Joe Palko
CEO
Joe Palko, co-founder of Solid Cactus, was always in business, always in management from the time he was a teenager. It started at a grocery store in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania. “By the time I was sixteen I was doing all the scheduling, the ordering, the stocking, pretty much everything,” says Joe. “Then one day the owner just gave me the keys and said ‘you do it.’” Joe did. The grocery chain saw what they had and moved him up. Joe did years of managing grocery stores. From there he went to UPS as a manager. It was along the way his friend Scott Sanfilippo had a crazy idea: sell ferret supplies and other pet-related items via the internet. It was a crazy idea. After all, Amazon.com hadn’t even been invented back in 1994 when the Ferretstore.com started.
“I was management, Scott was technology,” says Joe. “We had one employee and worked out of a closet.” Within two years the closet grew into a garage, and today the Ferretstore.com is twenty-two employees, a 20,000 square foot distribution center, 4800 unique SKUs, 250,000 customers, a quarterly print catalogue and annual sales over $5 million. But Joe and Scott wanted their web site to work better, be user-friendly, easier for search engines to find. They wanted a good web site to be a great web site, and in 2000, Solid Cactus was born.
Joe knew from the grocery business that products have to be easy to find and inventory has to be easy to control and started corresponding with Andrey and Stas, the first designer and programmer for Solid Cactus. “People were coming to us asking for help with redesigns of their own web sites,” says Joe.
Joe knew he could help people. “Scott and I made every mistake you could make along the way,” laughs Joe. “Solid Cactus doesn’t just design web sites, we know about operating an on-line business. With us it’s not theory, we’ve been there. We are there.”
Joe knows that most people who start internet businesses are trying something very new. “When I was working for big companies, I know how much I always wanted to work for myself,” says Joe. “I can see that in others. I like helping businesses succeed. I love learning about new businesses. I like helping people.”
As to Solid Cactus and the future, well, the present looks bright. As of 2004, Solid Cactus had grown to 25 employees with over 1500 clients. They’ve designed or redesigned a thousand web sites. Joe looks five years down the road carefully. “In five years hopefully we’ll all be the same people,” he says simply. I want to make Solid Cactus better, to keep it growing without over-growing. Right now I know everyone really well. That’s important. As we grow that will be the challenge. To get big without getting—you know—BIG. To make sure we continue to get great people who look after our clients. To keep everyone good at what they do, and me too. That’s my greatest concern,” says co-founder Joe Palko.
“I was management, Scott was technology,” says Joe. “We had one employee and worked out of a closet.” Within two years the closet grew into a garage, and today the Ferretstore.com is twenty-two employees, a 20,000 square foot distribution center, 4800 unique SKUs, 250,000 customers, a quarterly print catalogue and annual sales over $5 million. But Joe and Scott wanted their web site to work better, be user-friendly, easier for search engines to find. They wanted a good web site to be a great web site, and in 2000, Solid Cactus was born.
Joe knew from the grocery business that products have to be easy to find and inventory has to be easy to control and started corresponding with Andrey and Stas, the first designer and programmer for Solid Cactus. “People were coming to us asking for help with redesigns of their own web sites,” says Joe.
Joe knew he could help people. “Scott and I made every mistake you could make along the way,” laughs Joe. “Solid Cactus doesn’t just design web sites, we know about operating an on-line business. With us it’s not theory, we’ve been there. We are there.”
Joe knows that most people who start internet businesses are trying something very new. “When I was working for big companies, I know how much I always wanted to work for myself,” says Joe. “I can see that in others. I like helping businesses succeed. I love learning about new businesses. I like helping people.”
As to Solid Cactus and the future, well, the present looks bright. As of 2004, Solid Cactus had grown to 25 employees with over 1500 clients. They’ve designed or redesigned a thousand web sites. Joe looks five years down the road carefully. “In five years hopefully we’ll all be the same people,” he says simply. I want to make Solid Cactus better, to keep it growing without over-growing. Right now I know everyone really well. That’s important. As we grow that will be the challenge. To get big without getting—you know—BIG. To make sure we continue to get great people who look after our clients. To keep everyone good at what they do, and me too. That’s my greatest concern,” says co-founder Joe Palko.
