Portland, Oregon is most well known for its eccentricities. The place is lousy with vegan clowns and guys on unicycles playing flaming bagpipes. It also happens to be home to scores of independent, small businesses. The combination of tech savvy job seekers, and free spirited creative thinkers makes for a uniquely fun and prosperous place for a small business to flourish. SellerEngine is just one of many such businesses. Here’s a little of our backstory.
Read on for a little glimpse into our past adventures.
Part 1: Humble Beginnings
Believe it or not, SellerEngine started out as a big dream in a small house in Northwest Portland. The first “office” was actually a small attic room with desks crammed in. Our first employee, David, is still with us, but his workspace is much more comfortable now. Needless to say, we quickly realized that the dream had outgrown the attic, and needed a proper place to take root.
Part 2: Growing up
The move to the warehouse on 9th and Main allowed SellerEngine to expand significantly. Most of the employees shared space in the large, main room, with all our desks circled around a cluster of couches that served as our meeting area. We took turns playing music over communal speakers (there were mixed reactions to this depending on whose turn it was. The idea was eventually scrapped, and I have not heard a Ween song since.)
Our inventory management system evolved here. Profit Bandit and Sellery were both put into motion by our own need to manage large amounts of inventory. In particular, I remember sorting through Volkswagen sized boxes of bulk, secondhand books. I could write a whole other post about the weird stuff we found in those boxes.
Across the street from this location was one of our less well known, and significantly more ill fated, business ventures. For a short time we branched out into the coffee business, and opened “Kiva’s Cafe”. That ship sank after just two months, due to the lack of any prior knowledge of the industry, and the fact that we rarely charged for any of the drinks.
Perhaps the most memorable addition to the company during this period was Meat Mittens the cat; so named because of her penchant for shredding the hands of anyone who was unwise enough to attempt to pet her. She became our unofficial misfit mascot for many years, until she retired and went to live with the only employee she did not outwardly loathe.
Part 3: Going Big
In 2007 we grew too big for our office, and needed to expand again. Luckily, we were able to secure a new warehouse just two blocks from the old one. The new building afforded us the opportunity to split into more tightly focused groups; though we still share a sense of camaraderie due to the large, communal spaces throughout the office. The extra space also afforded us numerous, previously unseen advantages; for example, one year during our holiday party we discovered that our loading dock can comfortably house an extra large, pirate ship bouncy castle.
SellerEngine has really flourished here. It’s grown from a small seed of an idea, to a large tree with several branches dedicated to helping people find success on the Amazon platform. We are reaching across borders to help make the world more accessible to everyone. Going from a one room, attic office to a two story warehouse complete with two band practice areas, exercise equipment, a game room, and a large communal kitchen was no easy feat.
It takes a lot of work to keep this place running and caffeinated, but we here at the Portland office are committed to keeping the dream alive.
Nessa does editing and a lot of behind the scenes stuff. She is also responsible for keeping the Portland office fed and caffeinated.
The costume in the picture can be purchased here!
