Hooked Book Online

[Marketta Filipovich]

RecentlyI interviewed Paul Nieuwenhuys of eBay success story Hooked Online and Sinker, who founded and runs the most successful fishing tackle store on eBay Australia. In the lead up to the interview I asked Paul for a short bio on himself that I could incorporate in to my introduction.

I have been involved in many businesses including owning my own painting business, owning glass bottom boats in Vanuatu, boat hire on the Gold Coast and now selling online as well as via a bricks and mortar retail outlet.

At the time I owned and operated a hire boat business in Jacobs Well, Queensland. I saw the passion and spending trends of fisherman and women. It dawned on me then that selling fishing tackle online was the way to go.

I have an uncanny natural knack for knowing what the consumer wants and expects. I am a very demanding and pedantic customer myself and expect exemplary service wherever, and whenever I spend my money.

I went ahead with starting my first eBay store, just to test the waters and gain some online experience. I believed in eBay, the feedback system and the apparent selling power. I thought what better way to start and learn? It would be easy to see if I was going to fail with the honest feedback system.

I listed 500 products in the first year. This time last year we had 2500 items listed online. I now have just over 3600 items on eBay and our website, with sales of 750k on eBay alone last financial year.

This financial year we anticipate a turnover in excess of $1 million , with an expected turnover of 1.25 million for the 2015-2016 financial year. This figure is based on our current growth trend, and without adding any new stock. I have to date completed over 80000 transactions, and turned over more than 2.2 million on eBay alone.

I attended PeSA for the first time in 2013, solely relying only on family and friends for advice. As well as my own online research, it is amazing what you can Google and Terapeak these days! That first PeSA conference certainly opened my eye and confirmed my belief in e-commerce and the amazing benefits and phenomenal growth potential.

Last year, I built a new warehouse on my property of 250 square metres at a cost of 80k, I also put in custom steel shelving at a cost of 25k and a custom built packing station. This streamlined our operation as well as maximising the space.

Within the last 12 months, due to our phenomenal growth and product expansion, we have almost outgrown the new premises. Due to our established cult-like following, as soon as new items are listed they sell immediately.

I believe our name, our proven sales record, marketing, customer service, warehousing automation as well as strict staff training and a strong ethics protocol in place, we are destined to continue our amazing growth.

The HOOK of our business is our unique attitude and genuine desire to please people, as well as our product knowledge. Due to my natural understanding of human nature, we ensure a pleasant and memorable experience from the initial contact and personalised service, to the rapid delivery of the product. Staff are carefully selected and trained to ensure that this infectious enthusiasm continues.

Your privacy is important to us. On this site you can buy products & sign-up for our e-newsletter. To help you make decisions about the information you provide anywhere on this site, this notice has been provided to outline our my practices.

When you order a product, the information you provide will only be provided to outside parties if it is necessary to complete and deliver the order. Your information will never be shared or disclosed to other parties for any other reason.

Non-identifying information may be used to improve the site or shared with advertisers. For instance, information that is collected regarding traffic to the site or specific pages may be shared, but this will never include any identifying information.

When Pam, a lab research assistant at a Midwestern company, was called in for her annual review recently, her boss was sympathetic about the sharp decline in her job performance. He knew that Pam, a recovering alcoholic, had been battling manic depression and grieving over a death in her family. What he didn't know, however, was that Pam had been spending up to six hours of her workday sending e-mail to friends and playing electronic games. The consequences of Pam's compulsion extend beyond the work time lost. "Sometimes I forget where I'm at, and I might put the wrong solution on a slide and blow the experiment for the day," she admits. "I have many times told myself I'm not going to use the computer today," Pam reflects. "Then I say, 'Maybe just one game ...'"

What sounds like a confession at a meeting of Computer Addicts Anonymous --an organization that doesn't exist yet but could become the 12-step program of the new millennium--describes a disturbing dependency that may be affecting millions of computer users who succumb to the siren song of cyberspace, not just at home but during office hours. It is a compulsion so relatively new and scantily studied that doctors can't agree on what to call it--Internetomania, problematic use of the Internet, compulsive computer use, Internet addiction, and just plain computer addiction are a few monikers--let alone what causes it. A recent study by a group of psychiatrists at the University of Cincinnati suggests that people hooked on the Internet may also suffer from underlying but treatable illnesses such as manic depression, anxiety disorders and substance abuse. But the jury is still out on whether compulsive computer use is a disorder in its own right--like pathological gambling--or a symptom of another illness.

If the model used to measure the prevalence of other addictions--compulsive overeating, for example--is applied to this one, there could be as many as 15 million computer addicts. "The problem is far more common than people are willing to acknowledge in terms of loss of productivity or damage to the economy, as well as harm on a personal level," says Dr. Donald Black, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Iowa College of Medicine. Black, having already studied pathological gamblers and compulsive shoppers, has begun a study of compulsive computer users, since observing that some of the people in his department were spending enormous amounts of time in front of their terminals yet getting little work done.

That's one sign of computer abuse in the work force, agrees Kimberly Young, a professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh and author of Caught in the Net (John Wiley & Sons). Other signs include startled looks and furtive attempts to cover up the screen when supervisors approach work spaces, an inordinate increase in mistakes from employees who had previously made few--"Their attention is being pulled in another direction," explains Young--and a sudden decrease of interaction with colleagues. "A lot of relationships they're making online take the place of the co-workers," Young says.

The University of Cincinnati study found that problematic computer users tend to be most mesmerized by interactive pursuits--frequenting chat rooms and other multiuser domains, writing e-mail, surfing the Web, playing games. These can serve as a haven for workers from procrastination, boredom and feelings of isolation at work; the fantasy world they offer can be an attractive alternative to the daily grind. "It's an altered state of reality," reports Young. "It's like a drug rush." Depression, she and others believe, can be a result of--not the cause of--compulsive computer use: after someone has been parading his impressive alter ego around chat rooms or playing a power game, coming back to reality can be a real downer.

Experts recommend that managers call in their companies' employee-assistance programs to help in such cases, but aid for the afflicted is scarce. In addition to traditional offline therapy, Young offers a virtual clinic with chat rooms and e-mail counseling on her website--an approach that University of Cincinnati psychiatrist Dr. Toby Goldsmith likens to "taking an alcoholic to an A.A. meeting in a bar." Goldsmith reports that some of the participants in her group's study are having success curbing their computer compulsion after taking mood stabilizers, sometimes combined with antidepressants.

Total abstinence is an impractical solution, experts agree--especially for people who must use modern technology in their work. "It's like an eating disorder: one must learn to eat normally in order to survive," suggests Dr. Maressa Hecht Orzack, founder and coordinator of Computer Addiction Services at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. Orzack tries to get her patients to recognize the triggers for their destructive behavior and come up with alternative ways for them to feel better.

Jeffrey, a 46-year-old East Coast lawyer who attributes the loss of a lucrative job in part to his preoccupation with the game Minesweeper, made it a practice at his next job to get up and get a glass of water or have direct contact with co-workers, whenever he felt the urge coming on. He finally removed the games not only from his own computer but from those of his secretary and his boss, who never noticed they were missing.

Orzack suggests that compulsive computer users might create a schedule that rewards them for finishing their work by giving them a break to do what they want on the computer. "I don't know if companies would go for that," Orzack muses. "But they might have to learn that people do have needs and can't be forced to be isolated for great lengths of time." Pam, who has still not sought help, is withdrawing further: she has just bought a pocket computer to use outside her office.

June 12, 2000 -- How long have you been sitting there, staring at this screen? Are you spending more and more of your time clicking and typing, typing and clicking? Is there nothing else you'd rather do? Think carefully about the answers to these questions, say psychologists; they may tell a lot about your mental health.

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