Just off Dodge Street in Omaha, you’ll find seven person ecommerce team for PasuTech. You’ve likely never heard of the company and you’ve certainly never bought its products, but you may have been to one of their niche sites—solely dedicated to fans of vents and water filters.
It’s a seemingly familiar story for Omaha.
In 2002, Omahans Doug Nielsen, Julie Mahloch and Mark Hasebroock founded Hammocks.com, a speciality online store that only sold hammocks.The company grew specialty store by specialty store until it became a home goods empire, now known as Hayneedle.
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Today the company has more than 500 employees and millions a year in revenue with more than 3,000 brands and nearly 2 million products in its stores.
PasuTech co-founders Jay Raggal (right) and Iyad Aldalooj hope they can achieve similar success.
“We see them and other retailers like Wayfair.com and Build.com as a successful model to follow,” Raggal told SPN.
PasuTech is an online retailer that builds and operates ecommerce stores in the home improvement industry.
“We differentiate ourselves from brick and mortar stores and other online retailers by providing detailed and hard to find merchandise,” Aldalooj said.
They started their niche stores MyAirFan.com, MyVentCovers.com and FiltersHeaven.com with $6,000 borrowed from family members. The sites sell run-of-the-mill products to rare, specialty fans, like this bronze one, priced at $299.
“We didn’t know much when we started,” admits Aldalooj (left), who attended the University of Nebraska at Omaha and earned degrees in engineering.
PasuTech has a roughly 40,000-product inventory through its niche stores and through Amazon, eBay, Houzz and Sears’ online stores. By July, they hope to have 100,000 products with a half million by the end of the year.
The company’s origins in 2010 started differently though, with roommate’s differing opinions on room temperature.
“I was hot, my roommate was cold,” Aldalooj recalls. “But he was too lazy to get out of bed to close his vent, so we created a remote control vent.”
Problem was, the Click Vent wasn’t a very good product, breaking after a few months, Aldalooj said. But from dealing with companies that sold their product, the pair learned the ins and outs of ecommerce.
PasuTech pivoted in late 2012 and started niche sites that drop shipped its products.
“We’ve seen tremendous growth early on,” Aldalooj said.
In the next year or two, PasuTech hopes to bring all their brands and projected three million products together under one roof, CazaBlue.com.
Credits: Founder photos from LinkedIn.
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