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Since
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A brief history concerning Wishihadthat, Inc.
Wishihadthat was conceived in mid-1998, when I asked my son, Robert Welch (then a young Caltech engineering student) to build a website for my construction business. As a contractor, I knew that I needed to come into the internet age and provide online information for potential customers and expand our capabilities. I provided Robert my photo portfolio of years of accumulated custom jobs to get started. Several weeks later, he presented me with my website. However, someone else had purchased and locked in my company name before this, so we brainstormed and came upon the name Wishihadthat.com...why not?
Upon viewing the site Robert built for me, I was so excited about the outcome that the very next day I shared the fact with another business owner...who immediately asked me if Robert would build a website for his business, too. Within months, Robert had built quite a few other websites for some of my local business contacts, even teaching me a few pointers along the way. We decided to put these websites under the "umbrella" name of Wishihadthat, since we liked the name, and began creating an outstanding portal site serving Bakersfield and Kern County, California. The site featured hundreds of local business, thousands of resource links, etc.
During this time, Robert switched his major from engineering to business and accounting, and moved back to Bakersfield to further this new web-building business. As time went by, our vision grew and continued to evolve. By early 2000, Wishihadthat was experiencing rapid growth, so I finally retired from my long-standing construction business to devote full time to the marketing of Wishihadthat while Robert was finishing his degree and passing all of his CPA exams. On that day, Robert was named CEO/President of Wishihadthat, and handles the detail work, which allows me to do what I really enjoy: marketing and product development. My construction background has served well, as now I oversee construction of all of our large custom fountains, where we have grown to be one of the leading custom fountain production companies in the US market.
While we are equal partners, I suppose in title you could consider my son as my
boss...I'm very grateful for the role he fills!
As Marketing Director, I started adding new products and manufactures to the Wishihadthat format, and turned my full attention over to retailing. Within months, the company was selling a wide variety of products online.
During the past ten years, the site has grown to encompass approximately 38,000 pages of great decor online, and we maintain thousands of keywords on various search engines. WIHT is also an Industry Partner of ASID (American Society of Interior Designers) and works within the 41,000 member organization to supply great decorative products to the industry. Over the years, WIHT has grown to become an internet leader in the sale of architectural mouldings, fountains, marble and bronze statuary, and other decor items.
Evolution to Importing
Starting in 2002, the company started directly importing goods, mainly from China, but also from
places such as India and Thailand. To accommodate the imports, a new division was formulated in 2003 and set aside as an independent wholesale company, known as RoJico Trading Company (short for Rob/Jim Company). We hired a Chinese manager who maintains an office for RoJico in China
and oversee the logistics of importing many of the products you will find on Wishihadthat, such as architectural decor items (almost 1500 different items), carved marble products, bronzes, oil paintings, conference tables & desks , wood & marble fireplace surrounds, and much more. The wholesale division, RoJico Trading, is growing fast and now has over
900 national registered dealers, with representation in almost every state.
Wishihadthat.com is still the anchor retailer for our products, although many of our products are now seen on the many other internet sites that we license.
Since we moved into our new building and warehouse in June, 2007, we have
grown quite a bit. Although we remain primarily a web-based business, in mid-2008 we hired a full-time graphic artist who has been a terrific addition that allowed us to, for the first time, produce beautiful print catalogs , and
other sales materials for our dealers. Although we have been based in Bakersfield since
our inception, we are almost unknown in our own city, as we do no local advertising,
yet our warehouse and new showroom is open to the public. All advertising expenditures are directed for keywords on search engines
such as Google, Yahoo, etc. plus a few selected national print ads.
As a result, we are easily found by people all over the US looking for the types of
products we carry.
We would love to have you come by for a visit any time you are in the Bakersfield, CA area, so here's a map!
Recent News - Update February 2010
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Starting in October, 2009, we started hiring independent marketing reps
around the country to assist us in taking the news of our products to
designers, builders, and other trade accounts in their market areas.
To date, we now have almost 30 that we have set up to represent us, with
many more expected by the end on 2010. Part of the reason for this
expansion was the planned launching this month (Feb 2010) of
something pretty exciting - our Independent
Retailer Support Program. For several years, Robert and I
have been discussing ways that we could expand all over the US and have
our products better represented locally. So, we developed a package
that will allow businesses to be totally independent while working with
our products. We created a website format that we can clone,
allowing people to select their own domain name, and we provide printed
materials as well as electronic sales materials, and drop-ship the
products for them. Participants can elect to work from their homes,
implement a small showroom, or even open a retail storefront. The
program allows us to, within 24 hours, set up a participant with their own
website, start printing of personalized sales materials, and start sending
out samples of our products. We have recently added three new office
staff members to assist in implementing the program.
Last month, Bakersfield Magazine found out about us and has published a
small story about Wishihadthat, Inc. in the February 2010 issue of their
magazine. As stated earlier, since we do not advertise locally our
company has managed to operate "under the radar" in our
home town of Bakersfield, CA. However, we do appreciate their story (for
the most part, accurate) and if you would like to read what they said,
click images below:
Page 1
Page 2
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Mission Statement & Policies
We will continue to add new products as we expand our relationships with other manufacturers, our own produced products, and also bring in more selection from overseas.
We have a growing, dedicated, and efficient staff that has helped propel Wishihadthat into position as one of the premier decor sites on the internet.
We also have a great tech support staff that keeps our navigation running smoothly, and a non-commissioned, no-pressure sales staff whose goal is to assist each customer to the best of our abilities.
Here at Wishihadthat.com, our goal is to provide our customers with quality products, great customer service, and an enjoyable internet experience in a highly secured online environment. We pledge to act in good faith and to the best of our abilities attend to the needs of the users of our internet site. In doing this, we believe Wishihadthat will continue to grow as an asset to the internet community.
To date, those principals have proven themselves true with our many thousands of annual buyers.
Rest assured that Wishihadthat.com is committed to offering our customers a growing number of quality products with the best prices on the internet. Should you find a product on another site that is posted for less than shown on our site, please simply call us at 800-419-1130 or email us the URL page you found showing the exact item (send to Sales@Wishihadthat.com ) and we will do everything we can to either match or beat any competitors price!
Please provide us with the product-specific web page.
Give us a call if you have any questions!
Jim Welch,
Co-
Founder & Director of Marketing
Wishihadthat, Inc.
800-419-1130
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