their ads on a PC using a rudimentary version of Photoshop called GemDraw.
Unfortunately, I lacked discipline, so I joined the United States Army to help with that. I was a Bradley Fighting Vehicle System Mechanic (MOS 63T) and I also was trained to drive and operate M88 recovery vehicles. Being in the army was some of the most fun I’ve had in my life. I especially loved driving M88’s through rivers of mud in training at Fort Knox and drinking German Hefeweizen in Aschaffenburg.
The Army certainly helped with discipline. After I honorably served my four years of active duty, I enrolled at the Los Angeles Theater Academy where I got straight A’s and made the Dean’s List. I loved the studies and craft, but didn’t end up pursuing that career.
After school I went to stay with my mom in Dallas where she was running the “Mars Venus Institute” for best selling author John Gray, PhD. In her business she trained “facilitators” from across the country to teach workshops based on the material from his book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.
Before I got there, my mom had a simple website built for her business by a novice that included a directory of facilitators and their workshops. When she showed it to me, I knew I could improve it –– so I started working it for her, and the website became an essential part of their business. I added the ability for the facilitators to access their profiles and events in the back end, and the public was able use the front end to find workshops to attend. The website was such a hit that soon John Gray asked me to take over his main website, MarsVenus.com. I was fortunate enough to be his website developer for a few years, and I also started a practice as a freelance web developer for several more clients.
One day everything changed. I was at a Burning Man party in San Francisco in the early 2000s and a guy who called himself “Light God” was selling tiny magnetic earring flashing lights for ten dollars each. My girlfriend and I got one each, and we started wearing them when we went to other parties or dance clubs. Right away, people would ask us about them, “Wow those are cool. What is that? Where did you get that?” We had just been wearing them for fun, but we saw an opportunity. I found them for a couple dollars a piece on the internet and the next time someone asked me, I just replied “These are blinky lights. This is a product I sell. I’ve got some in my pocket. They are five dollars each.” These were really fun to sell and they covered our drinks and door charge when we went out. But still I saw a bigger opportunity.
I had been going to San Francisco Giants’ games to try to catch a Barry Bonds homer, so I thought the lights would sell well at night games. The next game I went to, I filled my pockets and covered my hat, shirt and ears with flashing magnet lights. I walked around the hallways at the games and I got the same reaction as I did at the bars. Tons of people approached me and I was able to make prolific cash sales. I expanded my product line to more shapes of flashers and other light up fun toys and I also started selling in more and more locales from Fisherman’s Wharf to Union Square, and I even started going to Warriors and Raiders games.
One day, I was selling lights on a street corner in the San Francisco financial district when another street vendor approached me and bought out my whole supply. He loved how compact the lights were in comparison to the bulky scarves and hats he was hawking. He became my first wholesale client. Soon after that, I put up a website for these light up novelties called Wear-Flashing-Jewelry.com.
That domain name was quite a mouthful, so I shortened it to MattsBlinkys.com and later to my current domain, Blinkee.com.
Over the years we’ve added more and more novelty items to our catalog. In 2017, my brother showed me a fidget spinner before they became hugely popular. I ordered some and started selling them and really benefited from the craze that it became over that whole year. In 2018, we started selling novelty gold plated Bitcoins. They were a huge hit during the bitcoin craze.
Another time that “everything changed” was a summer day in 2006. I was coming back to San Francisco from a weekend in southern California. When I got to the airport and went to check-in my bag, the agent said my flight had been canceled and to immediately bring my bag through security to get on an earlier flight. I rushed and made it and the only open seat on the airplane was next to the most beautiful women I’ve ever met. For some reason, she took a liking to me and I fell in love. Within a year or so, we got married. We are now blessed with an 11 year old son and 8 year old daughter. We’ve been living in Fairfax, Ca for the past 8 years.
My wife Anne is a huge and vocal Trump supporter (which is not a very popular stance here in the very liberal SF Bay Area.) She has really opened my eyes to the passion and energy President Trump has inspired in his supporters. She also encouraged me to start selling Trump memorabilia and merchandise.
In 2019, we started carrying President Donald Trump gold and silver plated novelty commemorative coins and replica Donald Trump hundred, thousand and million dollar bills. These bills and coins have been hugely popular and they are also how Ray and I found each other. Because I also do much of the customer service in our small family owned business, I have had the opportunity to speak with Trump supporters all over the country. The animated enthusiasm and positivity they exude when talking about President Trump and the country is remarkable.
Speaking to Trump supporters also provides a window into the tone of the country that isn’t reflected in what you read in the mainstream media. Anne and I were looking at our online advertising expenditures, and she suggested that perhaps we get a bit more targeted in where we spend ads promoting Trump merchandise. She wondered if perhaps it was wiser to focus more on Red and swing states, rather than places like California. She was surprised when I told her that California accounts make up a bunch of the Trump merchandise sales we make!
Q: Where did the name “Blinkee” come from?
A: I was searching GoDaddy for domain names with “blink” in them, and was lucky enough to snag the gem Blinkee.com. Blinky.com was already taken.
Q: How long have you been doing this?
A: We started our business in 2003.
Q: As an entrepreneur who has found his niche on the Internet, where do you see the retail market going in the next ten years
A: In 2009, my late father encouraged me to start selling on Amazon Marketplace. This was right after the birth of our first child, and we were overwhelmed and busy with life and new parenting, and I didn’t feel I had the time to set it up. So my father took it upon himself to manually enter around a thousand of our items on our Amazon storefront Magic Matt’s Brilliant Blinkys. The first year, we reached about $6,000 in sales. Today, our Amazon store does around half a million in sales per year. Our lifetime positive feedback rating is 95%. It’s been a good run, and we’re very grateful for the opportunity Amazon has provided.
However, over the years, Amazon Marketplace has become very saturated and intensely competitive. And Amazon itself now has its own brand which is very tough to compete with. They are being looked at right now for anti-competitive practices. They are certainly an e-commerce juggernaut, and their seller rates and fees have increased over time so that the cost of selling on their marketplace as a small business is a less profitable enterprise than it was when we first started.
We also sell on Walmart and Ebay, and many other online marketplaces are emerging and growing in response to the need for some competition to Amazon Marketplace. I think some equilibrium will be had in time, but it will take some time. Some advice I would give to other small online business owners: sell on a number of different marketplaces, as well as, maintain their own online presence and website. It’s critical not to rely too much on any one marketplace. In other words, don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.
I also think that in order to survive as a small e-commerce business, it is necessary to become an expert digital marketer. You’ll have to learn content marketing, social media marketing, paid ads marketing and SEO, to name a few. If you are small, then expert services are priced out of range.
Q: Without giving away any trade secrets, how do you decide what items to carry? Keeping up with market trends can be a daunting task.
A: Amazon has lists of their top selling products, and there are cutting edge marketplaces like tophatter.com and wish.com where new, popular products can be gleaned.
Q: Tell me anything else you want to
A: My hobbies are poetry and chess. I came up with this poem about this experience:
On a normal Blinkee day,
I got a call from Ray.
Some Trump coins he was seeking,
then, we got to speaking.
He told me ‘bout the big show
that he helmed on the radio.
And I was flabbergasted,
when I learned I would be casted.
It seems I’d been selected
My story Ray collected,
we now present to you,
for me, this is a coup.
Magic Matt, (Matt Jacobs), 415.261.0675
Blinkee.com / Blink Better™
Ray Richardson is the host of the Ray Richardson Show on WLOB Radio. He has authored three books, his new book, Truth About Trump is on sale now, written a newspaper column for over a decade and is a contributor to Richardson Magazine.
Ray lives with his wife of 34 years, Dee Dee, in Westbrook Maine. They have four grown children (8 when you count the spouses), and blessed with one granddaughter.
