Blog Entries : Entrepreneurs

The Truffle Trail To Success

Here's an inspiring story about a young man, Ian Purkayastha, who at 15,  literally caught the scent of success and followed through to become a successful truffle dealer.

Purkayastha who, at age 15, fell in love with foraging for wild mushrooms in the woods of Arkansas, where he's originally from. Soon thereafter, he tried truffles and it was love at first bite.  Purkayastha was so taken with the truffles he ordered some from a French distributor so he could cook with them at home. That might have been the end of the story — a kid with a sophisticated palate and an usual hobby — except that Purkayastha also has an entrepreneurial spirit.

After selling some of his truffle stash to local chefs to help pay for his shipments, Purkayastha realized he had an opportunity to combine two of his greatest passions: truffles and sales.

Soon he had a Web site, Tartufi Unlimited, and was shipping truffles across the country. Then three years ago, when he was just 16, Purkayastha convinced a major Italian distributor, P.A.Q. Gubbio, to make him their North American truffle representative.  "What I didn't realize," Purkayastha recalls, "is they didn't have any preexisting clients in the US. Basically I did everything to build the company from the ground up."

While most of his friends were finishing high school and heading off to college, Purkayastha headed east to make it big in truffles. From his base in Hoboken, N.J., just across the river from New York City,
Purkayastha started knocking on kitchen doors at some of the top restaurants in Manhattan.

Read the full article here.

Three things learn here in relation to finding a business opportunity :

Opportunity can present itself anywhere, anytime, often in the most mundane and boring of situations. We always think "That would be a great business", or "I wonder if I could make money doing that?". The trick here is to be aware of stuff - keeping your eyes and ears open. More importantly, it's about keeping your mind open!

Don't just think, do something. Just as soon as we have that brilliant thought,  more often than not, we push the thought into the back of our minds and stamp a huge K.I.V on it. And there is stays, as we struggle with our 9 to 5 existence. Ian saw the potential of truffles and he did something about it. His search could have just stopped at finding an unusual hobby. That wouldn't have been so bad. At the very least, if you Google the web and find out more about that brilliant idea in you head, you're arming yourself with information.

Start small, keep an open mind and BELIEVE. Okay, so you've Googled the entire web and you've even gone out into the field and did your research. You think you have a pretty good chance of making things work, but you're not as confident as you'd like to be. Ian didn't jump headfirst into the truffle business. He started small, got his footing and gained confidence. You can do it too.


The Good Entrepreneur Competition

The Good Entrepreneur Competition

Are you an enterpreneur with a green idea? "The Good Entrepreneur" is a new TV series that will be screen on CNBC later this year. It's a new business competition that's backed by business and financial news channel CNBC. Also backing the competition are Allianz a global financial services provider. The aim of "The Good Entrepreneur" is to find the entrepreneur with the best sustainable, responsible and innovative eco-business concept.

Budding entrepreneurs across Europe with a green idea or business plan for a product or service are encouraged to enter online at www.thegoodentrepreneur.com.

The winner of ‘The Good Entrepreneur’ will receive a prize package worth more than £220,000 which includes financial support, advertising on CNBC and business support from Allianz. The competition closes on 31 July, with three finalists named in August and ‘The Good Entrepreneur 2009’ winner announced in November.

Support for entrants on the website will be offered by star business names including Martha Lane Fox, co-founder of Lastminute.com; Stelios Haji-Ioannou, chairman of easyGroup and Nandan Nilekani, co-Chairman and co-Founder Infosys. Top business leaders from Allianz, General Electric International, LinkedIn and Microsoft International, alongside a leading professor from University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, will choose three finalists and select the winner.

The TV series will track the progress of the finalists as they receive mentoring and advice from leading entrepreneurs. The series, which will culminate in one of the finalists being announced as the winner, will be broadcast across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia on CNBC in the autumn.

The Good Entrepreneur website will engage leading business schools, business leaders and entrepreneurial organisations to create a new on-line community that helps entrepreneurs take great ‘green’ ideas and transform them into solid, responsible business plans.


Phil Tapia - Serving Up Success And Making Money

Phil Tapia - serving up success

Quote source : FindArticles
Image souce :
Tray Display Advertising

Phil Tapia can testify to the manifest virtues of occasionally cleaning out the family garage.

It was during a day spent with his dad, Mike Tapia, amid boxes and oil stains two years ago, that Tapia discovered his Tray Display Advertising business, or at least the idea for it.

Uncovering examples of the advertising Mike Tapia had done with his Billboard Bags Inc. -- on liquor store and fast-food bags -- in the early '90s reminded the Tapias of an idea Mike Tapia had hatched for selling ads on fastfood restaurant placemats.

Just about two years later, Tray Display Advertising Inc., is supplying 125,000 advertising sheets a month to 23 Wendy's locations in Colorado Springs, Pueblo and Woodland Park, with another 15 stores to come next year in Tucson, Ariz. and pizza box lid toppers for 12 Little Caesars stores in Colorado Springs and Pueblo.

Tapia banked sales of $60,000 in the company's first full year.

What made Tray Display Advertising take flight was its simplicity.

Tapia sells ads to a mix of a dozen or so local and national companies, has the 81/2-inch by 11-inch sheets printed in Oklahoma and then delivered to a central distribution point for his clients.

Wendy's of Colorado Springs estimates it saved $10,000 last year by not having to pay for its tray placemats. And the restaurant gets the central position on the sheets for its own advertisement, without cost.

Tray Display Advertising groups advertisers together so local businesses save on advertising costs, plus they get their ads in front of thousands of eyeballs everyday. And as far as I'm concerned, when I'm wolfing down my burger and coke, there's pretty much nothing else to do except to read what's on the tray mat.

Now isn't this one of those ideas that make you think, "I could do this!"?


Helen Pattinson And Montezuma - A Sweet Success Story

Helen Pattinson and Montezuma - a sweet success story

Quoted from : Times Online
Image via : Times Online

Helen Pattinson and her husband Simon had given up their jobs in Britain to travel the world for a year, and were passing through the town of San Carlos de Bariloche in the foothills of the Andes. They wandered around a town that was full of enchanting chocolate shops and the experience opened her eyes.

When she walked into one shop that was laid out like a chocolate supermarket, Pattinson had a moment of revelation.

“I just thought, wouldn’t it be amazing to work with chocolate,” she said. “How is it that a shop like this is sustainable here in what is a tiny town, whereas in Britain we consume so much chocolate and yet what is available is pretty poor?

“It was a eureka moment. I went back to Simon and told him he had to come out and look at all these shops because they were amazing. He could see what I meant immediately.”

Excited by the discovery of the Argentinian chocolate shops, the couple started researching the chocolate market in Britain in 2000 when they came home. They wrote a business plan and went round the country finding chocolatiers who could make products for a shop. Then they raised £160,000 – half from the sale of their house in London, the rest from friends and family – and found a shop to lease in Brighton, Sussex.

Originally the idea was to simply open a shop and sell high-quality chocolate made by British suppliers. But just before the shop was due to open their leading supplier, who was going to be the source of 50% of their stock, went bust.

Pattinson realised they had two choices – to give up their whole business idea, or make the chocolate themselves. Within 24 hours they had decided to become chocolate makers as well. They found a production unit, some equipment, and set about teaching themselves how to make high-quality chocolate.

Just a few weeks later they opened their first shop, calling it Montezuma’s after the Aztec emperor of Mexico, where chocolate was held in high esteem.

It was an instant success. “From day one we thought we have hit on something people love.”

The business broke even in its first year and the Pattinsons opened a second shop in Chichester. With the help of a £250,000 bank loan, they now have seven shops in southeast England and sell chocolate through their website.

Helen and Simon are inspiring examples of how ideas can be turned into a lucrative business if people would not only open their eyes and ears, but their hearts and minds to the everyday opportunities around them.

As they say, "Success is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration". Once you get an idea, it's critical to follow through on that idea. 9 out of 10 ideas end up on the KIV pile at the back of our minds because they were never followed through. Like Helen and Simon, you have to take the effort to find out all you can about the opportunity, go through the nitty gritty of beaureaucracy if needed and when the unexpected happens - like when their main supplier went bust - to take the bull by the horns and wrestle it to the ground.

I believe Helen and Simon are strong souls and they complemented each other in their journey to making Montezumas what it is today. That's an integral part of how they turned a simple idea into a money making venture.

However, the first step is as simple as opening your heart and mind to the everyday, simple and often "boring" things in life, seeing the opportunity in those things and finding a way to bring them to life.


Marty Metro - Making Money By The Boxloads

Quoted from : Unusual Business Ideas

When Marty Metro and his wife added up the number of times each of them had moved over the years, it came out to an astounding 29 times. Metro, 34, knew they weren't alone in using massive amounts of cardboard boxes and was convinced he could help movers, businesses and the environment by creating a solution to the cardboard quandary.

With a decade of experience working and consulting on large-scale business technology, Metro made it his goal to build an online marketplace that would allow big companies to get rid of their used boxes and scraps in an earth-friendly way, as well as offer companies and individuals the opportunity to buy used cardboard boxes at roughly half the price of new ones.

Currently covering the area between Los Angeles and San Diego, the company plans to expand by franchising in the top 50 cities in the United States in the next three to five years. For now, BoomerangBoxes.com offers an online exchange for those outside the delivery area to link up and exchange boxes with others for a nominal fee. With annual sales projections exceeding $750,000, the company boasts 75 percent-plus gross margins. "It makes me feel great," says Metro. "We have created a win-win environment."

This is one of those ideas that make you think to yourself "Whoa... that's such a simple idea and this guy is making money from it?".

Find a need, fill that need and the world will beat a path to your doorstep. Marty has created a business where it's a win-win situation all round :

  • people can get rid of boxes they don't need.
  • people who need boxes of any size know where to go to get them at a much lower price.
  • the lifespan of boxes extended so that means less trees get cut down and the world gets to breathe easier.

So the next time you're breathing in a lungful of fresh air, spare a thought for Marty and his Boomerang Boxes and how it affects the world around us. I'd say Marty deserves money by the boxloads don't you think?


Dana Foley and Ana Corinna - Accidental Designers

ana corinna and dana foley accidental designers

Quoted from : FitNYC

Here's a link to an inspirational short video about 2 women entrepreneurs who were brought together by the love of fashion. With no fashion design experience, these two vivacious ladies still managed to build a name for themselves in the fashion industry, and today, their products are even sold at Bloomingdales.

Given that there was not much money to be made by procrastinating, and that Ms. Foley had two children to feed, she often sold things at flea markets to buy more time to write. But then she would buy new clothes instead. So one day, about 12 years ago, Ms. Foley, a boho believer with rock-star hair, decided to be more resourceful and make a skirt for herself — a long, tight, sexy knit tube that she dyed in the kitchen sink.

With the help of a friend who could manage a needle and thread, Ms. Foley made more skirts and put them on a table at the old flea market on Avenue of the Americas in Chelsea. The first day, she made $2,000. The kitchen became a factory. “My kids were sitting there eating pizza in a sea of organza,” she said. “I was making money for no good reason. If I had chosen this profession, I would probably still be, whatever, writing.”

Meanwhile, Anna Corinna, the future other half of the label, hated her job. Having majored in psychology at New York University, she was hired, upon graduation in 1995, as a receptionist at a shoe showroom in Trump Tower. That job did not pay well, either, so Ms. Corinna tried selling vintage clothes at the same flea market.

She arrived on weekend mornings with a big pile of whatever she thought looked interesting, like acrylic knit ponchos she bought from a closeout sale and resold for $35 to $45. Other dealers worried whether she would fit in selling such clothes, until Donna Karan, Anna Sui and other designers started shopping at Ms. Corinna’s booth. Ms. Foley was a customer, too, and as the two women became friends, they realized they had more in common than their vintage bohemian style and decided to merge their operations into one, called Foley & Corinna.

In many regards, the story of how Ms. Foley and Ms. Corinna turned a flea-market friendship into a fashion company that now has $20 million in annual retail sales is uncommon. Neither one knew much about the mechanics of design or, for that matter, business. They have never been prominently profiled in Vogue or Elle, nor have they sought the Bryant Park runways. But Ms. Corinna has an eye for vintage fashion, and Ms. Foley is intuitive about how to make new versions of those styles for modern women. For those reasons customers — and knockoff artists — have sought them out.

Perhaps because Ms. Foley and Ms. Corinna have been content to remain just under the radar, companies that specialize in making cheap copies of designer fashion have been bold in appropriating their designs.

Entrepreneurs like Dana and Ana prove that sometimes if you have enough passion and gumption, then no experience is required.

So what's your passion?