Some people love to geek out on baseball cards, video games or trivia. Andy Humphrey is a self-professed sprinkler nerd. Humphrey, a 41-year-old landscape architect and father of three from Traverse City, Mich., runs two e-commerce businesses, Sprinkler Supply Store, a supplier of sprinkler parts, and TreeKeeperBag.com, which sells bags to stow away artificial Christmas trees. Together, the profitable stores bring in mid-seven figure annual revenue through both their websites and Amazon. Humphrey says they generate $1 million through Amazon sales alone.
Unlike many entrepreneurs with seven-figure businesses, Humphrey runs his stores as a side hustle. He enjoys his full-time business as a consultant in the irrigation industry so much that he doesn’t want to give up his “day job”—and has no plans to quit any time soon. In recent years, he has been able to consult on high-profile projects such as the World Trade Center, Hudson Yards and Battery Park in New York City.
“I only believe you should quit your job if it’s something you don’t like doing,” he says. “I think that’s a shift we’re seeing: trying to find employment happiness.”
E-commerce entrepreneur Andy Humphrey launched a podcast around his passion called Sprinkler Nerd.
So how does Humphrey do it all? He doesn’t try to. He’s gradually built a team of four people to help him run the businesses while he’s consulting. “It’s passive income,” he says. “If you do it right, it may never be worth your time to work in the business. As the owner, you can stay on top of it, building it, growing it, trying to scale.”
It wasn’t always this way. Humphrey started TreeKeeperBag.com in 2004 as one-man business. At the time, he was working in sales for a local distributor of commercial irrigation technology. He learned the ropes of e-commerce while selling Christmas lights for his employer. When a lighting manufacturer asked if he could also sell bags to store Christmas trees, Humphrey saw an opportunity to open his own store. Once he launched TreeKeeperBag.com, he quickly discovered he had a knack for selling online. “I started to make more money on my own than in my day job,” he recalls.
Humphrey continued running the store as he moved ahead in his career. “E-commerce is a craft,” he says. “You build knowledge slowly, over time.”
By 2008, he was working as a regional sales manager for another company in his industry. To make sure he had enough time for his job, he hired an employee to help him run daily operations. That led to a second employee. His thinking: “If you’re making $80,000 in your day job, why would you quit if you could hire someone to run your ecommerce business for $50,000?”
By 2009, Humphrey decided to leave his job and do freelance consulting. He had ambitions of opening his second store. “I want to be challenged and growing—always,” he says.
He quickly set to work building relationships among wholesalers in the irrigation industry whose products he would sell through the store. By 2010, he opened Sprinkler Supply Store.
To make Sprinkler Supply Store stand out, Humphrey focused on providing “much better” customer service than he found to be typical in the industry, along with expert advice that can’t be duplicated by a computer. “It’s up to every business to decide what its value proposition will be,” he says. “The computer needs to take the order. The human needs to add value in the relationship.”
He has also been an energetic marketer. In 2011, he appeared on the TV show Shark Tank to raise money for his ECOMOWER lawnmower. He didn’t win funding but raised his company’s national visibility. He also hosts the Sprinkler Nerd podcast, where he and his guests riff on topics like flow sensor basics, lawn care and green roofs.
Those efforts have helped him to grow both companies. To keep up with demand, Humphrey now has four employees who work primarily for Sprinkler Supply Store and also help him run TreeKeeperBag.com. The team is made up of a customer service manager, a marketer, a manager for the company’s Amazon channel, and a content creator and merchandiser for Amazon.
Humphrey believes that choosing the right niche has been essential to the success of Sprinkler Supply Store. “My passion is e-commerce,” he says. “Since I know irrigation, it’s the most easily accessible trade to apply my passion. I’ve tried to position myself so I am the only fish in the pond, instead of being one of many. If I wanted to do e-commerce in consumer packaged goods, Hello competition!”
Humphrey’s advice to others who want to start a successful ecommerce store? Go for it.
“We are in a world where someone who is a creator and builder has free reign to create and build,” he says. “Ideas are a dime a dozen. You go to a cocktail party and everyone has great ideas. No one has the courage to start. If you are a starter, this is the land of starters. It doesn’t take much.”
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