Starting Scrubadoo

For quite some time I racked my brain to try and figure out how I can take advantage of our local market.  To this point I have tried:

1. Walking into local private practices and introducing myself and providing a discount on their first order with us.
2. Walking through hospitals putting up magnets & fliers.
3. We will be sponsoring a local (put on by U of Minnesota) fundraising event benefiting the Smile Network in April (I will write more about this in the near future).
4. Just general networking and telling people (I sponsor our rec league basketball team).
5. Putting us on Google’s local results map.

To this point none of these things have worked, at all (I have high hopes for the fundraiser).  But, like everything else we do, none of these things cost very much and if I hadn’t tried them I wouldn’t know.  Here is the newest idea.

One of our suppliers also publishes a new “scrubs magazine.”  They will sell us as many of these as we want for .01/each and they come out quarterly.  The magazine has stories and tips about and for health care professionals.  It has had a pretty good response from what I have heard.  I have also heard that in a hospital a magazine like this gets into at least 4 sets of hands.

I am going to buy 500 of these things for a grand total of $5.00, then I am going to have stickers with our logo and website made (think the round white stickers that people put everywhere).  I am also going to make a bunch of 1/3 page 10% off coupons.    I am then going to stick our logo on the front of each magazine (just covering up the UPC code).  On the inside cover I am going to use the removable sticky stuff to stick on 3 10% off coupons (It will be obvious each coupon can only be used 1 time/person).  I am then going to drop the magazines off at 500 private practices and hospitals to see what happens.

I figure it won’t cost much and who knows, maybe it will work.

I will let you know.

It is absurd what passes as “customer service”  these days.  I may not be an expert on the subject but for the last 2 years I have tried my best to live customer service through my company, scrubadoo.com.

What has my all piped up about customer service today???  Comcast.

I don’t know if you have seen their TV commercials about “customer service”  but when I see them I laugh.  You know what they consider good customer service?  They won’t charge you for an appointment if they fail to show up.  Ready for the cherry on top?  If for some reason they don’t do the job right the first time they wont charge you for a second visit!  Are you kidding me???  They actually advertise these two exact things on TV?  What a joke!  I have heard of setting low expectations so you can exceed them, but give me a break.

That is basically the equivalent of me advertising “If we don’t ship you any scrubs after you have ordered them, guess what?  We will refund you in full!”  I can see our add now: “Receive Maternity scrubs??? (As a young man holds up a pair of maternity scrub pants) don’t worry, we will ship you the correct scrubs at no extra charge!”    How does Comcast have the balls to put that add on the air (don’t worry they take their boots off to make sure they wont track mud in your house).

Today I had an interaction with this Mecca of service here is how it went:

I was immediately brought to an automated answering service  at which point you have to go through a series of steps prior to selecting the choice that will take you to the correct department (pretty standard, unfortunately not very “customer service” oriented).  I went through these steps to talk to someone about canceling my service (outrageous prices!) and when the automated service attempted to transfer me to the appropriate party I was disconnected.  This happened 4 times!  I then went a different route and called the “new sales” people.  The phone was answered immediately.  Fairly typical.  Unfortunately they couldn’t help me with what i needed!  I was again transferred and then put on hold.  They were experiencing a “longer than normal” wait time, but I stayed on hold.  In the end my conversation lasted about 1 minute and didn’t really accomplish anything. Two thumbs up, I bet I wasn’t even charged for the longer than normal wait time.

The lack of customer service oriented companies is one of the reasons I started scrubadoo.com.  Sure, we sell scrubs, shoes, and other nursing uniforms, but I figure if we can help change the perception of what good customer service is, even if it is one nurse at a time, then I am helping to shift market expectations and slackers like Comcast would never be able to claim “customer service” as a strength.

Would someone do us all a favor and jump in that market, start a company, and take Comcast down?  They are ripe for the pickings.

I was recently asked “What is so great about running a company?”  It really got me thinking.  After some deliberation I came up with a multitude of reasons I enjoyed running scrubadoo, however I was able to narrow it down to 4 and thought I would share them.

Control your own destiny

Ultimate success or failure rests solely on your shoulders as a small business owner. At a large company it seems like there is always a scapegoat or someone else to blame. Here I have no one to hide behind or pass blame to. The successes of the company are also your successes and the company’s failures are your failures. This adds an element of pressure and excitement you don’t normally get at a large company. Entrepreneurship is a little like gambling, the major difference is that hard work, skills, and perseverance can tip the odds in your favor.

No Such Thing as “No”

From my own experiences and through the stories of many of my friends who work for major corporations, a common complaint is the inability/lack of support to try new ideas or new methods. Here at Scrubadoo we will try anything. If we think a new marketing strategy may work we can implement it immediately. There are no hoops to jump through or politics to deal with. We have had clients give us feedback about something they didn’t like on our site and we have literally made a change within hours. I would like to see a major corporation be that responsive.

The Education

I have flat out learned more about business, customer service, and operations (the list could go on and on) in the last 2 years than I ever imagined I would. Every day there is a new challenge. I don’t have specialized departments to figure problems out for me, so I either learn it or underperform in that area. You become a specialist in so many areas that you never dreamed you would. Some areas are more useful than other, anyone need to know specific details about Cherokee women’s flair leg scrub pants?

The Contribution of Friends & Colleagues

Scrubadoo.com wouldn’t be close to what it is today without the help of a multitude of people. I can easily name dozens friends and colleagues from my past who have no financial incentive in my company, but have pitched in and helped us. From legal work to selling scrubs off of a table at a school; lawyers, doctors, consultants, and a many other highly skilled individuals have helped us out. Why do they do it? My theory is, they get to enjoy the excitement of a start up without the risk, they love the passion that I have for the company, and they get the satisfaction of helping a friend out. Plus if we ever hit it big, drinks are on me.

I truly enjoy running a company and the many perks that come with it, (I didn’t even mention “no pants day” when you get to work from home).

With the holidays upon us, the lack of vacation time as an entrepreneur has begun to hit hard.  December has been by far our busiest month ever, which is a good thing, but it also ensures that I will not be taking 1 day off over the holidays.  It turns out that people buy scrubs as presents.  They seem to be especially fond of our collegiate logo’d scrubs.  Which is great as long as we are able to fulfill all of the orders without a hitch.  But I digress, back to no vacation.

Unfortunately Scrubadoo.com is not yet running itself.  What makes this even more difficult is their are several daily tasks that only I know how to do.  Unfortunately we aren’t large enough yet where I can bring someone else on to handle these daily tasks, and while many can be automated, automation takes capital and we still are low on that.

I honestly don’t remember the last 24 hour period in which I didn’t open my computer and do at least an hour or so of work.  It is somewhat pathetic.  My Fiance is worried about being able to take a honeymoon this summer (and so am I).  If we don’t bring someone on or make some significant changes I don’t know if it will be possible.

I am positive that it won’t always be like this, but this is certainly a reality of entrepreneurship that I didn’t put a ton of thought into when I started the company.  Crazy hours and little time for rest is a given, but when you start a business you literally must live that business.  Especially when your most valuable asset is your time.

I haven’t written anything in quite some time (there just aren’t enough hours in the day) and there is a lot of catching up to do.  SO this is a quick update of what has happened in the last few months.

• May -  We hired two new interns for the summer, both performed extremely well.  I reiterate to any aspiring entrepreneur to make sure you take advantage of the resources that you have around you.

• June – Growth continues.  We have been able to grow revenue pretty much every month we have been in business to this point.  We add Barco scrubs & Grey’s Anatomy scrubs to the site.  We are close to closing a deal with Crocs.  The entire summer will be spent deciding if it is worth bring Crocs inventory in (they dont drop ship).  As of today we have not yet added Crocs.

• July – We add two new pages to the web site one is for scrub fundraisers and the other is for scrub bulk sales.   We have already had several request for both of these and they should pay for themselves in the next month or so.  At the end of the month we start selling on Amazon.  Unfortunately they only allow us to sell shoes as they are not adding new clothing retailers at this time.  It is a lot of work to manage but we think it will be worth it.  Either way with the addition of the two new scrub lines we carry every major brand.  There are a few more we would consider adding but I am pretty happy with our selection now.

• August – Biggest month ever.  A few repeat customers make some large orders.  Hopefully we can keep the repeats coming in.  Our two interns finish their summer internship.  One of them decides to stay on while he goes back to school.  We get close to completing some major back end upgrades on the site.  We have now automated a lot of our product management.  On the customer side we now have real-time inventory availability visible.  We split with the SEO firm we hired in January as they have not completed the original contractual agreement and have not produced any results.  This is a huge headache and I will try and write more on it later.  I am looking for a new firm to work with if anyone has any suggestions.  We work on a huge marketing campaign targeting nursing schools.  We now have minor partnerships with over 60 schools.

• September -  Issues with one of our major suppliers has continued throughout the summer.  I am really at a loss as to what to do here.  It got to the point where I attempted to speak with their CEO and I was effectively blown off.  Some of our partnerships with nursing schools combined with our fund-raising page may pay off by the end of the month as we have a few large fund-raising partnerships that may come to fruition by the end of the month (which will help us beet August’s #’s).

That is an incredibly quick catch up.  I hope to get back into this on a more regular basis.  We will see if the company lets me!

-Brett