E-commerce Pioneer Can't Stop Building Businesses

Stuart Carlin is an entrepreneur who has capitalized on the connectivity of the Internet and the emergence of e-commerce. From his office in West Bloomfield, Carlin manages Machinetools.com, Anglerweb.com, and most recently, Local Stew. He's a self-described serial entrepreneur who mixes an intense work ethic with informality.

 

His entrepreneurial instincts were revealed one night, at age 10, at summer camp. Having exhausted his supply of comic books, he noticed other bored campers were finished with their comics as well. 

 

"I started to be a comic book broker," he says, acquiring comics by trade, sometimes selling them. When he came home with a supply of comic books and a pocketful of money, his mother was understandably concerned.

 

Later, at the University of Illinois, he started his first "official" business.  He wanted to do something about an old pop machine in his fraternity house that was filled once a month and was often empty. He worked out a deal with a local vendor to replace the old machine with a new one as well as a candy machine. Carlin got a commission on the products sold. Then he placed machines at other fraternity and sorority houses, ultimately commissioning 60 to 70 machines. 

 

He graduated with an accounting degree and was offered a job by six of the leading national accounting firms. Office based accounting wasn't for him, but he wasn't quite sure what was.

 

 

Unemployed and walking his dog one night in Chicago, he ran into someone he knew who had a machine tool brokerage company. He began working with him, but was lured into establishing his own business -- a network of ice cream carts on the city's waterfront -- in partnership with his brother Greg..

 

"I wanted a chance to have my own thing," he says. In the first year, Carlin and his brother launched 15 carts ice cream carts on the beach. It was successful but only a four-month business, so Carlin looked for other ways to make money. Recalling his work with the machine tool industry, he launched Xchange, a direct marketing company. He offered machine tool sales clients a business proposition: He would send faxes to prospective customers, culled from lists he developed. He collected a premium on each fax.

 

For the next two summers, the ice cream business continued to expand, taking over Mrs. Field's cookies locations and hot dog and pizza stands. After three years, there were about 35 locations. Then the city opted not to renew the contract.

 

"I like to negotiate," Carlin says. "I like to wheel and deal. ... I didn't want to work for anyone else. That was something I knew. I just wanted an opportunity."
 

 

In 1998, Internet commerce was just starting to come of its own. Carlin had an idea to evolve from the fax business to launching his own Internet company that would connect machine tool sales clients with prospective customers. 

 

"Wouldn't it be great to have one site that I could have all this stuff in one place?" he says. The Internet allowed Machinetools.com to go global immediately.

 

It wasn't meant to be a sales and distribution company but rather an Internet match-making service for businesses. He launched the company with metrics and multiple languages. When he started he had more than 30 viable competitors, but Machinetools.com eventually prevailed, while the others went out of business. The difference he says, was that he used the Internet to make connections through a transparent medium. Unlike the others, Carlin didn't collect commissions on the leads or sales, but he still made a decent profit.

 

"The dealer is the one buying and selling," he says. "Our site went after the dealers. That was a huge right move. We didn't try to change the industry, we embraced the dealers which had an existing channel. They loved us for that. They gave us all their machines. If we went the end-user route we wouldn't have gotten the machines."

 

Carlin believes the transparency of the site is critical. "You can see the seller, call him directly, go see him. ... We're not taking any commission so we don't need to police and hide the contact information." It's about lead generation. "If you see a machine for $50,000 you're not going to buy it with a credit card. You have to talk to the person."

 

 

Carlin is a quick study. He realized that he needed to understand the machine tooling industry well, not just leverage Internet technology. His next venture, Anglerweb.com, didn't require the same background. His partner, an avid fisherman, did. Carlin used the same business model -- matching information services with fishermen.

 

"All of my businesses have been creating solutions for problems and needs; that's pretty typical of all entrepreneurs," he says.

 

Carlin moved to West Bloomfield from Chicago about the time that Richard Florida was gaining notoriety for his book, Rise of the Creative Class. Florida concluded that Detroit and other rust belt cities were uncompetitive primarily because they weren't attractive to the creative class. However, Carlin, an under-40 technology entrepreneur and angel investor, found it just right to raise a family and develop his business. Even though his lifestyle requirements may be different from young, single entrepreneurs, he says they're finding urban Detroit attractive. In a few years, he feels there will be a larger pool of programmers to pick from.

 

Entrepreneurs are born, not made or educated, he insists. "Instinctual for sure. You can't teach someone to take risks and have vision and have good gut decisions. Those are the things that make a strong entrepreneur. Anyone can be an entrepreneur, of course but maybe about two percent of the population would make successful entrepreneurs."

 

Even if entrepreneurs aren't home grown, it helps to have a nurturing environment for startups. Carlin believes Michigan's business incubation opportunities, relatively cheap rent, and family-friendly communities are reasons why the state is a place more entrepreneurs should call home. The "stigma" of Detroit, the big negative factor, "is slowly being lifted." 

 

"I'm very much attuned to what's going on in Detroit. I try to hire people in Michigan. Most of my employees are in Michigan. With all these incubators and all these young people coming, the change is happening. My issue is, we need better entrepreneurs here. You can have as many incubators as you want. You have to have the right people to put in there."

 

Carlin speaks with rapid-fire enthusiasm about his work and his adopted state. He applies a strong work ethic to his business, but insists on maintaining an informal working environment and ultimately keeping his staff satisfied. 

 

"For me, as an entrepreneur, what I am most proud of is not how much money we make, it's how much my employees like working for my company."

 

When he's not working, he's playing competitive tennis five days a week, coaching high school basketball, and occasionally enjoying a good night of poker.

 

Most recently, Carlin has turned his global interests locally, using the internet to connect consumers with community activities in West Bloomfield through Local Stew. Unlike Patch, a community online news publication, Local Stew is a resource center, essentially providing an accessible calendar of local events. 

 

"I'm a family man with kids in this town. A lot of times (I wonder) what's going on in this town. I don't want to go to the library website, then go to the high school website, then to another website.... I wanted to have a site where I could put all of this content." There's a mobile application, as well as email. 

 

Like his other businesses, Local Stew is an aggregation of information about specific communities, which serves residents hungry for "what's stewing in their town." It's also a double entendre: Carlin is known by friends as "Stu."  

Dennis Archambault is a freelance writer and regular contributor to Concentrate and Metromode.