Groublogpon – The Serious Blog of Groupon

Today’s Featured Merchant is founder and CEO Bob McKeon of Picture It On Canvas, a photo to canvas, slate or metal website based in San Diego, CA.

With only one other full-time employee and two part-timers, Bob was looking for a way to expand his business by bringing new awareness and traffic to his website. Since offering his first deal, Bob has certainly become one of Groupon’s success stories. Click through to read his story.

Writes Bob:

Long before I inquired about running a Groupon deal for Picture It On Canvas, I was a Groupon subscriber. I loved reading the daily deals in my area every morning and thought it was a wonderful concept. Since I believed in the concept so much as a consumer and saw the incredible sales the deals were creating, I was intrigued by the possibilities.

After a close friend ran a Groupon deal featuring her restaurant and had a wonderful response, I decided to try it with my business, Picture It On Canvas. My sales rep was extremely responsive and helped me create a deal that worked for not only for Groupon subscribers, but also for our company. Since Picture It On Canvas is an Internet company, we have the advantage of being able to run deals in cities all across the country, something that has helped us sell a lot of canvas!

Our deal in San Diego, which sold more than 3,700 Groupons, was $39 for a 16″x20″ gallery-wrapped canvas. On the day of the first feature, we were amazed at how many people were buying the deal. I must have clicked refresh on my computer every five minutes! It was very exciting.

The response and number has been incredible. Groupon did a great job of helping us prepare, but in the end, we had to upgrade our business to handle the amount of sales, something I couldn’t be happier about! Within 10 days of our first feature we had to get a new phone system and move to a larger building. We moved from an 800 sq. ft. space to one that is 4,600 sq. ft. That was five months ago and within the next two months, we’ll be moving again, this time to a space with more than 10,000 sq. ft. Absolutely incredible. We now have the personnel, phone system, computers and everything else needed to handle the ever-growing volume. On the days we run a Groupon feature, we know the call and email volume will go up so we’re prepared.

To date, we’ve run more than 100 Groupon deals across the country and have sold thousands upon thousands of deals. Also, we’ve found that over 20 percent of Groupon customers return to buy again and more than 25 percent upgrade during their purchase to a larger canvas print. After starting with just one other full time employee, we now have hired 22 other full-time employees. Along with Groupon, I’m changing the lives of many people by giving them rewarding jobs in a growing company. We’re very grateful for the opportunity to partner with Groupon and are very excited for many more deals in the future.

-Picture It On Canvas founder and CEO, Bob McKeon

Questions or comments for Bob?  Leave them below and we’ll make sure he receives them.