When Liam Gerada and his brother, Travis, were selling sneakers online out of a garage on the island of Malta, there was little to predict that they would one day be leading a red-hot e-commerce company.
But then, garage enterprises have a way of growing into big things, don't they? Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Dell, and Disney were all reportedly born in garages.
The Gerada brothers certainly aren't in the same league as those multi-national behemoths, but give them time. At ages 23 (Liam) and 20 (Travis), they have plenty of years left to make their mark.
Liam is CEO of Krepling, an up-and-coming competitor to the giant e-commerce platform Shopify. When the brothers sold their direct-to-consumer sneakers business, they took their technical and business acumen and formed Krepling, a Chattanooga-based e-commerce company which serves over 500 merchants across 80 countries. Travis is the tech expert and Liam has the business savvy, some say.
Liam says that as former merchants themselves, they recognized the need for an e-commerce platform that offered a more multi-layered approach than Shopify, but that was still priced within the reach of growing companies. As companies grew, some were forced to hire web developers or look for more complex e-commerce solutions, Liam says.
"Different merchants had very complex tech stacks," says Liam, speaking of the set of technologies used to develop an application. "This was forcing merchants, more often than not, to leave Shopify or hire developers, or find a more complex ways to navigate those tech stacks. We thought there had to be a better way to do this. Krepling was built as a response to that problem.
"... Krepling is trying to give companies access to high quality tools without having to suffer that opportunity cost of having to hire those extra resources."
About a year ago the brothers relocated Krepling to Chattanooga to take advantage of its reputation as a logistics hub and to align with the business-incubator firm Brickyard, which provided much of the early funding for the startup. Brickyard was founded by Cam Doody, co-founder of Bellhop, one of the nation's largest moving companies.
So far, Krepling has attracted about $2 million in start-up funds, and plans to announce another round of investments soon, Liam said. Encouragingly, the company has about $2.1 million in sales this year, up from about $500,000 last year. "So we are doing about four times year over year," Liam explains. "Next year, we are hoping to hit $4 million."
The company, which also has offices in Miami, has about 10 employees with plans to add 10 more -- mostly in engineering and sales position -- in coming months, Liam says.
The Gerada brothers were recently named to the Forbes "30 Under 30 Local Miami List" for their work on Krepling, but Liam says they aren't looking for individual accolades.
Unlike many start-up founders who may be hoping to get rich by flipping their companies, Liam says he and his brother are playing the long game with Krepling.
"We are not in it to sell it, or for the short term," he says. "We believe there is a huge opportunity to provide an infrastructure platform for that middle-market (business) category. We think we can be a driver in that space. We really are in it for the long haul."
Liam Gerada
* Job: CEO of Krepling, an e-commerce company
* Age: 23
* Hometown: Johannesburg, South Africa
* Marital status: single