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Josh Goree, owner of Completeful, joined Discover Lafayette to discuss his journey in building his growing empire in e-commerce.
Completeful offers a Dropshipping service that allows entrepreneurs to create an online business and sell products at little to no risk, and without having to first purchase and store merchandise to successfully fill orders.
With services such as Completeful offers, a business owner can start selling at little to no cost out of pocket, and run their business from a laptop anywhere in the world.
Dropshipping has upended the shopping experiences of consumers as online shopping continues to improve and grow in popularity. Today, about 33% of e-commerce stores use drop shipping as a fulfillment method.
To bring this home, many of you may have also heard that the former Walmart building in North Lafayette was purchased by an up-and-coming entrepreneur who is setting the e-commerce world on fire. This entrepreneur would be our guest, Josh Goree.
His story is an inspirational one for anyone wanting to have an opportunity to make passive income. Josh didn’t study business at Louisiana Tech; he ran track on scholarship and wanted to be a biomedical engineer. But he became frustrated with how engineers were expected to work within pre-existing ‘boxes’ of thought. Josh would come up with ideas and wanted them immediately implemented.
He jumped into sales for a marketing company and learned to overcome his introverted tendencies. After approximately “500 presentations,” he realized he was on the way to effectively selling products and making lucrative commissions. His goal was to buy a Raising Canes franchise.
His first traditional business that he bought was a hair salon, with no experience in the cosmetology business and with no hairdressers yet hired to work for him. Yet, over a meal at Logan’s Steakhouse in Alexandria, he convinced 10 of the 14 hairdressers he met with to work for him. Josh joked that they robbed him blind, but he still made a profit and sold the salon for a profit two years after the purchase.
After a foray into being a franchisee for Jimmy John’s (and he eventually had three locations (with the Monroe store recently being sold), Josh realized that the traditional retail concept limited him as to how many people he could serve based on limited capacity. He started learning all he could about the e-commerce business.
Shopify turned out to be the best bet for selling goods easily and cheaply. He sold fishing bait, bikinis, and leather jackets. “For $30 per month, you can get access to a website, drag and drop your logo onto it, and start selling.” Josh learned that marketing is the key. “You can have a terrible website, but if you can drive people to your website, you can be successful. Don’t believe everybody on YouTube. You can learn everything you need to know for free.”
Josh began to target goods in demand in the wedding industry. He figured out how to market on Facebook and targeted all the people getting married. Trying different company names such as ‘”From Him to Her,” “From Her to Him,” Yours Personalized,” and Your Wedding Things,” he had success but realized the business model wasn’t scalable. He was still immersed in the moment-to-moment execution of his businesses.
So about three years ago Josh built a new business model as he learned about dropshipping. He thought, “What if we carry all the inventory, have printing machines, ship the goods for others who need their orders fulfilled?” That is scalable. In July of 2019, he was traveling with one of his best friends from college, Justin Martin, and Justin was intrigued by the number of calls Josh was receiving and wanted to get into the e-commerce business as a salesperson. Today, Justin is a seller for Completeful, and about one year in, he was pulling in about $30,000 to $40,000 per day in sales.
No order is fulfilled by Completeful until they receive a paid order from a client. The company keeps the ‘blanks’ (merchandise) in its warehouse. As Josh has gained experience, he learned to streamline processes to more efficiently and cost-effectively fulfill orders. With an original investment of $150.00 that he spent to build his very first laser printer, Completeful has turned out to be quite a successful business.
Completeful’s business model differs from other dropshippers who are typically either a “technology company that builds intuitive software that allows sellers to produce goods, or they are a ‘producer’ who make the goods. Completeful does both, which cuts margins down, reduces prices, and affords better quality control.
His success flew under the radar until the purchase of the former Walmart building was announced. Then the economic developers flocked to him. It must have been hard to believe that a young man not even 30 years of age had reached this level of success.
Completeful occupies about half of its 230,000 square facility. Josh spoke of his desire to make space for an incubator for other tech and manufacturing companies. He could supply the space, machines, power, internet. And as he says, “With the fifth-fastest internet in the world, this is a great place to be.”
Josh has shared equity in Completeful with dedicated employees. “With a stake in the company, they genuinely want it to succeed. As it grows, everyone will prosper.” He also likes the fact that Completeful pulls in revenue from all over the world. “We’re not just recirculating local dollars, we’re brining it in.”
For more information on Completeful, visit https://completeful.com/
This was a heartwarming interview. We wish Josh Goree continued success and can’t wait to see his next initiative come to fruition!
