mberry

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Summary

Charles Lee knows something about making life sweeter. The Phoenix-based entrepreneur has built his business around the Miracle Berry (Synsepalum dulcificum), a naturally growing fruit that tells taste buds to temporarily recognize acidic and bitter flavors as incredibly sweet. His business, mberry (www.mberry.us), makes small, fun and convenient tablets of compressed, freeze dried miracle berries for consumers to use for everything from fun-spirited tasting parties (lemons taste like lemonade, vinegar like apple juice) to relieving the sugar restrictions placed on some diabetics. And, the business has bigger goals of using the tablets to reshape how our society thinks about food through product innovation and health education.

Lee sells his mberry tablets around the world. Because the product is so unique and has a relatively niche market, the company's Web site (which accounts for 100 percent of sales) is its lifeline. mberry.us is the primary way of branding and educating the public about the Miracle Berry.

When it came time to launch the mberry Web site, Lee knew that it would be a critical part of his businesses success. What he didn't know, however, was the importance of choosing the right hosting partner. “I thought all Web hosting solutions were created equally so I went with the cheapest hosting plan I could find.”

Challenge

After gaining exclusive rights to distribute the product, hiring a developer and launching the official site, mberry was off and running. When consumers took to Google to search for the terms “mberry” or “miracle berry” they found Lee's Web site and began placing orders. “Sales were great and, as we had expected, it was clear immediately how important Google searches were going to be to the business.”

While he had planned for how consumers would find his business, Lee was shocked when, within a matter of months, the mberry Web site was hacked. “We were a small business at that point. Why would anyone want to hack us?” Lee quickly patched the problem, and went back to work. Unfortunately it was anything but business as usual. The site was hacked a second, and then a third time. It was after this third hack that the situation became very serious and Lee realized he had a larger problem on his hands.

With every cyber attack, mberry lost thousands of dollars in online revenue and new business leads. If the site wasn't down, it loaded very slowly, causing potential customers to turn away and tarnishing the company's credibility. After one particularly bad hack, mberry was labeled by Google as an “insecure” site. Whenever a Google user searched on mberry or tried to go to the company's Web site, this warning was displayed, causing further brand damage.

Lee consistently approached his hosting provider for answers, but was given little guidance as to where the attacks were originating or what could be done to stop them. “I started looking around for ways to patch our security hole. I couldn't find any answers. The suggestions from our previous host were elementary and ineffective at this point - to have a strong password, change our password often, and have a good anti-virus program.”

To get the site back online, Lee's Web site developers endured a painful and lengthy “battle” with Google. The entire process took two weeks, resulting in a tremendous financial loss and significant stress for Lee and the rest of the company. “For a small business like ours, getting hacked and not having a hosting provider who could help us navigate the problem nearly put us out of business. Companies simply cannot afford to get hacked.”

Solution

mberry was hacked last in October of 2009. Lee's search for a new hosting partner stopped with FireHost, the industry's leading secure managed Web hosting provider. By November mberry was completely migrated onto FireHost's Secure Servers and back online, securely.

Having protection for mberry.us was a huge relief for Lee, but he soon realized some surprising additional benefits of choosing FireHost for his business. “We were just getting started, so we didn't have all of the formal divisions that larger online retailers have, such as a dedicated IT department. It was very time consuming and expensive for us to troubleshoot problems before hosting with FireHost. Since making the switch, we've discovered that they offer so much more than just hosting services. FireHost engineers helped us figure out why we were being hacked and assisted in fixing the problems. We were back online in one day, and within a week, everything was perfect.”

Knowing that FireHost had security under control allowed Lee to put his CEO eye back on the business of running and growing mberry. He no longer worries about hacks and brand damage due to them. Instead, he focuses on creating new products, new partnerships and changing the way the world thinks about food.

In the end, Lee considers FireHost more of a partner than a vendor. “Before, I worried that if our site disappeared, so did our business. Now I know my site and my Web applications are in the hands of experts who are doing a bang-up job of keeping us protected. We are nearing the one year hack-free mark, and I have full confidence we'll celebrate more sweet anniversaries together.”

Visit the mberry website:
www.mberry.us