November 25, 1999

Ten Fast Facts

ShopStars.com WHO: An e-commerce startup company founded earlier this year by Charlene Steinhauer. WHAT: Offers a comprehensive selection of brand-name children's goods on one Web site. WHERE: Headquartered in Issaquah and on the web.

Fast Fact #1: ShopStars.com is an online subsidiary of Stars Children's Wear Inc.

Charlene Steinhauer

Comment: Stars Children's Wear is a 25,000-square-foot store Stein-hauer opened in Issaquah in 1993. It's a "category killer" in which everything related to a particular market in her case infants and young children is sold under one roof. Clothes, toys, books, furniture and accessories fill the shelves.

Fast Fact #2: ShopStars was launched in less than three months.

Comment: "The pace was frantic," recalled Steinhauer a few days after ShopStars.com debuted on Nov. 1. Why the rush? To cash in on the Christmas season and protect the company's first-mover advantage, said Steinhauer. Plenty of e-tailers peddle children's products over the Internet, but so far, none offer the comprehensive selection that ShopStars makes available on a single Web site, she said. "There are not a lot of people who understand the entire children's [market]," she said.

Fast Fact #3: ShopStars first customer was from New York.

Comment: Steinhauer said 25 percent of the company's opening-day business came from out of state. "All of a sudden you're a national company and eventually we'll be global," she said. Steinhauer said jumping on the Internet was a faster and more logical way to expand her business compared to opening additional bricks-and-mortar stores. "The emphasis is on the Web site," she said. "It's easy. It's convenient. It hits our target market ... parents with young children who don't have a lot of time."

Fast Fact #4: ShopStars outsourced all of its Web work.

Comment: "We're sticking with our core competency," she said of her company's reliance on a team of consultants to guide ShopStars into cyberspace. The lineup: Cobweb, development; Tim Girvin, design; Interact, distribution and warehousing; Sound Telecom, call center.

Fast Fact 5#: Why the name ShopStars?

Comments: "Because every child is a star in their mother's eyes," says Steinhauer. Her star is Sabrina, 3.

Fast Fact #6: Steinhauer grew up working with her mother.

Dolls are one of many items you can find on the ShopStars website.

Comment: As early as age 7, she was refolding socks in one of the seven Children's Corner stores her mom owned. After graduating from the University of Washington with a political science degree, she became a manufacturer's rep for various children's products, eventually opening showrooms in Seattle and San Francisco. Noticing the success of "big box" stores such as Target and Toys R Us, she rounded up investors and returned to her retail roots by opening ShopStars in 1993. "It's what I know," Steinhauer said of children's retailing. "I can't get it out of my system."

Fast Fact #7: ShopStars features "merchandise adjacency" on its Web site.

Comment: For example, if customers select a sweater for their daughter, they can click on an icon and up will pop matching skirts, hose and shoes. The same holds true for many other items ranging from toy bars for car seats to mattresses for cribs. "We're doing the thinking for them," said Steinhauer. And if they just happen to sell a few more knee socks in the process, so be it.

Fast Fact #8: ShopStars soon will hire more employees.

ShopStars also sells children's clothing.

Comment: Many Star Children's Wear employees have pulled double duty to help launch ShopStars, but Steinhauer plans to expand her Internet subsidiary's eight-person workforce, hiring a chief financial officer, a planner and additional buyers.

Fast Fact 9#: Steinhauer is keeping her future options IPO versus acquisition open.

Comment: "Our focus is to capitalize on our first mover's advantage and be the leader in the online baby and children's superstore industry," she says. "We will continue to do whatever it takes to remain a solid leader."

Fast Fact 10#: Steinhauer's husband, Gregory L. Steinhauer, owns Gregory Development Co.

Comment: She said he reads the Daily Journal of Commerce "all the time."

Previous columns:

• Ten Fast Facts, 11-18-1999
• Ten Fast Facts, 11-11-1999
• Ten Fast Facts, 10-28-1999