Let us show you how to access endless targeted opportunities, expand your market reach, and become more competitive by finding hidden treasures of consumers and suppliers for the leather, apparel and footwear industries!

Let us take you back to 1995, when through a “friend of a friend”, two leading international Leather Suppliers contacted two of the founding members of TrueSource Corporation “to do a little job” and assist with their companies’ Internet Sales and Marketing strategies. Back at the time, we had full time jobs with very reputable IT and Marketing organizations, but decided to start doing a bit of moonlighting to help pay for a planned trip to Europe.

The assignment appeared to be very simple! We were told “Okay guys, we know nothing about the Internet but I’ve being hearing and reading about this thing. We want to capitalize on this “fad” or whatever it is.” We thought, no problem, fire up a website for them, stick them on some search engines and Bingo! All we needed to do was complete the project and we would be able to put some money in the bank for Europe. We decided to tackle one business at a time.

Traditional Offline marketing Works!
We rolled up our sleeves and started working. One day while at the client’s warehouse I noticed that the front door was swinging open every few minutes. I could hear the cash register and the credit card machine making their distinct sounds with just about every customer that walked in the door. My curiosity was peaking so I approached Janet (one of the owners) and asked her point blank “Janet, how do you manage to get all these customers walking through your door?” She looked at me with a blank look in her face and said “Well we advertise locally in the yellow pages, put out a few flyers here and there and purchase advertising space in trade and craft publications”. I was impressed! A few days later I over heard several telephone conversations between Janet and some of her customers (no I’m not an eavesdropper ). Well, turns out that Janet was taking mail orders for customers in neighboring states. On the way out the door, I noticed that her shipping area was full of outgoing packages. Janet grabbed me by the shoulder and showed me that 30% of the orders were going out-of-state. Before I could even get the question out, she smiled and said “We also advertise in neighboring states yellow pages!”

Our Addiction to Leather!
I remember sitting in my den one evening and thinking “Is there really a market for leather? Hmmm … Lets just say there is, then who is going to buy leather half way around the country, let alone half way around the world?” I hopped on my trusty PC, connected to the Internet and started researching the leather industry. I was surprised to see that yes indeed some leather suppliers and industry organizations had taken the plunge to the net. After close to 4 weeks of the nightly ritual of researching, I kicked up my feet, laid back in my chair and said to myself “Ok Janet, time to show you what the net’s going to do for you!” I had collected information on competitors, tanneries, manufacturers, resellers, etc. you name it, I had it (or so I thought). The Internet was growing exponentially by the day, it was time to act!

The internet WILL Drive Business to Your Door!
A few weeks had passed and I was ready to impress Janet. We had created a fantastic website for her firm, optimized the site graphics, inserted some killer content, registered her site with banner and link exchanges, registered with search engines and directories and created the optimal meta-tags that would propel this firm to the top of search engines and directories. Janet was ready for results. Slowly but truly as the search engine and directory placements starting kicking in, Janet started getting more and more orders. Within weeks, she was shipping across the country and internationally. Janet was impressed and behold my question was answered; there is an online market for leather! I was convinced I had the perfect recipe for online success and a business.