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About Us
Living Direct is all about bringing you the appliances and home goods needed for modern, smart living. We want to find the best compact appliances that work for your tight urban space. If we find a product, or better yet develop our own product, we want to make sure it’s eco-friendly, yet still functions as a part of your convenient lifestyle.
Along with smart modern products, we want to make sure that you have an excellent retail experience. With over 13 years in online retail, we’ve seen booms and busts among a lot of technology. In the end, technology cannot provide anything that isn’t already there. For us, it’s all about Lagniappe—providing that extra service and connecting with our customers. We want to make sure you get the right products for your needs. We would rather sell you something that fits your needs, even if it’s different than what you wanted initially. We not only want you to enjoy your products, but also your shopping experience with us so that you come back for more.
Our company culture is open. Everyone’s got an equal shot at proposing new ideas for the websites and new ideas for products to develop (including you, the customer). We’ll publish our mistakes right alongside our successes. Internally, we embrace failures as a great opportunity to learn, improve, share, and go forward. We use Agile methods for our development and marketing: it’s better to get moving quickly and stumble a few times than it is to go slow just to try and avoid risk. We hire people that can think on their feet, with the mantra that everyone needs to work themselves out of their own job as soon as possible, because there’s always more work being created with the new ideas we are thinking up.
Our crew samples the products we sell. We’ll test it until we break it, then go back and figure out what went wrong, and how best to explain it to customers to avoid mistakes. This work goes a long way in our efforts to provide the best customer support call center possible: our customer service reps aren’t just sales people, they’re experienced installers, service techs, and home brewers who use many of our products on a daily basis. We’re here to answer questions, not just sell something.
Company History
Living Direct, Inc. began in 1999 as Richlund Ventures in Austin, Texas. Our founder and CEO, Rick Lundbom, grew up around appliances. Both his dad and grandfather sold appliances for boats and RVs, and Rick saw the potential for more people to see the benefits of smaller specialized products. Seeing the Internet as a way to reach niche customers across locations where such specialized products may not be easily available, Rick started
CompactAppliance.com in 1999, which has seen double-digit growth every year since. We’re now enjoying a network of many different websites, each aimed at a niche set of products to fit customer needs. We’ve relocated our offices on the west side of Austin Texas, just east of the beautiful Texas Hill Country, with over 70 employees to bring great service and cool products to our customers.
Company News
May 10, 2011: Living Direct, Inc. is #253 for the 2011 edition of the Internet Retailer Top 500
October 8, 2010: Living Direct is one of the Austin Business Journal's Fast 50 for growth over a 3 year period
June 21, 2010: Living Direct, Inc. is #259 for the 2010 edition of the Internet Retailer Top 500
May 17, 2010: IceMakerDirect.com, the newest Living Direct Network site, launches
