Author: admin Edit http://www.petbutler.com The most noted pioneer in the poop-scooping business is Matthew Osborn, who runs Pooper-Scooper.com. He never knew that this business would one day make him a millionaire. Osborn got started back in 1987 when he opened Pet Butler in Columbus, Ohio. “I had been interested in small-business ideas since I was a kid,” he says. “My friends thought it was an interesting but far-out idea, and many of them just couldn’t grasp the concept. They all said, ‘People aren’t going to pay you for that.’” At the time, Osborn was working two full-time jobs and making less than $6 per hour at each. He had a wife, a daughter and a son on the way, and was desperate to make some extra money. Osborn began doing research at the local library, studying the area’s demographics and census data. He eventually contacted the county auditor and learned that there were about 100,000 dogs within 15 miles of his home.”I just happened to be in the right place at the right time and got started with very little money,” he says. The business slowly took off, and despite the dirty work, Osborn says he enjoyed satisfying the customers and working outdoors in some of the nicest backyards in Ohio. However, it wasn’t all fun and games. “I didn’t enjoy driving around in my little Honda Civic with hundreds of pounds of dog poop in the back,” he says. “It sort of gave me nightmares until I was able to buy pickup trucks for the business.” Eventually Osborn employed seven people and owned a fleet of six trucks serving about 700 regular customers. “I was making more money than ever before and spending most of my time with my family doing the things I enjoyed,” he says. After a nearly 10-year run, Osborn sold his business in 1998 and started Pooper-Scooper.com, which contains an international directory of pet waste removal businesses. His newest business venture is that of writer. He recently released a book, “The Professional Pooper-Scooper: How to Start Your Own Low-Cost, High-Profit Dog Waste Removal Service.”

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Lando’s six-year-old, six-person company, with headquarters in Tiburon, Calif., had a breakout year in 2005, generating more than $5 million in U.S. sales and another $2 million overseas. CliC glasses have been spotted recently on CSI, Nip/Tuck, Will & Grace, Freedomland, and the Rolling Stones, who donned CliC reading glasses and sunglasses when last year’s tour brought them to San Francisco. Which means Lando, 52, who looks like Paul McCartney (he plays guitar in a ’60s Brit-rock cover band, the Whining Bullies), is living a distinctly American dream: The one where you wake up one morning with an idea so simple, so right-, uh, over-your-nose obvious, you can’t believe nobody ever thought of it before. You arm yourself every which way with patents. Yoo’s six-year-old, six-person company, with headquarters in Tiburon, Calif., had a breakout year in 2005, generating more than $5 million in U.S. sales and another $2 million overseas. CliC glasses have been spotted recently on CSI, Nip/Tuck, Will & Grace, Freedomland, and the Rolling Stones, who donned CliC reading glasses and sunglasses when last year’s tour brought them to San Francisco. Which means Lando, 52, who looks like Paul McCartney (he plays guitar in a ’60s Brit-rock cover band, the Whining Bullies), is living a distinctly American dream: The one where you wake up one morning with an idea so simple, so right-, uh, over-your-nose obvious, you can’t believe nobody ever thought of it before. You arm yourself every which way with patents. Yoo’s six-year-old, six-person company, with headquarters in Tiburon, Calif., had a breakout year in 2005, generating more than $5 million in U.S. sales and another $2 million overseas. CliC glasses have been spotted recently on CSI, Nip/Tuck, Will & Grace, Freedomland, and the Rolling Stones, who donned CliC reading glasses and sunglasses when last year’s tour brought them to San Francisco. Which means Lando, 52, who looks like Paul McCartney (he plays guitar in a ’60s Brit-rock cover band, the Whining Bullies), is living a distinctly American dream: The one where you wake up one morning with an idea so simple, so right-, uh, over-your-nose obvious, you can’t believe nobody ever thought of it before. You arm yourself every which way with patents. You take your invention to market. Voila, you’re rich. Of course, a lot can go wrong between ah-hah! and ka-ching! Someday Lando may go head-to-head with a well-heeled copycat. He has, after all, no secret ingredient. Lando - a 20-year industry veteran who previously worked for his father’s eyewear-design company - came up with the idea after just a week of focused fiddling. The only part missing was the fastener. “I was originally thinking about a hook or a snap,” he says. He even considered Velcro. Regular magnets wouldn’t work because they’d have to be as big as silver dollars. Then someone showed him a powerful neodymium magnet, which had just come on the market, and the whole thing snapped into place. To protect himself, Lando went to Steve Schneider, director of the Sawyer Center in Santa Rosa, a SBA-sponsored resource center for California inventors. Schneider did a patent search (the coast was clear), introduced Lando to a patent agent and patent lawyers, and showed him how to file for trademark protection, all at no cost. (Ultimately, Lando says, he spent about $250,000 on fees, lawyers, and other startup costs.) In March 2000, Lando took a suitcase full of prototype goggles to the Ski Industry Association trade show in Las Vegas and came back with a sheaf of orders, including one for $100,000 from a national sporting goods chain. Suddenly Lando was in business, even though he had yet to secure a manufacturer. “I immediately flew overseas,” says Lando, “brought them my prototype, and said, ‘Make this for me.’ ” Originally Lando focused on ski goggles. Then Harley-Davidson proposed a licensing deal, and he moved into motorcycle goggles. In 2003 Lando had the bright idea of expanding into reading glasses; now they account for two-thirds of his business. The latest: sunglasses - a nearly $2 billion market. “Everybody tells me that will be bigger than readers,” Lando gushes.


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Think small. That was the basic starting point for Mike Cayelli when he decided to open an online retail business two years ago. With a tiny house, little capital to invest, and only “spare time” to devote to the project, Cayelli knew his big dream had to stay manageable. The Washington (D.C.) entrepreneur still hasn’t quit his day job, but he’s projecting $500,000 in sales this year for his company, Cuff Daddy. You have a full-time job. Why start your own company? About two years ago, I was working for [a hardware chain] as a manager in the regional professional contractor division. I still work there, in fact. But there was some reorganization going on, and I became concerned about my future. So I wanted to hedge my bets by starting my own company. How did you settle on becoming an online retailer? I wanted to emulate my cousin, who’s been enormously successful selling mobile phone accessories online. He imports products from Asia and realizes a substantial profit margin. I also wanted to do something purely on the Internet so I could keep working at my “real job” and develop the company in my spare time. Your major concern was finding a niche product that was physically small. Why? Well, we had a small house that I planned to use as headquarters. So I needed inventory that I could store in a footlocker, have my wife ship out of a home office, and haul around in a car instead of a truck or trailer. As for shipping, about 90% of our orders can be mailed first-class with two stamps in a .13-cent padded envelope. How did you settle on cuff links? It was not easy. I spent several months looking at things like buttons, watchbands, shoe laces, and collar stays. Every time I thought of a small, niche product I’d write it down on a scrap of paper and shove it into my pocket to research later. I wanted a product that could produce high sales volume and a high profit margin. I didn’t want something that sold one unit per week. So when I got an interesting idea, I would search for it on eBay and run it through a research tool called Andale. For $7.95 a month, you subscribe to this Web site and you can get diagnostic information about any product’s online sales volume and average selling price.

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Tamara Carlisle Story
http://www.bigkidsvideo.com
I was in the film business as a film producer for 10 years. I produced high-end commercials. I was completing a two-month shoot, which was very tough. At that point, there was a surge of independent live action production being done for children's videos. My father, who has a construction company in Cincinnati, said, “You need to make a children's video about construction.” And I thought, “Oh my gosh. Here I was working with 400 extras on the set and a 50-man crew. A children's video was totally different from where I'd been for many, many years.” But I did do it. I produced a children's video called “What Do You Want to be When You Grow Up”; and it was called “Heavy Equipment Operator.” It was a very big success. It was written up in all the papers around the country, and it was in schools and libraries, and a lot of retail stores. So I followed up with other 30-minute videos called “Railroaders” and “Zoo Crew.” Basically the videos are a behind the scenes show. Upon completion of “Heavy Equipment Operator” we quickly discovered how difficult it was to distribute a children's video in a market dominated by multi-million dollar corporations. We also realized that there were many fabulous children's videos out there but their producers, many of them working mothers, were not able to find adequate distribution. So we decided to start our own distribution company through Big Kids Productions, Inc. Big Kids Productions, Inc. and BigKidsVideo.com have become important parts of the children’s entertainment industry. We search out the very best live-action, independently produced video and audio products for our catalog, web site and other distribution efforts. It was just a tough situation in 1994 and 1995. I was getting out into the distribution world, which I had never been in, and I found out that it was very hard to distribute against powerhouses like Nickelodeon and Time Warner. So I started with a small brochure of about 9 videos and did the direct mailing. I started to make my way through the maze of distribution in the country, both retail and other wholesale distribution companies. After many months of making calls and waiting for the phone to ring, we gradually developed strong relationships with our wholesale outlets and expanded our retail customer mailing list. We have since grown into a company with a few hundred audio, video and software titles, and we pride ourselves on customer service and quick, accurate order filling. BigKids started distributing in late 1995. Since then, our sales were approximately $45,000 that first year and we'll probably do a million in sales this year. We have worked very hard. But, here is what people might me surprised to find out – it’s still a home business. One of the biggest advantages to having a home-based business is that I am able to spend a lot of time with my two children. When we started, I was working out of a rented space. When we really had to dive into this, and I was also pregnant, we decided to build a separate building outside of the house. So it has worked out real nice because I'm a mother of two. I know that I am so lucky because I am just 30 walking steps from wrapping my arms around my babies. Since turning to Vontoo, one client has cut its own collection staff by more than 50% while realizing a 60% jump in collections. About Big Foot,2,3,4

Vontoo started out as a voice-messaging tool, blasting targeted lists of people with prerecorded pitches from the likes of Greg Oden, the No. 1 pick in the National Basketball Assn.'s 2007 draft, who "called" Portland Trailblazer season ticket holders to re-up for another year. But as times have grown tougher, the 25-employee company has morphed into a service for bill collectors. Dustin Sapp, 30, and Robert Compton, 52, co-founders of Indianapolis-based Vontoo, had already launched and sold a successful business—NoInk, a digital information service for the medical-device industry—before they began their new company in 2005 with $1.5 million from angel investors. Prices range from $15 for 100 message minutes to $1,000 for 10,000 message minutes. Lately, the founders have discovered their automated phone calls are an effective collection tool. More than a third of Vontoo's clients today use it to get customers to pay past-due bills, and Sapp expects the share to grow. (Celebrity voices aren't used for these calls; companies typically record a company exec or someone in customer service.) Since turning to Vontoo, one client has cut its own collection staff by more than 50% while realizing a 60% jump in collections. About Big Foot,2,3,4