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"Oh, there's nothing of interest to you on the Internet in Lancaster, Virginia," Catherine's mother said when we asked about her experiences with the information superhighway. "Just a bunch of gobbledygook and games. A big waste of time and money. I wouldn't have it except it's at work." So, we took a "wait and see" approach to getting onto this mysterious and imposing technical tool, The Web. Even the name sounded like it would grab you and not turn loose of your life.
A few months later, we attended a sheep management conference at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia to learn in preparation for our sheep. One session by Woody Lane showed us how to get information on sheep from experts and individuals ranging from Pennsylvania State to England to Australia. It was up to date information, much more current than what was available in our books and even the conference notebook. There at the conference in December 1996, Dr. Lane told us about a local sheep raiser who wanted to visit sheep producers in New Zealand and through the Internet was able to plan their itinerary to include meeting sheep raisers and visit their facilities, all without spending a dime on long distance telephone calls or even postage.
What a marvel, we thought, to be able to communicate with people around the world and get up to the minute information from experts and agencies. And what a treat to do it without making expensive phone calls or waiting for the mail. We had already begun to realize that by living in a rural area we missed the resources of huge university or pubic libraries to do research. We asked ourselves, "Could the Internet be a resource for us?"
With advertisements in "Organic Gardening" and "Southern Living" magazines, we began selling our romantic old garden roses with a free catalog in February 1997. A neighbor who uses the Internet for personal investing said she had located sources for roses on the Internet. We asked to visit some of these sites and learned that customers can spend as much time as they want visiting your site and getting information about your products and you don't have to personally visit with them. They can get your information 24 hours a day, any day of the week. By the time they call to place an order, they would know what you have available, how much it cost, when and how much shipping is, and what your company is all about. This sounded wonderful compared with the constant telephone calls we were receiving asking just these questions. And these calls cost us dearly over our 800 telephone number we had gotten.
After our trip to England and Scotland in September 1997, we started asking around about how to get on the Internet. You needed a local telephone number which you had to get through a Internet Service Provider. Who were those providers and what were the charges? We researched and found that a provider needs to do more than just provide a line to service, they should help you learn to make the most of what is available. Then a friend had us meet Cate and Keith Pillow at Sylvan Information Services in nearby Warsaw, Virginia. They were enthusiastic and knowledgeable and literally held our hands as we leaped into cyberspace from our 1830s brick cottage we use as an office.
With Cate and Keith's help, we obtained a domain name, "melroseplantation.com"
and designed a very basic web page. We took their classes to learn
what makes a good web page and how to make customers happy. Our page,
we decided, would provide information about our roses, books, and other
interests. And since most folks on the Internet will never personally
meet us, we decided to sell with a story, just like this one.
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e-mail: Bennett@MelrosePlantation.com