Sarah Goodhart-McCormick’s garage in Vineyard Haven is filled with about a thousand pieces of vintage clothing, all hanging in neat, colorful rows. On a recent weekend, the young entrepreneur was helping her friend Bart Jarek choose an outfit for an art opening that evening.
“We’re going for the Mad Hatter look,” Mr. Jarek said as he stood in front of a mirror straightening a bright red vest with rhinestones, part of a happily mismatched outfit that probably spanned several decades of style.
Aequinox Vintage Clothing in Oak Bluffs closed last year and Ms. Goodhart-McCormick is in the process of moving her business online. The two-story converted garage next to her house will serve as the store’s headquarters, photography studio and repair shop.
Upstairs, some mannequins watched over the photography setup and a small sewing studio where Ms. Goodhart-McCormick does all the repairs herself.
In addition to having spent more than a year renovating the garage, she has been working with a consultant in New Jersey to build a high-quality website, which she said has been a major learning experience.
“It’s kind of like parenting,” she said of the transition to the web. “There is absolutely no linear guidebook or roadmap. So I’ve had to figure out a lot of things the hard way.”
One challenge has been making sure the devices and software she uses are all compatible. Her new photographer, Louis Jacobs-Walsh, has been instrumental in the process, she said.
Another challenge has been finding a unique name for the website. She decided to drop Aequinox because people sometimes had trouble with the spelling. “Every name I’ve thought of, someone else had already taken it,” she said. “I’m always waking up in the middle of the night trying to get a business name.”
She hopes to open under a new name this winter, conducting about half of her business online.
Although the exact number is hard to determine, most Island businesses have some degree of online presence, whether through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, online directories or individual websites.
Of the 49 clothing stores listed in the 2014 Island Book phone directory, 21 have websites and 15 of those sell to customers online. Most Island hotels and inns have websites.
Nancy Gardella, executive director of the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber of Commerce, said the internet is playing an increasingly important role in Island business. “I would say it has emerged over the last four years in particular,” she said, pointing to the influence of social media and its popularity among baby boomers.
“You’ve got the largest population group in the country using social media, it encourages you to get engaged with that demographic,” she said.
Heidi Feldman and her husband Curtis Friedman moved to the Vineyard about 14 years ago to start Down Island Farm in Vineyard Haven. Last year they launched Martha’s Vineyard Sea Salt with the internet in mind. Sea salt is the only product they sell online because it is shelf-stable and can be shipped anywhere.
“In order to sell a product that is perishable, you’ve got to have overnight shipping,” Ms. Feldman said. “It gets really complex really quickly.”
She previously worked as a project manager for large companies, including Sears and Victoria’s Secret, and worked on e-commerce software. “So I had experience at the 50,000 foot level,” she said. But when it came to building a new website, she hired one of the Island’s several website consultants.
Like many small businesses, Martha’s Vineyard Sea Salt uses a Wordpress template for its website. “There is no use reinventing the wheel,” Ms. Feldman said. She added that the many challenges of building a site from scratch “can pretty much put a business into the dregs before they even get off the ground.”
Heather Goff, a well-known Vineyard website consultant who has worked with many Island businesses, said more and more stores on the Vineyard are setting up e-commerce sites to cater to their seasonal clients throughout the year. “Every business now realizes that a website is beneficial,” she said. “That wasn’t the case five years ago.”
Websites today need to be responsive to different formats such as tablets and smartphones, she said. That’s especially important for businesses in resort communities, where visitors often leave their computers at home.
Setting up a website is only half the challenge, she said. “People don’t realize that once it launches it isn’t necessarily going to be found. There are so many variables involved in being noticed by the search engine.”
Selling online can be like having another business entirely, said Frank Imbibo, co-owner of Sanctuary, a gift shop in Oak Bluffs. He and his wife Rita started Sanctuary around 2001, and with help from Ms. Goff they expanded online a couple of years later. The original idea was to use the web to stay connected to their clients year round.
“Just like any business, you have to work on it constantly, keep it updated, change it,” Mr. Imbibo said. Many visitors to the website have never visited the store in Oak Bluffs, or even set foot on the Island, he said. “We’re getting a whole new customer base, basically, with the online store,” he said.
About 85 per cent of Sanctuary’s products are available on the store’s website (thelifedivine.com). “So just staying on top of that is a big task,” he said.
The bricks and mortar store brings in higher profits, he said, but the website helps maintain business throughout the year, including in the weeks before Christmas, when foot traffic is slower but people are shopping online. “I think all of us kind of experience the same ebbs and flows,” he said of Vineyard businesses.
Seaside Daylily Farm in West Tisbury started in 1993 and has been online since 2001. Owner Wendy Forest said daylilies can be easily shipped since their roots are thick and retain moisture.
Of the eight farms listed in the Island Book, five have websites, but only two sell online, including Whippoorwill Farm in West Tisbury, which offers membership to its CSA program for weekly farm shares of fresh produce.
Over the years, e-commerce has become second nature for Seaside Daylily Farm, Ms. Forest said. Besides helping her stay connected with seasonal visitors, the website (daylily.vineyard.net) helps streamline the process of selling and shipping and saves waste from the paper catalogs the farm used to distribute, she said.
In fact most of her customers are off-Island, she said, and about half have no particular connection to the Vineyard, other than their interest in daylilies.
For her, running an online business is more of an opportunity than a challenge. “The only challenge is to keep learning the new technology that is changing,” Ms. Forest said. As with many Island businesses, she hired a consultant to get started. But now she is familiar enough with the process to handle the design and updates herself.
“The main thing is to present what we are doing here,” she said. The website is not just for commerce, but for helping people learn about daylilies, organic farming and sustainability. With pictures and text, she said, “That’s the kind of thing you can present well on a website.”
Before opening Aequinox, Ms. Goodhart-McCormick sold vintage clothing at the Chilmark Flea Market and at the antiques show at the Grange Hall in West Tisbury. In response to customer demand, she opened a store and then began pursuing an online business venture.
While running the store, she also began selling at trade shows in major U.S. cities, which were time-consuming but helped her gain exposure. Now she hopes that having a website will allow her to take her business to the next level.
Despite the challenges, Ms. Goodhart-McCormick finds inspiration from others like Ms. Forest at Seaside Daylily Farm.
“Even if you are not selling online, you at least have to have a website these days so that people can find you and get more information,” she said. “It’s the only way to survive as a business here year round.”
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