He primarily sold his products through big box retailers like Walmart and was getting squeezed on margins. I suggested he should sell direct through a website. He scoffed at the idea.
On the long drive back to Chicago my girlfriend brought it back up and asked if I could help put her dad’s business online. This was 2001 so there weren’t really any easy options to create what he needed. Ended up spending nights and weekends for the next month building a whole shopping cart, storefront, and payment gateway. Remember learning just what a pain getting SSL setup correctly was at the time — which was part of the inspiration for Cloudflare making it free and easy many years later.
Gave the site to him for Christmas. He spent the whole day playing with it and then bragging to his friends he was now in “e-commerce.” Girlfriend was very happy. We continued to date for another 4 years until her medical career took her East and starting a company took me West. Still friends to this day.
I think her dad’s company may still using a lot of my old code. (Which, to be honest giving my coding skills, is a bit terrifying.) Ecommerce has become a big part of their distribution. And I still buy and use his detergent, which is terrific for cleaning performance fabrics like Gortex and washing sheets if your skin is sensitive to perfumes or dyes.