Her Own Bubble Economy

By ADAM COHEN

Karen Young knows exactly when the bubble wrap took over. it was the day an 18-wheeler pulled up to her small-town Indiana home and unloaded a trailerload of the stuff. Bubble wrap filled her living room, gobbled up the hall and invaded her porch. "The neighbors had no idea what was going on," she says, laughing. They know now. Today Young presides over her own company, ShippingSupply.com and all that bubble wrap is now in a warehouse.

Young's niche is quirky but lucrative: selling bubble wrap over eBay, largely to other eBay sellers, who use it to wrap their own items for shipping. That Young supports herself through an eBay business is not unusual; an estimated 75,000 Americans do. But her rise illustrates just how powerful eBay's 22 million-user platform can be for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Young's small-business career began as an eBay cliche. A stay-at-home mother of two school-age daughters, living in rural Crawfordsville, Ind., Young had more time on her hands than money. She had always been good with computers and had an eye for collectibles. She started scouring local flea markets and estate sales looking for undervalued knickknacks she could then list on eBay. At first Young tried to keep 15 auctions going at any given time; then 25; then 50. Eventually, she reached 100. When the packing and fulfillment got to be too much to handle, she hired her first employee: a retired neighbor, who helped out part time.

As soon as Young decided to make it a real business--she was already working 100 hours a week--she started looking for ways to cut costs and increase profit margins. One expense jumped out: the cost of shipping supplies that she was buying at her nearby Staples. She decided to go directly to the manufacturer to order bubble bags, self-sealing bags made of bubble wrap that she used to pack items.

Then Young decided, on a whim, to start listing the bags themselves on eBay. Her good deal and her low overhead meant she could charge less than retail stores, even after shipping costs. Soon she was doing well. Very well. That's when she decided to sell the bubble wrap itself, not just the bags. Young was already buying the stuff for her own packing needs in 750-ft. rolls. She just increased her order. By a lot. And she got a little system going. Since 250-ft. units sold best, every roll that came off the semi had to be divided into three. So she laid an old card table on her living-room floor, its legs sticking up. She put a roll of bubble wrap on one leg and rerolled it onto another, cutting off swaths of 250 ft. Before long, she was shipping out 30 to 40 rolls a day.

ShippingSupply.com now does a brisk business in bubble wrap, mailers, shipping tubes and plastic-foam peanuts. It has expanded twice and currently occupies 7,000 sq. ft. of warehouse space. Young has a staff of eight, including her husband, who quit his day job.

Young is the biggest shipping-supply seller on eBay, although competitors are multiplying (you can't hide on the network). She handles 150 orders a day, nearly twice as many as a year ago, and she has 35,000 customers in her database. Young has reached a legendary status on eBay. She's one of only a handful of "shooting stars": users with a feedback rating, eBay's form of customer evaluation, of more than 10,000.

What Young really likes, after years of working part time as a photographer's assistant, is being her own boss. She makes her own hours, although that usually includes Sunday nights. Still, there is plenty of time for her daughters. She can watch tapes of musicals in her warehouse office. And the dress code is up to her. "You know what?" She pauses for a minute and then whispers, "I don't wear shoes."