Manufacturers-Finally!
Posted by Brett in Uncategorized on January 19th, 2010
So I know you have all been waiting at the edge of your chair for the conclusion of my last story.
Our first big manufacturer to sign up was Landau Medical Uniforms. I went through the normal channels and steps you have to take to speak with a sales rep including sending in all my application forms and credit forms etc. However, I didn’t have any strong credit references in the uniform industry, which is what they specifically asked for. I used my banker, lawyer, and a screen printing shop I had done some business with and that was all. On top of it I was forming as a drop ship outfit so they knew there would not be a large up-front order for me to get my inventory up (this would prove to be and still is an ongoing issue to sign up new suppliers, as no one really wants to sign up more drop shipment only retailers).
After a week or so I received a call from the head of sales at Landau, which I imagine is a little unusual. He started asking me questions about our business model etc. It then came out that he was a UVA graduate, At the time I was still a student at Darden (UVA’s MBA School) which is why he called me personally. We hit it off and talked about the school a bit. After the conversation he approved our account. He never said that was the reason he gave us a chance, but I am pretty sure it is strongly correlated.
Once we signed up Landau (who also owns the Urbane Scrubs brand) I moved on to Dickies Medical Scrubs. I was able to use my new-found Landau agreement to help convince the Dickies people they should let me sell their product. It was still a tough sell but since I had one of their major competitors on board it was much easier to convince them.
Finally, I re-approached Cherokee Scrubs (who had initially told me I had no chance at signing them up). They saw that I was selling the scrubs of their two biggest competitors and realized that they were probably losing business.
Signing up these suppliers was a ton of work and a huge sales job all on its own. Today, I am starting to get fed up with the operational lackings of one of our smaller manufacturers…which I will talk about in my next post!
Until then (it wont be as long a wait as the last time!)
-Brett
Adding Manufacturers
Posted by Brett in E-Commerce, Lessons Learned on December 6th, 2009
It has almost been a full year since we first ventured out to start scrubadoo.com. Looking back on how we have gotten this far, one step that stands out as perhaps the most important was initiating our relationships with major manufacturers.
We originally planned on carrying only Softscrubs brand scrubs but quickly realized that this would significantly limit our target market. In order to be a major player in our industry we need to sign up the big boys, Cherokee, Landau, and Dickies. Early on I thought that this would be one of the easiest tasks, looking back on it, it was one of the most pivotal. The first time I contacted Cherokee I was pretty much laughed at. Dickies and Landau were not much better. It was your classic Catch 22, I couldn’t get any uniform suppliers to sign with me until I had other uniform companies to use as a reference. Once you broke into the circle it seemed like it would be easy to sign everyone up, but breaking into the circle as an online provider is extremely difficult.
I was finally able to sign up Gelscrubs, a much smaller company in the uniform universe. My references: a screen printing shop in Charlottesville that I had done about $200 worth of business with, a buddy of mine who had done some pro-bono legal work for me, and my friend Frank who I was starting Conrohl.com with (another one of my ventures). They were willing to give us a chance early on, but we weren’t really doing any business with them, making it difficult to use Gelscrubs as a reference.
As we improved our site and a few sales I again decided to attempt to contact the big boys. However, if it wasn’t for a bit of luck I don’t know if we would have a signed anyone up. That luck? In the next entry I’ll let you know how we signed our first big one.
-Brett
Business Plan Competition
As I mentioned in my last I recently revised our business plan. I did this to enter a competition that a local radio station was holding for new and young businesses in the Minneapolis area.
I am proud to announce that scrubadoo.com and scrubraisers were selected as a finalist under our umbrella company ScrubSquared LLC. You can listen/follow our progress in the competition here.
My first ever appearance on any form of media was last Saturday (They should be posting a podcast of the show soon). I did a passing job but hope to up my performance as the competition progresses.
It is a survivor type competition where they will be eliminating one company/week until there is one champion. Each week they are giving us a new task that we will be judged on by a panel of professionals and some online voting. Listen in this Saturday at 10:00 am EST to hear how we did in this weeks competition! You can stream the station live from the link above.
Wish us luck!
-Brett
Business Plan Revisions
Posted by Brett in General Entrepreneurship on November 11th, 2009
In my last post I talked about why a business plan is an important step in any entrepreneurial venture. Today I wanted to talk about the importance of revisiting your plan and not just letting it sit around gathering dust.
The catalyst for the revisiting of our plan was the hiring of two new interns. I wanted to provide them with a document they could read and hold onto. It would serve as a template of where our company came from, what we are about, and where they are going to help us get. The best document I could think of was my business plan.
I hadn’t looked at the plan for 8 months and it was amazing how many things had changed. Aside from the market analysis and the fact that we are selling scrubs to nurses and other medical professionals via an internet portal, everything was pretty much different. It was good to go back and look at where we had come from and gave me the chance to reflect on how much we had already accomplished.
Revisiting the plan also provided me a check to see how we are doing compared to where we thought we would be. Oddly enough back in February 09′ we did a pretty good job of projecting what our time-line would look like. Without realizing it we have been right on track! We expected our first internet sales of scrubs to medical professionals to happen in August/Spetember and guess what? They did.
My recent revision of the plan also provided an outlet to get my future plans down on paper. For the last six months our forward looking business model and marketing plan has been in my head. I still have those steps and ideas up there, but now I also have them on paper. In six months I will be able to come back to my plan and revisit our goals, successes and lack thereof once again.
While revising the plan was a lot of non-revenue generating work I think it was worth it. A side benefit is the ability to search out and enter business plan competitions more aggressively and with more confidence. If any of you have a young business I would suggest that you take a look back at the original plan you had laid out and see what you can learn from it. And guess what, in six months I will be able to come back to scrubadoo.com’s plan; revisit our goals, successes and lack thereof once again.
Why Write a Business Plan?
Posted by Brett in General Entrepreneurship on November 9th, 2009
I am a big believer in a business plan. I have written or helped write 4 business plans in my life. 3 of those 4 business’s have moved forward to the point where money has been spent on them and 2 of the 4 have had revenues. In my eyes a business plan does several things for you:
- It makes you start putting time into the company.
- A lot of people talk about a great idea or a company but that’s all they ever do. To me a business plan can provide that needed spark to get you moving towards making it happen.
- It forces you to think about all nuts and bolts of the potential company (not just the fun stuff like how awesome your product is and how much it will make you).
- The dreams of big money and all the fun parts of running a company are what make entrepreneurship great. Unfortunately there are a lot of crappy aspect of running a company that you have to think about, execute on, and master if you even want to have a chance to be successful. A business plan will not answer these questions but it will make you think about all the ancillary work you will have to do to make your company successful.
- It can help validate your idea.
- When You write a plan you do a ton of research. In doing this research you can validate that there is a great opportunity for you to enter the market. With ScrubSquared our research did just that. We found that the research we did backed up our gut feeling that selling scrubs to nurses and other hospital personel was a great market for www.scrubadoo.com.
- It can help you realize the business is a terrible idea.
- If you figure this out in your research phase of a business plan you can save yourself a lot of time, stress, and money. You also need to be honest with yourself if you do find this. One of the plans I wrote sounded like a great idea but after an in depth look it really just would not have worked out.
- It will point out holes that need to be filled.
- This goes along with better understanding the nuts and bolts of your company. Another thing is it can help you realize your weaknesses as a CEO of your company. I have no experience in the medical field. I have no experience to selling scrubs or medical uniforms to nurses or anyone else in the medical industry. I needed someone with that experience so we made a board spot for it.
- It gives you something to hand to people.
- This can be for a bank, employees, or maybe investors. There are a ton of competitions out there that you can enter to win money, publicity, etc. If you don’t have a plan you can’t enter these.
I am not going to sit here and tell you I look at my business plans on a daily basis. In fact, since I wrote the original plan for ScrubSquared LLC I hadn’t looked at or revised it until a few days ago. It was amazing to see how much our business had changed from what we expected it to be. But for me the Scrubsquared plan was important because it got me started and it got me moving down a road. Anytime you want to get somewhere it helps to have a map. A business plan can be the map that helps guide you to your goal.
Marketing Strategy: Facebook & Google
Posted by Brett in E-Commerce, General Entrepreneurship, Lessons Learned on October 27th, 2009
We have been live for just about a month now and have been working on the execution and improvement of our marketing plan along the way. Like many other entrepreneurial ventures we have a very limited marketing budget so we built our plan around the assets that we do have; man hours (both mine and interns), a decent understanding of social networking, and a relatively decent network.
For this post I will give a brief update/rundown on our online advertising plan.
We advertise online through Google and Facebook. At the beginning we used FB only because we were able to find an offer giving a free $100 trial (you can get it here). Unfortunately we flew through the $100 with very few conversions. We ran about 15 different adds and there did not seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason behind which of our adds received impressions. We targeted the same people and bid the same amount for each add and 1 or 2 would get 100,000 impressions while the others would get around 100.
FB was not a total waste and we still do advertise with them. It is very good at targeting specific demographics and we did get some good early visibility for scrubadoo.com. Additionally, people seemed very willing to sign up for our scrubaclub. These new scrubaclub members provide us with email addresses and have displayed obvious interest in our product (both good signs). This has also expanded our marketing list. Overall, I would say the verdict is still out on advertising on FB. Before they become a legitimate advertising option I think that they need to add more transparency to how their advertising system works and tracking systems for the results your advertising dollars provide.
We also launched a rather large Google Adwords campaign (and a small Adsense campaign with this blog, feel free to click a link to the right!). As you would expect words like “scrubs,” “nursing scrubs,” etc are all extremely expensive to advertise on.
Which brings me to an important point that I think a lot of companies ignore. It is extremely important for every company to pay attention to the financial portion of advertising on Google, no one can stay in business losing money. Sure you can get millions of impressions and clicks by being the top bidder, but you need to calculate what the value of a click is for your company. What is your conversion rate? Of those conversions how many will come back and purchase from you again? Will they tell friends? A “B-School” term for the answer to these questions is what is the “life-time value” of each of your customers. No matter what you call it, these are all questions you should ask yourself when determining how much you should bid for words (or spend on any type of marketing). What is great about Google is that you can track all of these things and drill down much further than you can with more traditional marketing options. Moral of this story: use the free information and don’t overspend for your advertising.
Our campaign is still very young so we don’t have enough information to draw any statistically significant conclusions. There are a few things I am sure of though. First, it is much cheaper to get impressions on related websites (through other peoples Adsense accounts) then it is through search terms. Unfortunately, to this point those adds have been less effective for us. It does make sense though, people who click Adsense adds do it more on a whim, while if they search for a term they are closer to a purchase decision.
The second thing that I am sure of is that conversion rate is key. We are far below where I think we should be and we need to get better at it. How do we do this? Great question. I don’t believe our pricing is an issue. We are working on ease of navigation, product selection, and a few other areas that may be the problem. We will see how these changes effect our conversion rate.
Google is a proven advertising entity and every company should leverage the tools that they offer. Even if you just use there free analytics program. It will provide you data that can really help you improve your business. Just one last quick tip. If you are paying for a hosting service they will more than likely offer a coupon for a free $50 or $25 dollars of advertising on Google. We use Blue Host and they offer the free add money and every penny counts!
Until the next installment,
-Brett
Entrepreneurship….A Test of Patience
Posted by Brett in Brett and Mer, Failures and Frustrations, General Entrepreneurship on October 17th, 2009
We have been live for about three weeks now and these three weeks have been the most agonizing weeks I have experienced thus far in my quest to start a successful company.
Up until this point every second I worked had a very definitive result and pushed us closer to our goal of launching. All my work was directed towards getting the website live, getting us to the point where we could finally start bringing in revenue. In the very early stages I could see, track, and measure my effectiveness and progress. The last three weeks, not so much. It has become incredibly difficult to see what, if any, progress I am making with my sales and marketing strategy. Things are no longer just in my hands. People need to start buying from you. They now have the power.
When you get to the point we are at now, you can work your butt off and see minimal results. Then you start questioning everything you have done. Why aren’t clicks converting to sales? Why aren’t we driving more traffic to the site? We are asking for feedback, if people aren’t happy why don’t they tell us? All of these thoughts will inevitably go through your head at some point. It becomes difficult to motivate and persevere.
What is the saying…Rome wasn’t built in a day? As much as you want to say “forget that” you need to keep perspective. These questions your asking yourself aren’t a bad thing (I think you should be constantly evolving) but you need to stay confident. Entrepreneurship is the most difficult undertaking I have ever experienced. It is surprisingly lonely, everyone is constantly questioning you, your decisions, and your company. If you don’t have thick skin and a natural confidence you can easily be flattened by the pressure and criticism.
You just have to keep pushing on, lean on those few people who support you or who have been through it before. You are doing something that A) very few people will ever have the balls to do, and B) Something that you should be passionate about.
I recently read a great article. Check it out here:
http://www.centernetworks.com/your-startup-sucks
-Brett
Merchant Services Part 2
Posted by Brett in E-Commerce, General Entrepreneurship, Start-Up Tips, Uncategorized on October 15th, 2009
I know this has been a little while coming but I think I am finally at the point where I have a little time to write more frequent posts. Before, I start part 2 of merchant services, I would like to mention that we have added some add’s to the blog so if you see anything you like please feel free to click through and help support the us.
OK, on to merchant services. In my last post on this topic I spoke about the steps it takes to set up an account and what the value chain of the industry looks like. This post is specifically about fees. Everyone who accepts credit cards hast to pay something (even Target and Walmart) but you can do several things to help minimize your costs, even as a start-up. How do I know this? I know because A) I used to sell merchant services and B) I just went through the process of setting them up. Here are a few steps to take to minimize your costs:
- First understand your busienss. Specifially, what will your typical ticket size be Vs. how many tickets a day will you process. This element is key because every merchant processor is going to charge you in two ways; 1st a per swipe transaction and 2nd a % of the total bill. They dont advertise this, but merchant processors are willing to negotiate prices on both of these cost elements (i.e. charge a smaller per swipe for a higher % and vice versa). This is why it is important to know your business. If you do very few swipes but have large ticket sizes you are better off with a low percentage and a higher per swipe charge. If your company does a lot of volume with small ticket sizes then you would want a little higher percentage with a lower per swipe (scrubadoo.com for example). The better the idea of what your transaction size and volume will be the more optimal your fee structure can be.
- Ignoring their publicly advertised pricing, look for a few processors that you are comfortable working with. Research the company, how they do business, even ask for client references (people you can actually call). Just like every other part of your business do your due dillagence on your merchant provider.
- Once you have identified your top two or three choices for providers contact them and ask them for a quote. Make sure you tell them what you are looking for in pricing (remember you know your business better than they do and they can taylor thier quotes to what you specify i.e. small per item and high %). It is also important to take into account the equipment you will need. If you are an e-commerce site you will need none. But if you have a brick and mortar shop you will need processing equipment. The newest wireless technology can be close to $1,000 for one machine. It is important not to ignore this aspect of pricing. Once you have the quotes in hand you hold the power in the relationship. You have choices and all of the processors want your business.
- Again, ignoring pricing, decide which processor is your top choice. If your top choice also has the best pricing you are done (although it never hurts to tell them you are looking at other companies to see if they will throw in free equipment etc). If they are not the lowest, tell them. They will likely ask for any lower quote in writing. Give it to them. Most companies will at the very least match competing offers, more than likely they will actually beat competing offers.
- Now you have your preferred vendor at the best pricing you could have hoped for.
- Re-visit your account at the very least annually, see if your pricing is still ideal for your company. As you grow don’t be afraid to renegotiate. The bigger you are the more valuable you are to your processor.
That is my breakdown on merchant services pricing. We are currently using Authorize.net as our gateway and BB&T for our processing. If you are in a region where you can use BB&T give them a shot. They are very good at both service and pricing.
-Brett
Sales
So we have officially launched our Google Adwords and Facebook marketing campaign. Both have been running for about 10 days now and they have been the source of both some good information and some frustrations. We have had a heck of a time trying to get adwords and analytics tracking conversions properly (this will eventually be the topic of another blog post).
The first 5 days after we started paying for advertising we didn’t have a single sale. Needless to say I was extremely nervous, upset, worried, and many other words you can probably imagine. Fortunately, on Wednesday we finally got our first sale from someone that I didn’t know. Talk about a relief! We have had sales in 2 of the last 3 days as well and I am at least relieved that so far we haven’t had any major issues.
I talk about wins sometimes and every company, person, team needs wins sometimes to keep moral up and keep you pushing forward. These first few sales have been that win that we needed at scrubadoo.com to rejuvenate the motivation.
All of you can help us move forward keep telling anyone you know about the site!
Until next time,
-Brett
Live
Posted by Brett in E-Commerce, Entrepreneurship at Darden, General Entrepreneurship, Successes on September 8th, 2009
OK everyone, Just a quick message to let everyone know that scrubadoo.com is officially live! Like always I have been crazy busy getting everything correct and finished. I will start writing regularly again as soon as we get things more stable.
In the meantime tell your friends about the site. You can give anyone the discount code Family&Friends (no spaces) and they will get 10% off their first purchase.
Check the site out and send messages giving me feedback!
-Brett
