MWM Interview Bret Ridgway: AInterview Editor:
This time, we're chatting with someone who is not just a marketer in his own right but someone who offers a truly valuable service to marketers big and small. When it comes to the world of physical products and fulfilment of those products, Bret Ridgway is the go-to guy. Now, if you've never thought of making a physical product available, then you could be missing out on a huge opportunity and that's why I'm so excited this time to welcome Bret. Thank you for taking the time to chat with us today. Bret Ridgway: Well, it is such a pleasure to be with you folks today and I look forward to our chat. Editor: Great. Well, we need to talk about your business, I guess, don't we Bret, SpeakerFulfillmentServices.com and how you set that up and what the company does. Bret Ridgway: Well, it's actually a very interesting story. Way back in the mid-1990s, and I'm going back a while obviously, I actually put up the first portal website in the plant engineering and maintenance industry. It was called MaintenanceResources.com and back in those days, we were selling VHS tapes and books and manuals aimed at that particular niche: maintenance guys, mechanics, electricians, et cetera.
And so, we were selling quite a bit of product online via that site and about the same ti me, I met a guy at an event, and it was back in like 1992 or 1993, a guy named Carl Galletti at a conference down in Florida and that led to a joint venture with Carl a few years later. Then he decided to put on his first internet marketing super conference in 1999 in Las Vegas. So he actually called me up and asked me if I would come out and handle the back sales table for him. Well, I didn't even know what back room sales was honestly but I hadn't been to Las Vegas before so it sounded good to me. So I went out there and handled the sales table for Carl and that's where I started to meet some of these guys who were involved in the internet and information marketing spaces and a lot of speakers were obviously promoters in their own right.
