LUCK & FATE: AN INTERVIEW WITH BMESHOP [The Present Tense

“What’s success? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” - Bob Dylan

Ryan and Corrie Worden (IAM:badseeds).

Relationships are absolutely baffling to me.
Seriously. I mean, I like to think that I’m relatively switched-on with regards to most things. But, when it comes to meaningful interaction with someone of the opposite sex, I go into some sort of horrific, mind-numbing autopilot that entails me losing approximately 93-percent of my brainpower and acquiring all the social graces of a war criminal.
Now, maybe I’m just inept. As a matter of fact, there’s a lot of truth to that.

Luckily though, I’m not alone. I habitually err in the same fashion that so many people do: I fall into the line of thinking that somehow, I’m different. That for whatever reason, my love is bigger than everybody else’s, and that it’s okay for me to flagrantly, arrogantly break all the cardinal rules of dating. Silly things like, “taking your time,” and, “giving your partner space.”
(Ludicrous!

...

Ahem.)
Granted, not everybody is quite as half-witted and romantically bereft. Some people, well ... actually fall in love, and the rules no longer seem quite so relevant.
Take, for example, Ryan and Corrie Worden (IAM:badseeds) — also known as the owners of BMEshop.
Meeting during the mid-90s in barren, wintry Toronto, Ryan and Corrie have managed to defy all logic and expectations for over a decade now, seamlessly mixing their personal and business lives with unqualified success on all fronts.

Longtime friends of BME, the pair stepped away from the tattoo shop they were co-owners of to take on the task of running the site’s online store — a job that has grown larger than anyone could have imagined, and is only getting bigger. Now, with the launch of the new BMEshop web site around the corner, I recently spoke with them about how love can blossom in the emergency room, the pleasures (and difficulties) of running a family business, and of course, the future of BMEshop.

* * *

BME:

So, how did the two of you meet? From what I’ve heard, it was almost “love at first sight.”

CORRIE:

Oh, I don’t know about love at first sight; lust maybe. We would see each other a lot at the same clubs and had mutual friends, you know, friendly enough to say “Hi” — but that was it. Man, was he hot though! With his leather pants and his belt, and the long black mohawk ... not to say that he isn’t still hot of course, but you know.

Anyway, we were both going through break ups though, and I asked a girlfriend of mine if I could crash at her place until I found somewhere to live. It turned out that Ryan had asked his friend the same thing, and it just so happened that my girlfriend and Ryan’s friend were a couple, so we both got promised the same couch! We only found out, however, when they decided it was time to head home after a night out and Ryan and I both stood up to go too. [Laughs.] Well, we found a way to make the best of it, and we just stayed up that whole night talking and getting to know each other.

RYAN:	I happened to mention to Corrie that we had an apprentice at Stainless Studios (where I was working) at the time, so if she wanted to stop by at some point, she could get a free piercing. Well, what girl could resist that? She showed up at the shop about a week later to get her navel pierced. Stefan Dewsberry (former co-owner of Stainless Studios) had also decided that he was going to try to do some scarification work, and I volunteered to be a guinea pig. Well, a fresh scarification mixed with one crusty pair of leather pants equals one very bad infection. The nightly ingestion of alcohol made it bearable though, until one night it was fairly painful and quite smelly — this time I asked my friends at the bar if they thought perhaps I should get it looked at. Lifting up the leather pants and seeing that it was festering and stinking of rotting flesh, apparently a trip to the hospital was in order.
BME:	Was it really that bad?
CORRIE:	Oh, it was gross. It was black and kind of bubbling — and that wasn’t even the scarification, which was on his calf muscle; this was on his shinbone, so it had already moved pretty far. We convinced him he needed to go to the emergency room, so while he finished his pitcher (he wouldn’t go until his beer was done) a bunch of us drew straws to see who had to take him. I lost, and off to emergency we went. I think he was in the hospital for a week. It was pretty awful; he had one big black vein running all the way up to his chest. I only ever left the hospital to go to work, and when he got out, we were pretty much inseparable. Very soon after that I moved into his “apartment” (which was really just a tiny ten by ten room with a bathroom), we opened ourselves a joint bank account, and from that moment on, it was always about “us” as a team.
RYAN:	Living together in a 100-square-foot space for a year will either make or break a relationship, and apparently, ten years later, it made ours. I always joke with people that we didn’t really rush into things at all — we didn’t even move in together until our second date!
BME:	Where did you get your starts in the piercing/tattoo industry? Ryan mentioned working at Stainless Studios.
RYAN:	Yeah, I got my start at Stainless Studios, mostly thanks to Ryan O’Brien (IAM:://trinity), who I met on the set of Rowdy Roddy Piper’s movie, “Jungleground” — I guess having a bunch of piercings and wearing a lot of leather made it pretty easy to get a small part as an extra in the movie. Ryan worked at Stainless, and he said to come hang out at the shop some time. After spending some time over there for a while I got hired to work the counter, and through the natural progression I ended up piercing and making jewelry.
CORRIE:	Well, Ryan doesn’t take enough credit here, and I don’t want to step on any toes, but he didn’t just “work” at Stainless. He progressed quickly to handling a lot more than the counter (including making jewelry), and he was really the manager of Stainless for a long time; he kept things running properly and eventually when he also saw a need for another piercer, he decided to take that on too, while still managing the shop. Myself, I bounced around a few jobs, but Ryan knew I was artistic and encouraged me to try tattooing, so I figured, what the hell. I started learning to tattoo, mostly just trial and error with a few guys here and there giving me some pointers, and then later Shane Faulkner — who also came to work at Stainless — was glad to help me as much as he could. But, I never had a proper apprenticeship. Ryan and I eventually felt like we needed a change, and we headed out to Windsor to work at Skew Skin. Pretty quickly though, we knew that Windsor really wasn’t for us, so we headed back to Toronto after only six months — but with Gary (IAM:Gary), who is from Windsor, in tow; he saw his opportunity to head to Toronto and took it, and he’s gone on to have a lot of success with his WayCool Uptown shop. When we got home though, Ryan and I both worked at Tat-a-Rama, and we started saving and planning to open our own shop with Shane Faulkner and his girlfriend at the time, who was also a piercer (which would go on to be “King of Fools”). Eventually, we found a location close to home, and spent a lot of time trying to make it look great; I remember many hours spent with Shane, hand-painting hot rod flames all around the lobby and down what seemed like the longest hallway in the world.

BME:	Do you ever miss being involved on that level?
RYAN:	I don’t really miss it at all. I’m not a very social person to begin with, and the shop atmosphere is much different now than it was then anyway. Hell, I don’t even like going to shops to get tattooed — I’m lucky that my artist will make the drive to our house these days. Hmm, recluse much?
CORRIE:	I do miss the whole “shop” thing sometimes moreso than I miss the actual tattooing. To be honest, I enjoyed it, but I didn’t *love* it, and I believe that it’s one of those things that you have to love to be truly good at it. I certainly don’t feel like it was my “calling,” and so I don’t miss it in that respect. Plus, I love our situation as it is so much now, I can’t really imagine it being any other way, so how can I miss it?

BME:	And what made you think that Ryan and Corrie were the right people to oversee BMEshop’s expansion from what was essentially a side-project into a full-fledged business?
SHANNON:	I didn’t really know Corrie as well as I know her now at the time, other than as Ryan’s partner, but, as has been said, I started working at Stainless Studios within a month or two of when Ryan started, way back in 1994. Then, [when King of Fools opened], I got to see how he ran a studio and made his business decisions. I needed someone that I could trust, could work 100% independently, and just as importantly, really understood what BME was about and was trying to accomplish. I don’t think there is anyone else I could have gone with.
BME:	Back to Ryan and Corrie, what kind of planning went into initially getting BMEshop up and running? Did you run into any problems?
RYAN:	Well, as with anything, there are always snags along the way. One continuing problem, though, was and to some extent still is the actual shop software. Shannon had hired someone to write it, but things kept running into snags and the timeline kept getting pushed back. At this point we had a ton of stock sitting in our apartment and the holiday season was coming up quickly, and this programmer was fired. Funnily enough, I had the phone number of the guy who was supposed to write the software in my cell phone, and just one day after firing him, Shannon and I were walking down the street bitching about his incompetence and what we were going to do. Unbeknownst to me though, the redial button had been hit and we ended up leaving our entire conversation on his answering machine. The only time I ever heard from him again was him asking me to not call anymore. I guess we weren’t saying very nice things.
CORRIE:	So Shannon just ended up writing it by himself in one weekend, and that’s the site that we still use to this day. In addition to everything else though, we were also having problems trying to get an online credit card processor, but when [Shannon] came to King of Fools after finishing it, he told us he had just heard of this brand new third party processor that he thought we could use called PayPal. So, we signed up with them easy enough, and BMEshop went online. Almost instantly, it was so much more then any of us could have imagined. I believe Shannon originally thought it would just be a part time job; you know, ship out some t-shirts in our spare time away from the tattoo shop, that kind of thing, but we all realized pretty early on that that wasn’t going to be that case. Luckily, like I said, we were ready for a change, and so we left King of Fools in Shane’s capable hands and walked away from our baby — our shop — to dedicate all our time to the fledgling BMEshop, which was already becoming a full-time job for both of us.

BME:	You mention using PayPal back then, but you ran into problems with them recently, correct?
CORRIE:	Well, PayPal was perfect for us when Shannon first discovered them. They were extremely new in what they were doing, just as we were, so I guess we took a risk on each other, but it worked out on both our parts. That is, until eBay bought them out, and decided that they didn’t approve of our products anymore.
RYAN:	At the time we were carrying the XXXjihad CD-ROMs, and when we were reviewed by their new ownership, they asked us to remove these items and then bumped us up to the adult merchant rate, even though we did remove them per their request. Well things went along swimmingly and PayPal made their hefty profit, and we didn’t think too much of it. We wondered how long this would take to really affect us, and it didn’t take long to find out that not only was our account frozen, but we were also informed that we could not get our balance out for six months. This was in case there were any charge-backs, they could deduct it from our balance. We were not offered any sort of explanation for the freezing of our account, nor offered the chance to rectify any problems they had with our product. One of the most shifty aspects of the whole thing was that they continued to accept money from customers up to five minutes before they froze the account; they knew they were going to do this and that we wouldn’t be able to get that money for some time. It was simply, “We don’t like your product and that’s the end of it.” The scary part was we were in the process of setting up our new bank accounts as we had just moved to a different city and hadn’t withdrawn anything in a couple weeks. Luckily, the morning before this happened I had pretty much emptied the account, because if I hadn’t BMEshop would have been in quite serious trouble. And as well, so many things had changed since we launched, and there were much better payment methods available to us by then so it all worked out in the end. Sometimes you need a little hardship to push you to the next level.
BME:	Now, what kind of education or formal training did you both have coming into this? I understand Ryan had a degree in Golf Course Management?
RYAN:	Well, having been socially stunted all through my school days, I took the quickest route possible through high school and was out of there by the time I was 16. As well, I had worked summers on a golf course and I really enjoyed the serenity of being by myself all day; you could come to work in the morning and get your assignment and be out doing your thing until the end of the day. There was also night watering though — which is mostly obsolete by now — where you had to physically move the sprinklers that watered the grounds, and I volunteered for that a lot. I figured I liked this work, so why not pursue it further? (As well, at this point I had both lobes pierced by a gun at the mall and a small tattoo on my wrist.) I entered the Golf Course Management program at Seneca College (which included several classes on general management), graduated two years later, and I eventually started working at a course in Toronto. However, after a few incidents involving illicit drugs at work, they decided I should probably look for other employment.
CORRIE:	But business is business, right? Manage a golf course, a tattoo shop, or an online store [and you’re going to need a lot of the same skills]. Myself, I didn’t actually go to college, but I have had a million jobs — all interesting in their own ways — and I’m sure each one has taught me more valuable things then any college courses could have.

BME:	Can you walk me through a typical day at BMEshop?
CORRIE:	Well, our days differ a fair amount, so I’ll just go over my day in the office, which starts with me dropping our two daughters off at daycare, and then usually getting coffee for Ryan and myself on my way home. The first thing, then, is to check on the bank accounts and plan any banking that needs to be done that day. I’ll go through the mail (of the paper variety, not email) and pay any bills that need to be paid, and then I’ll spend the better part of my day working on the books — accounting stuff, which is not too exciting, so I’ll spare you the details — and paperwork, filing ... you know, all the glamorous behind the scenes stuff. And of course, I’ll also help Ryan with any number of things through the day, from ideas for new products to choosing shirt colors or designs, to whatever else comes up. We constantly use each other to bounce ideas off of and get opinions from, and we just really understand each other so perfectly and balance each other so well.
RYAN:	Again, my days are a little different. We ship on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings (barring any holidays), so those orders all need to be processed the day before so they are ready to go to the post office at 8:00 AM. So on shipping days, I head to the post office early to ship all the parcels out and then come home and send off all the email notifications. By this time it is usually around 10:00 AM, and I can then answer any emails and process payments for orders that have come in since the day before. Once the orders are processed and customer service is answered it is usually about noon. After lunch, I head over to We Print Good Shirts to print shirts for stock in the afternoon. On non-shipping days, I start at 7:00 AM and answer the day’s emails and process that day’s orders, and orders are then packed for the remainder of the day until about 5:00 PM. I work to some extent on BMEshop six days a week, and as we work on the launch of the new shop, sometimes after the kids are in bed I will spend time working on and testing the new software. Throw some product development and re-ordering of stock in there and the days are pretty full.
BME:	Now, you mentioned your daughters; how has introducing kids into the equation affected the business and the ease of working from home? What measures did you guys have to take to make sure the work didn’t suffer?
CORRIE:	Since I’m the primary care giver, I think this one is more for me than Ryan — and I can definitely say that it was quite a bit harder than I thought it would be to get anything done after our first daughter [Sidney] came along. I guess I thought I would be able to look after her and still do the same amount of work I had been doing, but I learned pretty quickly that that wasn’t going to be the case. For the first month or two though, I did manage to continue to do most of the same jobs; one the jobs I used to do was address and label all the packages for Customs and whatnot (before Shannon altered the program to print labels like it does now), and while Sidney was an extremely easy baby and was happy to play on the floor while I did this, once she was a few months older and needed more interaction, it was obvious something was going to have to change. The only solution, as usual, was for Ryan to take on more work. [Laughs.] So, he took over addressing packages, which freed up a lot of my day — when I was doing them by hand, it could literally take hours just to do that — to spend with Sidney. When she was about 11 months old we decided to put her in daycare part-time, just so I could help Ryan out a bit more again. Although, Ryan is an extreme control freak, so once he’s assumed a job it’s virtually impossible for anyone else to ever do it again, because you won’t do it the same as him (or right, as he considers it). So I never did go back to addressing the packages because I wouldn’t put the labels on to Ryan’s satisfaction! [Laughs.] When Olivia (our second daughter) came along, I was much more prepared for how it would impact work — or let’s say, I thought I was. Olivia was a much higher-needs baby, so most of the time, she wasn’t happy to sit in the office while I worked or anything, so I really did not get much done for six months. That was hard, as was the decision to put her in daycare earlier than I had originally planned, but when you run a business, sometimes you have to make these hard choices. It’s not like it’s some crappy job that I hate anyway, and can just walk away from to stay home; when it’s yours, you don’t have much choice but to work at it. And not that I’d want to [walk away] anyway, I very much enjoy working as well as being a mom, but you really have to balance both when you own your own business. It was either, I came back — even part-time — or we’d have to hire someone, and that thought didn’t really appeal to either of us. We do, however, have a high school girl that comes after school and does some of the “grunt” jobs, like folding t-shirts, sterile bagging and repackaging — a lot of people don’t even realize how much packaging and re-packaging we do. All the acrylic jewelry comes bulk bagged in lots of 100, and most of the jewelry also needs to either be individually bagged — because it comes bulk bagged — or it needs to be repackaged to match the rest of our stuff. But, she’s also our babysitter, so she’s a bit of a “Jill Of All Trades,” I guess.
BME:	A lot of couples would go pretty crazy if they spent as much time together as you guys do, but the two of you seem to have it down to a science. What’s enabled the two of you to be so inseparable — in really every sense of the word — without murdering each other?
RYAN:	Good question, and if I knew the answer to that I’d be a millionaire with a self-help book on the Best Sellers list. It is something that has been asked before though, and I don’t think there is any real answer — although I like to think that that first apartment had a lot to do with the longevity of our relationship. We work together on everything and play to each other’s strengths. The funny thing is, in our little group of friends way back then, we were the ones that nobody expected to stay together, but in the end we outlasted them all.
CORRIE:	I’ve said before that we’re a team, that everything we do is about “us,” but I can’t really say why either — it’s just been that way from the very beginning. I have never in the last ten years felt like I’ve seen too much of Ryan, and few people spend as much time together as we do. We have literally been living and working together for at least the last six years, so how can we still stand each other? I guess it’s just luck or fate, take your pick.

BME:

Now, let’s come back to We Print Good Shirts, what can you tell me about this?

RYAN:

There isn’t much to tell. Shannon had been suggesting for quite some time that we get our own printing equipment and do the shirts in-house, and after much debate we finally went ahead and purchased the equipment to do so. Now, it doesn’t really save us any money business-wise, and it eats up a fair chunk of my day sometimes, but it does allow a lot of flexibility that we didn’t have before. For example, now instead of waiting on a two week turnaround time with our old printer and then potentially having something we weren’t happy with, we now can work out any kinks in the design right away and whip up re-prints a lot faster. It also allows up to print special shirts once in a while; in the past we have made shirts that were only available to members of certain IAM forums such as JewCrew and the Dirty South Mod Squad. Screenprinting equipment.

They could be preordered and then we only had to print exactly how many people ordered. Corrie’s mom and step-dad also use the equipment at night and print shirts for some of the local schools and sports clubs.

There are some plans to perhaps get a little larger with it and move the embroidery work in-house as well, but right now my time is stretched so thin and we don’t have anyone here that seems too interested in running with it. The nice thing about the space is that it has lots of room for expansion. There is even a storefront space already set up, but I don’t have the time to tackle something like that right now, nor do I think I could handle being tied to retail store hours. Who knows? Perhaps the right person will come along who can work well with Corrie and myself (and Shannon and Rachel), or they’ll just perfect that cloning technology and I could get some duplicates of Corrie and myself.

BME:	As far as the storefront space goes, what kind of store would you consider opening there? Are you talking a front for the printing business, or a retail store?
RYAN:	Well, as the stock continues to expand and things get more cramped in our basement, we will need to consider moving the whole operation to the Good Shirts space. If and when this does happen, it wouldn’t be too far fetched to see a BMEshop retail location. We do get requests all the time from people asking if they can stop by and do some shopping, but I’m not really down with people browsing through our home. So if this did come to happen, I’m sure there would be a couple people who it would make happy.
BME:	How do you decide what to stock? Are there any items that are sure-fire sellers?
CORRIE:	It’s always hard to know, and we all work together on this (Ryan, Shannon, Rachel and I). It’s always helpful to have more input than less as far as what brand new items to carry. As for what our sure-fire sellers are, I believe this also changes on a fairly regular basis.
RYAN:	There are a few things that always seem to sell well, though; the “Guess Where” shirt, for example. That design has been printed more times than I can remember and continually sells every time, which I think is because that one in particular appeals to not only BME/IAM type people but people outside that realm as well. The “Not Deaf” shirt has also had a few re-prints and continues to sell now. And from the looks of it, the new “Bling” eyelets from Anatometal will also do quite well. I think that’s what makes the job interesting and makes it easy to go to work each day — it changes all the time. Things like the large messenger bags moved quite well for the first couple batches, but at this point have really slowed down, so they’ll most likely be whittled back to just a few basic colors and designs rather than the 17 different ones we have now. Actually, I’m looking into replacing them with DJ bags, which are sort of the same idea but are square to fit records, and likely backpacks as well.
BME:	Now, whenever you’re dealing with customers, you inevitably find yourself faced with some of the worst/most hilarious people that society has to offer. Do you have any particularly noteworthy customer service tales?
RYAN:	I think that’s just the nature of any retail-type operation; there will always be some sort of customer incidents. One recent one was a returned parcel in the mail: I opened it up and there was a letter from a mother saying her son had used her credit card without permission and she would like her card credited. Well, no problem; it looked like the package was in good shape. Upon opening the parcel, though, I found it filled with a beat up pair of pliers and some nuts and bolts that looked like they were swept off of dad’s workbench. So I gave this mom a call and explained that the items returned to me weren’t even items we sell. She assured me that they were, however, as she had intercepted the parcel before her son got it. I suggested the possibility that perhaps her son intercepted it before she did, and invited her to checkout the shop and in fact see that we don’t really sell used pliers and nuts and bolts. Needless to say, I never heard from her again. But other than the normal, “I forgot to include my apartment number and my parcel was returned, so can BMEshop pay to ship it again?” — type things, our customers are generally very nice and web savvy. This makes our job much easier.

BME:	And similarly, based on the variety of things that BMEshop sells, have you run into any problems as far as certain items getting stopped by border officials and things like that?
RYAN:	The only things that have ever been scrutinized at all have been the play piercing needles, I’m sure mostly due to the fact that they could be used for purposes that we aren’t offering them for. But even with them, the number of times they have been stopped over the years is small enough to count on my fingers. I figure it is mostly just someone having a bad day and stopping everything that comes across their desk, or someone who happens to have a supervisor hanging over their shoulder. Anyone with half a brain can look at the contents of any of our packages and understand that they aren’t a threat to national security. We have sent things all over the world, even to not-so-common places like Russia, South Africa and Gibraltar, and never had any issues. In the few cases where something is stopped, I usually just package it up again and list the same description and it breezes through with no problems at all.
BME:	How do you feel about the size of BMEshop? Between the range and quality of products you offer, there’s definitely the potential to move into “Hot Topic” territory, but without the blatant pandering to “youth culture.” Are there plans to make that jump?
CORRIE:	I don’t know about a jump right to “Hot Topic” proportions, but I definitely feel like we’re at a bit of a crossroads per se.
RYAN:	I think we’re at a point right now where we either need to get larger or stagnate to some extent.
CORRIE:	Exactly. We have been expanding slowly over the last five years, at about the only pace that can be expected from a two-person operation, but I think now we are looking at a need to expand at a bit different pace — and maybe focus on some new directions. Especially now that we have switched over to Anatometal as our primary jewelry supplier (with the exception of organic and glass products) — and have the opportunity to expand our jewelry section with a large selection of high-quality jewelry, we may be looking at having to hire an employee, or maybe me coming back full time. Which, as much as I love having a couple days to myself with my girls, seems like a more preferable solution; it’s really so hard to trust something you’re so invested in to someone else.

BME:	So you feel there may be downsides to a considerable expansion?
CORRIE:	Definitely. One of the main downsides would be having to move the stock out of the house, which is a problem not only for the obvious reasons of convenience (if we need to check on something stock-wise for an email, it’s sure nicer to have it ten feet away than across town), but because Ryan works six days a week — sometimes as many as 10 to 12 hours a day at least now, he’s home even while he’s working. Plus, I think when you get too big, you lose that “family business” feel, which is one of the things I love about BMEshop right now. Although, I think a lot of people don’t realize it is just that a “family business” run by two people. Well actually, it probably goes both ways. I think people either don’t realize it’s only two people doing everything — they think it’s much bigger than it is — or, they know that just Ryan and I run it out of our house, so those people would be surprised by how big it is. One third of our house is dedicated to BMEshop; our entire basement level has bin after bin of t-shirts, bin after bin after bin of jewelry, and piles of supplies and books and so on. Plus the t-shirt shop, which is across town.
RYAN:	I don’t really have any interest in that giant faceless online retailer-type stance, partially because one thing that is very important to me is the connection between IAM and BMEshop. If someone has a question about something, they are welcome and encouraged to send me a message over IAM, and chances are they’ll get an answer far outside of business hours. If they want something special, they just have to ask and I’ll see what we can do. I find that as some businesses grow, their quality and level of customer service diminishes, which is something we want to avoid at all costs.
BME:	Speaking of stores like “Hot Topic” and the like, who do you presently consider your competition to be?
CORRIE:	I don’t really ever think about it in those terms, I guess. I know Ryan will price-check other sites, but I guess I assume that if people want to support BME, they’ll shop at BMEshop, but I never really put any kind of “aggressive” face on it, like we’re in competition with anyone else. Maybe that’s being naïve?
RYAN:	And, as I’ve said, I’m still sort of socially stunted and not really too aware of my surroundings. I’m sure we have lots of “competition,” but I don’t really look at it in an adversarial sort of way. You know, if you want a barbell that was made in a low wage factory by people without piercings and sold to you by some guy who has no interest in you or your lifestyle, so be it. But, if you want to support jewelry-makers and artisans in the community, and have it brought to you by BME (who, there is just no arguing their contribution to things), then BMEshop is probably the place you want to shop. I could certainly double the profits overnight by importing some cut-rate products from Asia, but I take what BME stands for very seriously and would never abuse that trust given by our customers.
CORRIE:	Exactly, and we made that moral decision very early on — that we would not carry low-quality jewelry just to bolster our profits. Most of the cheap stuff out there has anywhere from a 500-900% mark-up on it — and trust me, I’ve worked a lot of retail jobs, and mark-up is usually only about 100% — so these guys are buying a barbell for under a dollar and selling it to you for more than ten dollars. It’s a little disconcerting to see people on IAM buying things that BMEshop carries from those “other guys” just because they’re a few dollars cheaper. We know that some of our prices are slightly higher than some other sites’, but those sites aren’t donating a percentage of their income directly back into the community — and maybe people don’t even realize that we do that. But not only is BMEshop helping to support the BME community financially, we’re also very active on a personal level; we’re always (quietly) donating to different causes on IAM, and we always try to work within the community whenever possible — both of our organic jewelry suppliers (Black Ivy Organics and One Tribe), for example, we found through IAM. I guess I’m hoping that people take this into consideration the next time the question of a few dollars comes up — where is your money going after you pay? That’s pretty important, I believe.

BME:	And finally, what’s next for BMEshop? Any new items you’re particularly excited about?
RYAN:	There are always lots of things in the works, including staying on top of older stock items. I know that bores a lot of the older people on BME and IAM, but with so many new people joining every day who would like some of those items, I think it’s only fair that we take care of them as well. There are also lots of exciting things on the jewelry front as well: Our new partnership with Anatometal is going to allow us to carry a greatly expanded selection of jewelry. This will include the beautiful “Bling” eyelets and jeweled navel barbells, as well as things like tiny 16 gauge eyebrow barbells. Our selection of glass jewelry is also coming along, and I am concentrating on adding more and more of that. As well, it’s important to keep adding things that are out of the ordinary and in larger sizes, since there are so many people out there with stretched piercings that need jewelry to fill them. I’m really happy with the organics selection, as it was non-existent at the start of BMEshop, and we have built it up with some really beautiful pieces from both One Tribe and Black Ivy Organics. And as always, we will continue to add new shirt designs all the time as well.
CORRIE:	And the most exciting of all (to me, anyway): The new version of the site, which is very close to being ready.
BME:	What’s going to be different about the new site? Is it just a cosmetic facelift, or is it a totally new site from top to bottom?
RYAN:	It’s cosmetic and functionality-based as well. Look, let’s just call things as we see them: The old shop looks exactly that — old. It’s the same old story that, when you are dealing with something every day, you don’t really see it as everyone else does. Since I’ve been busy working on the new shop, some of the older stuff looks really outdated. I mean, some of the product shots are just Shannon holding onto the item in his driveway! The graphics on the new shop are much nicer and better represent the quality of the items. I’m not a tech person in the least though, so a lot of the integration work was done by Jon (IAM:1101001), and a lot of the new ads you see on BME were created for us by IAM:Gray. There are some really cool features available on the new shop, such as a reward points system that allows you to collect points on your account based on your purchases that you can redeem as discounts. You can search by manufacturer, and there are linked items as well. This saves people having to scurry all over the site to find the item they are looking for, and saves some of the older products from getting buried in obscurity. And other things, such as on the old shop you will notice that the tapers are three separate items, which is kind of a pain and was just a limit of the functionality of the old software. The new site allows for any number of sub-items for each product, so things will be much cleaner looking.
CORRIE:	It’s been such a battle to bring it into being, but I am really, really excited about the new shop. I think we have just about exhausted the software we’re running now, and the new site looks so slick — lots of thanks to Jon there — and it’ll be a big change. I can’t wait.