WHO WE ARE

The Origin of EcoShip - a note from Jake

A long and winding road has led our business here. It’s been a journey of over 22 years since we first started our business online.

Our family business began as so many businesses do - with an opportunity.

In 2004, my oldest sister, Rachel, wanted to go to horse camp AND church summer camp. My parents thought that was great, but she needed to raise some money if she wanted both.

So Rachel (age 11) and my mom began getting coupons for AC Moore (the craft store) and buying and reselling products on Ebay.

It was going OK. Some things sold, others refused to budge. But then they came across the real winner - the 22,000 Perler bead jar.

Ebay was an auction site at this time - and the price kept climbing and climbing on the bead jar until it surpassed the non-discounted price at AC Moore. It sold, and my parents were stunned. Rachel was excited, she’s going to horse camp!

Sensing the opportunity, my parents began going around to all the AC Moores and Michaels in the area to get their hands on as many bead jars as they could.

They bought up all available stock and carted it home, selling all of it on Ebay.

Then came the next opportunity.

Mom realized we could sell more Perler products online if we went directly to the manufacturer and made our own site.

So she reached out to Perler, built the most beautiful 2004 HTML site you’ll ever lay your eyes on, and booted up KoolStuff4Kids.com.

Traffic started coming in, but was slow.

So mom took one more step - she reached out to Perler and asked them to make us their preferred online supplier and link us.

They did and the buinsess doubled overnight.

Now the fledging Ebay operation living on half a sheet of pegboard in the basement needed to upscale.

So we made our first of 13 moves in 22 years of operation. From the basement to a friend’s closet.

The business quickly outgrew the closest and went subterranean - into the basement of my grandfather’s chiropractic office - the Strauss Chiropractic Center.

The boxes were stacked so high the flickering fluorescent lights blocked by the mountains of beads - the employees began calling themselves the mole people… it was time for a change.

Sensing an opportunity to make this upstart online store into a business supporting our family, Mom and Dad decided to go all-in on our online retail store.

So they packed us up and moved us 1.5 hours west to Reading, PA. Real estate was cheaper, the schools were better, and they decided to move the business into the basement of our new home.

The next 12 years we continued to expand into opportunities we saw for selling online. We started Quilling.com and Polymerclaysuperstore.com, added more Perler products and moved the business two more times.

2016 arrived and I entered the business as a 16-year-old with a lot of ideas and a little too much confidence. To the frustration of my co-workers, I began to tell them how everything could be made better… not my finest moments.

We continued our little ecom retail stores until 2018, when another opportunity opened up before us.

A friend of a friend began selling Keto Bars online and needed some advice on how to ship. Mom told him that if he didn’t want to ship them, we could do it for him.

A week later, he called to take us up on the offer.

And so started our 3PL.

In a 2,000 square foot strip mall we started shipping orders for other ecom brands. We quickly expanded to a 5,000 sqft warehouse space in 2019. And so HawkRidge Fulfillment was born.

We then upgraded in January 2020 to a 15,000 sqft facility. Our timing could not have been better.

Again, our business almost doubled overnight from the pandemic, we were overjoyed. We had struck gold again.

Our 3PL kept expanding year over year. I entered into the business as General Manager in May 2020 after graduating from college.

then we rebranded to ecoship to as a response to an opportunity to make our planet a better place with less waste for all people. It’s why we’ve gone 100% plastic free in our operations

Partnering with people so they grow

(insert picture of me working with Thea as third generation)