So what’s so special about the Fruit Box you ask? Well, it is 65% post-consumer recycled goodness, and growing! The FruitGuys founder Chris Mittelstaedt states, “I’m very excited about the Fruit Box because we’ve worked very hard and it’s taken us a long time to develop it. It’s a project that I would never consider finished and I think it’s going to be a constantly evolving process. We started out with the idea that we wanted to ship fruit in a box that was more environmentally friendly than anything else that’s being done.” Create an environmentally friendly box they did!

For starters, the cardboard used is between 65% and 75% post-consumer recycled cardboard and the ink used for printing is a soy based, water soluble, bio-degradable ink. In an effort to stay away from traditional petroleum based polypropylene foam; corn foam was used for the insulation and padding of delicate fruits, which is a plus because the corn foam dissolves into a non-toxic cornstarch liquid when held under running water. Unfortunately, the corn foam is getting harder to acquire so future plans include the use of a pulp recycled shredded paper for insulation and padding. Structural strength was also addressed by utilizing a flap and fold system to eliminate the need for non-biodegradable adhesives.

Yet as Chris mentioned before, the Fruit Box is a project that will continue to evolve. The next iteration of the Fruit Box is currently in development as The FruitGuys have purchased a machine that will allow the use of a vegetable based biodegradable glue to hold the box together. Not only will this add structural strength, but it will also cut down on the amount of cardboard used by 1/3 since the flap and fold system will no longer be needed. Look for the post-consumer recycled cardboard percentage to increase as more vendors come online with better technologies, products, and offerings.

My hat goes off to Chris and The FruitGuys, for it is innovative individuals and companies such as these that help keep other environmentally friendly suppliers striving to create better and more sustainable products.

Sincerely,
The Closet Entrepreneur

And if you missed Chris Mittelstaedt’s original interview about The FruitGuys, you can view it here:
The FruitGuys – Changing the World One Apple at a Time

I was informed about The Fruitguys after founder Chris Mittelstaedt made a guest appearance at an ASU business course. And after contacting Chris for an impromptu phone interview, I came away very impressed by the way he has created a business that helps to keep individuals healthy, and demands mutual respect, pragmatism, and empathy from his entire staff in their day to day operations. This is one of my favorite interviews to date, so I strongly suggest that you take the time to check it out. And as always, enjoy!

Feeding a Need…

I was motivated to start another business after my wife and I “got pregnant”. I had to make a decision about my future before I got locked in a position where I wouldn’t be able to take risks. So a childhood friend and I started The FruitGuys in 1998 after trying to figure out what we were going to do with our lives. We had some friends who worked in offices; we talked to them and asked, “What would you need if you could think of anything to have in the office?” A couple of people stated that they would really like to have some fresh fruit because they had all this junk food laying around and they’re working really long hours and would like to have something healthy. Having a sales background, I cold called a bunch of office buildings and landed 4 or 5 accounts, much to my surprise. I was able to sell them the concept and actually have them send me the money upfront so I could go out and get the business started. They were even willing to wait for 30 days for the first delivery; they were very tolerant with me.

We started the business in a grassroots/bootstrap kind of way. Our first production line was in the kitchen of my one bedroom apartment in the Little Italy section of San Francisco. And our first delivery vehicle was a Honda Civic. It was so filled with fruit that I had to follow behind on a scooter because I couldn’t fit in the car with all the fruit and my friend driving.

Starting and “Growing” a Business…

The reality of business is that if you have a good idea, or even a mediocre idea, so much of success in business I believe is determined by perseverance, consistency, and execution of your idea. Even if you have an idea that 100 people already have, I think you will be successful if you’re the guy who sticks through all the hard times, is savvy enough to find a way to make the idea work, and is willing to find a way to refine your business and continues to think about it anew everyday.

The thing that people do not realize is that you don’t have to have a hotshot technology business; you can make it in any business. You just have to be willing to stick it out because there will be a lot of moments when you say: “This is not making any money”, “This thing is sucking up cash for me to keep it going”, “I’m not sure if it’s going to succeed”, It’s taking time away from my family”, and “It’s stressing me out all the time” And there are moments, especially within the first couple of years, when you really do think seriously about throwing in the towel and walking away from it. And there are a lot of entrepreneurs that say “Hey, it would be easier to have a job than to run a company” and that is true, very true. But once you get over those humps and you can get to a point where the company starts to take off, then you actually start to feel the benefits and rewards of having the control and creativity over the direction of your business. And you do get rewarded personally for these kinds of things.

Beta Testing a Small Business…

I’m a huge believer in beta testing. You almost have to just get your feet wet in low cost businesses. I think a lot of people get stuck in analysis, when the reality is it should almost be the opposite – you should go out there and test your idea and then you can go back and figure out “What did I learn from this test?” Design a model that doesn’t cost a lot to test, and that will give you the most information as quickly as possible so you can determine whether you want to try your idea or not.

When you have a big idea that’s going to cost a lot of money, you have to have the documentation, the analysis, and the planning before you start it. When you have an idea that doesn’t require a lot of capital, you can afford to test it. And it’s almost worth testing just to try and build a customer base. Talk to 10 potential customers and ask “Will you become a customer, because if you do, I’ll start this business.”

Making a Difference One Non-Profit at a Time…

We’re funding the growth of a micro business to distribute fresh produce door to door to people who aren’t getting fresh food, and for a very low cost. We’re giving the fruit to Somethin’ Fresh to help them get off the ground; ultimately the goal is to have them distribute the fruit at cost, if not just a little bit above cost, and make a non-profit that can serve the community as a whole. So I’m interested in developing not just my business model, but also parallel ones that go along with our success. I’m constantly looking for people that are interested, and one of my goals is to meet talented people out there who have the same kind of interests about these things as I do. You never know when these networks of people can come together to expand these “good deed” models. The more that I can get out there and spread our message, the more I get to meet other people that will be interested too.

The Secret to Success – The Five R’s

In 1999, I had an experience where we had a customer call us and say, “I’m never working with you guys again! Your delivery driver came in and was rude and gave me the finger and walked out! It was the most embarrassing thing I have ever experienced!’ I apologized to the woman and we ended up saving the account. I talked to the driver upon his return and asked “What happened here?” and he explained that he was about 10 minutes late and the woman was frantic. She was in the middle of trying to prepare a board meeting and she yelled at him. So, he dropped the fruit box on the table and threw up his arms (and he claims that he didn’t flip her off) and left. And I asked “Why would you do that?” He said if there’s one lesson he learned in his life, it was that his father taught him many years ago if someone disrespects you, you disrespect them right back.

And I realized at that moment that I have people who are my employees who are not going to have the same feelings about customer service that I naturally have, and I had to find a way to communicate what my standard of customer service was for all my employees. So over the next year I thought about this as it was eating me inside, and over the course of a week after thinking about it for a year, I came up with a concept called the five R’s of customer service. It actually turned into the underpinning philosophy that drives The FruitGuys.

The five R’s are five questions that we ask ourselves all the time in order to judge whether we’re doing a good job for our customers, having positive vendor relationships, and dealing with our peers and those around us.

The Five R’s of Customer Service…

Respect: Have you been respectful to whomever you’re dealing with whether it’s a customer, peer, or a vendor? And we define respect not as a respect for a superior, but a respect for someone because they walk this planet with you. And you give them respect equally as you would anybody else.

Respond: Have you been responsive to the needs of your customer or the person you’re dealing with? Many people say “You didn’t react fast enough” and I actually don’t agree with that philosophy, I think it’s more that you’re not responding fast enough. Reacting is a very emotional and gut based thing, when you react you’re not thinking. Responding to somebody involves thinking about what you’re doing so you can help them. Responding implies that you’re listening to what they want and what they’re saying, and you’re trying to find a solution for them.

Realistic: Have you been realistic about what you can or cannot do? That is a really important part of our business, if somebody comes to us with an unrealistic goal that they need fulfilled, then we need to immediately tell them that we can’t do it and why – and give them options for what we can do. Yet if it’s over our heads, we need to admit it because we don’t want to lead someone down a path where they’ll be disappointed or angry at us and we ruin our own reputation through over-promising.

Responsibility: Did we take personal responsibility for the outcome of the situation we promised to shepherd? It’s easy for one person to take responsibility, but it’s difficult in an organization where each person has a job to do and different people are shepherding that project. Everybody has to go into it with the philosophy that this is my project and I own it collectively with everybody else, but I’m going to make it a personal responsibility that this thing succeeds. If everybody takes that philosophy, then you’re going to get overlap and you’re going to make sure that things get done correctly.

Remembered: When you walk away from a situation with a customer, vendor, peer, or anyone in your organization, are you going to be remembered positively? And if you have done all of the other four R’s, I think you are going to be remembered positively.

These five steps have become the ethical philosophy of The FruitGuys that we use to create our own management system. And we also use it with our employees, our customers, and our vendors. If a vendor doesn’t live up to our standards, then we realize that regardless of their product, they may not be a type of company that we want to associate with ourselves. And we explain to everyone – vendors, customers and peers how we use the 5R’s. I’ve never understood customer service that is based on ultimatums or is impolite, it’s not the way I want to be in business. I want to have a business that’s very respectful to others. It may sound cliché but I think that all things circle back. If we treat others well I believe we will receive the same in return. And that’s what we are trying to do here.

-Chris Mittelstaedt
Founder of The FruitGuys

For a box of fresh fruit from The FruitGuys for your office, just go to www.fruitguys.com, email us, or call us. -Chris Mittelstaedt

Finally, all the hard work pays off! Wal-Mart, Walgreens, and Office Depot are hungry for your product and order up half a million units! All of a sudden, you’re on your way to the top! You find yourself on the set of Desperate Housewives and schmoozing with George Lopez, Wilmer Valderrama, and the lady with the high pitched voice from Police Academy. Life is good, right?

Well, there’s a slight problem…

You and your 5-person business only have $300K on hand, and it takes money to make money. Your factory in China wants 30% up front for big orders, and each retailer is asking for $100K just to reserve a spot on their shelves for your product. So, what would YOU do?

This is the story of Colin Roche, Bobby Ronsse, and PenAgain. PenAgain is the idea of Colin Roche, who in 1987 dreamed up of a new pen design while doing time in high school detention. He teamed up with his fraternity brother, Bobby Ronsse in 2001 and the two created Pacific Writing Instruments with the purpose of making PenAgain a reality. For several years, they rolled up their sleeves and got their hands dirty in an attempt to make a name for the pen. And make a name they did. By the time Wal-Mart gave them a shot, they had already made $2 million in revenue and the PenAgain was being sold around the globe.

But the journey hasn’t been all fun and games. Initially, PenAgain lacked mass appeal with major retailers. And even after proving that the wishbone shaped pen had a following, the small company has been physically, mentally, and financially taxed by the demands of running a small business and catering to the needs of the big retailers. Getting the product out the door is a full-time job for the five-person staff, and the money the company has on hand isn’t enough for traditional advertising or expanding the size of the company. VC’s aren’t willing to invest less than $3 million, and the right Angel investors are yet to be found. So if you had any advice for Colin Roche and Bobby Ronsse, what would you tell them?

Personally, I think it’s a hard spot to be in especially because it is so difficult for them to grow the company and run the company at the same time. Yet they have an established brand name and a product that sells, and sells well. Plus, ergonomic products are a big thing nowadays with companies and individuals with special needs. So if I were Colin and Bobby, I would actually not grow their company into a huge corporation. Instead, I would license out the technology to other pen manufacturers and companies like Wacom and Logitech.

Why? Well, I went out and bought the Ergo-Sof PenAgain. And although I like the design, it still needs some R&D. For starters, the solid body still has the capacity of creating pressure points between the index and middle fingers where one of the ends of the wishbones rest. An actual semi-solid “NERF-like” body would be awesome. Second, the quality of the ink and ink delivery aren’t up to par with other pens. I would rather use liquid gel instead of traditional ball-point inks. And finally, the body of the pen takes some getting used to. The pen itself is already compact, but is just a quarter of an inch too long and half an inch too thick.

A major manufacturer might be able to tweak the pen more easily to make it perfect for “everyone” to use. And licensing the technology would allow the creators to still profit from their idea, yet probably get the idea out to more markets than they themselves could imagine. That’s my 2 cents, take it for what it is worth.

So would I recommend the pen? Yes. Despite my constructive criticism, I believe it warrants a try, especially for people who have trouble with traditional pen designs and need an alternative.

Now lets hear from you. If you were given the task of advising the PenAgain guys, what would you suggest they do? Leave a comment with your advice; maybe you’ll have the answer to the PenAgain conundrum!

Sincerely,
The Closet Entrepreneur

Before iBegin

I moved to Canada in 1997 and began dabbling online, and kept playing on the web through High School. I got serious about the web about 6 months before the dot com bubble burst, and incorporated a web development firm in 2003. We don’t do client work; instead we create websites for ourselves where we have advertising, subscription, virtual products, and other methods of making money – iBegin is a small part of what we do, but will hopefully become a large part.

The iBeginning

I started a blog called AJAX Review around the time AJAX came out and started heating up. As I started reading about Web 2.0 companies for ideas, I found that many did solve a problem or an issue yet they were superfluous. Then one day I was searching for something online and became frustrated because I couldn’t find what I wanted, and then it hit me – there’s all this user participation and what if it were to be used for local searches where it was needed. I already had a company that was making money, so I didn’t have to go to an investor or outside sources for funding. I started on a project and sketched out some ideas in October 2005, and by January 31st I had a workable system.

iBegin was released in March, and we decided to skip all the invitational stealth mode and startup hype that other companies were doing. We’re almost 3 months old now and just got 53,000 unique hits last month; people have been joining up and submitting reviews and things are going good.

It’s Not A Web 2.0 Site!

I tried my best to steer away from pumping up the site as a Web 2.0 company; my main focus has always been local search that works. I’m involved in the domain industry and the valuation is absurd for domains these days. People are buying domains and so much money is being thrown around, and I tried my best to keep away from Web 2.0 because local search is not a fad. My target audience is far beyond the tech niche of the “audience of 53,651″; of course I would love for them to use the site yet I have no interest those specific users who like fire ants go through a farm and eat everything then move on to next thing. And I don’t really see all these [Web 2.0] websites doing much that a normal user would find useful at all, some do make sense but 99% of sites don’t have sustainability in what they’re doing.

Driven By Need

I’m a very socialist oriented person, and I don’t see why you have to make the maximum amount of money. I have a comfortable life, a condo with a nice view, my woman, my doggie, and I’m not that driven by money. Google kept it clean and could’ve made more money if they whored out their site. With iBegin, I want to keep the site clean and make around 75% of what I possibly can – which is much more important because I’m not driven by money but driven by an actual need. Searching Toronto was a pain, just today I was using the website to find a breakfast place and found a totally new restaurant and that’s a reward for me.

Keeping It Simple

I did a bit of benchmarking after I built the site. My entire idea was to make it easy to use – Google Maps uses one line to find a location instead of separate fields to make their search as simple as possible, they let the system compute what the user puts in to find results. I also wanted to keep it as simple as possible; you could say that my idols were Google and Craigslist. The entire philosophy is to just make it as simple as possible and k.i.s.s.

I’m a CE by degree, but have lots of interest in psychology and usability. I spent a lot of time sketching things out the way I wanted things to appear. Since we’re a profitable web development firm, it wasn’t a burden to send out my ideas to the graphic artists and create a mock up. The final site has been a bit of an evolution, I wanted the elements to be as simple and clean as possible; and it’s a lot cleaner now since we’ve tried to keep the graphics down to a minimum.

The Future of iBegin

I’m actually very leery about our staff getting too big, the more people you bring in, the more control you lose. We’re happy with the size of the company and don’t want to manage too many people. We’re also around 90% of where we want to be feature set wise because we don’t want to complicate the site. A large majority of iBegin users don’t care about tags or other features, they find what they want and move on. We may decide to let companies offer coupons, but we’re not interested in integrating companies on a larger scale because it starts becoming a headache. Integrating companies will develop the need for a sales force and customer support, and then there’s the issue when they want to try to get all your data. I own one of the bigger blog directories and frequently get contacted by marketing companies trying to buy ads, and sometimes they ask if they could buy marketing data from us which makes for an uncomfortable situation. We’re happy where we are and are not too keen on expanding into other businesses.

Expanding Into Other Cities

It’s a given that I will take iBegin beyond Toronto, I don’t see why it can’t be the biggest local search engine around. I believe it’s faster and much more useful than the other local searches out there. And since I’m living in Toronto, I can stay under the radar whereas the competition would be giving me a lot more attention had I been in San Francisco. We’ve ordered some new servers for iBegin Ottawa which will be here in a few weeks, and 3 or 4 weeks after that we will slowly but surely expand into the US. The system is setup in such a way that if one city becomes too popular, it won’t bring down the local searches for other cities.

A lot of people are interested in bringing iBegin to their city; we’ve been “dugg” twice and have only received 3 or 4 negative responses amongst the positive responses of people interested in bringing the local search to their city. And because of the setup and utilization of search results, once we’re well established we will skyrocket to the top of the search – which is already happening. My biggest worry is people not finding the value built into the site (user notifications, events systems, etc), and I hope that the way I’ve approached the site in terms of philosophy and setup will help propel us beyond the competition.

For now, the first few cities we will be targeting are pretty much set in stone because of market size and internet use. Ottawa is about 6 weeks out, and I want to make sure the system is as solid and fast as possible before hitting the big cities like San Francisco and New York. After that, I’m not sure – maybe we will build a system where you can submit your own city and create something people can run themselves, or maybe work with municipal governments and have it run through them.

Ahmed Farooq
Founder of iBegin.com

For those of you not familiar with Woot.com, there’s an entire Wikipedia page and FAQ page with all the information you’ll ever need. In a nutshell, one item goes up for sale at midnight (Central time) each day and stays on the homepage regardless of whether or not it is sold out. On different occasions, special buys are offered like the infamous Bag O’ Crap which contains various items & sometimes a special surprise (no not that kind of surprise, an expensive electronic gift type of surprise). Most of the items on the site are electronic and household goodies accompanied by some of the most colorful and sarcastic descriptions. As an example, I’ve copied and pasted their product info for today’s PC Defender Wireless Screen Lock that’s up for sale:

We don’t care why you need this PC Defender Wireless Screen Lock 2-pack. Whatever it is that you can’t let people see on your computer, whatever you suspect your co-workers have been doing at your workstation when you’re away, we’d rather not know. Seriously, keep it to yourself. We’re creeped out enough by our fellow man as it is.

All we know, and all we need to know, is that the PC Defender Wireless Screen Lock locks your computer screen when you walk away and unlocks it when you get back in range. You need enter no password! You need toggle no switch! Just stick a dongle into any regulation-size USB port and tote the transceiver around in your pocket, on your belt, or in an intimate cavity. It’s so easy we’re tempted to call it the E-Z Wireless Screen Lock. Like the ladies, your computer will always notice when you walk into a room. Unlike the ladies, it will not begin gathering its things and sidling toward the exit…

There’s even a Product Stats page that contains a nice statistical wrap-up of the item’s purchase activity for the day.

I can only imagine how entertaining it would be to work at Woot. And with an estimated $40 million in yearly revenue and only 30 employees, I’m pretty sure the paycheck isn’t bad either.

Sincerely,
The Closet Entrepreneur

Well low and behold, Nathan Kaiser of nPost has been dedicating himself to doing the same since 2000 and has accumulated over 120+ interviews in the process. Through a quick search, I found interviews of Craig Newmark (Craigslist), Bob Parsons (GoDaddy), Reed Hastings (Netflix), and Jimmy Wales (WikiPedia) to name a few.

According to Nathan,

I founded nPost.com in 2000 as a way to learn more about business and marketing. Conducting interviews with CEOs and entrepreneurs I was able to learn from their insights, experiences and mistakes. That information is useful to everyone looking to start a business. nPost.com is expanding to monthly events in the Seattle area and will be growing to include events in Portland and Vancouver BC over the next few months.

I definitely like what Nathan’s done, and definitely recommend it as a useful resource to aspiring Entrepreneurs and those looking for a good read.

Sincerely,
The Closet Entrepreneur

In the beginning, there was Wite-Out

In Junior High, yearbook class introduced me to art, photography, design and manual labor! On the yearbook staff, you wrote a story, took the pictures, edited the copy and then typed it out on your typewriter on a 4-layer carbon copy sheet. If you made a mistake, you had to Wite-Out 4 carbon copies to fix it. The layout was drawn on similar carbon layered sheets. This layout and copy was then physically mailed to the yearbook company where they would typeset it, place artwork and photos based on your drawn layout. Weeks later the company sent back proofs and then you would edit those with a pen, send it back, and they sent you another proof. That was the process of designing and producing a yearbook.

In High School, there was still Wite-Out

We had design camp for yearbook; I learned a lot of the design basics of layout and typography there. They taught a `right way’ and a `wrong way’, so we kind of became these `design snobs’ when looking at other yearbooks. It’s funny, I think some of my work today would have been frowned upon in those ‘right, wrong’ design sessions! At that time, we were just getting into using a computer but only to set the type, the rest was still on the 4-layer pica-based layouts and the photos were never scanned but cropped with a grease pencil, so I had a lot of experience doing layouts and building artwork really slowly by today’s standards. Now you can lay something out, print it out, and that’s what it will really look like. Back then it was a 2-month process to see your finished layout the way it would actually look.

In College, yes – there was still Wite-Out

I went to the University of Arizona in Tucson. They ask you to go through all the foundational art classes. You take art history, illustration, painting, sculpture, fibers, drawing, and then you get to design. And when you get to design, you didn’t go to the computer – you had to do stuff by hand. A lot of cut paper, hand inking of letters, rubbing on lettraset type, ordering chromatechs, rendering thousands of thumbnail sketches. It was great training. There was time to think through your concept and really have a great idea before the laborious task of executing it. What I see today is instant gratification on the computer. Anyone can type out or paste in what they want and it looks decent technically so there’s a temptation to leave it and say it’s done. Usually, it’s not. The type isn’t letter spaced perfectly, the curves from your pen tool aren’t exact, and the style you achieve is based on the computer’s default settings. It’s awfully easy to let the computer drive the aesthetic. In the end that’s letting your tool (the computer) control your art. You want to be an artist and an author first, and have that idea down, then determine a tool and execute your idea.

The first design class…

I had a professor say “Take out your sketch pads and do one-hundred thumbnail sketches of different logos for this project.” So I did a hundred thumbnails, came back the next class, and he said “Okay, do a hundred more – throw those away and do a hundred more.” Looking back that was great, the lesson was that you need to go through a lot of iterations and you have to think about it and you can’t hold on to your first idea and think it’s precious. The creative process is often an interactive one, so learning to let go of the first idea (so that you have access to the 20th one, the perfect one) is a great benefit.

The moniker takes ‘shape’

In Tucson, I worked for my professor Jackson Boelts and his brother Eric. One afternoon, Eric peeked over my shoulder as I was solving a layout problem with a series of shapes and said, “You’re Mister Shape.” And so that name kind of stuck. One of the first pieces that inspired me was the design of a magazine called Emigre. I found an issue that had been authored by designers in the UK called The Designers Republic. The message was all from the designer. The style was very distinctive and unique. At that time the style was predominately shaped based, and much of it was tied in with the electronic music coming out of Europe. In this work, the forms were carrying the vibe of the music, and that was a large influence on my design work in school and it’s carried over in the Mister Shape work.

The shirt off your back…

I have always loved T-shirts, it’s something where a cool idea becomes a product and other people can enjoy it too. I like the idea that I can design and produce something that has value to people and makes them happy.

Mister Shape’s inspiration…

Series 1 was all about growing up in the suburban desert. It was this idea where there was a lot of concrete, it was hot, and there were swimming pools, fans, ice cold drinks and squirt guns.

Series 2 is a couple of different things.

Balance: I wanted to play the shape theme more literally and the idea was to take one shape, the circle, and create a composition with just one shape. There’s just circles, whether they’re overlaid or by themselves, and then there’s this typeface that I built off the circle that says `balance’. The idea is that everything is out of balance, asymmetrical, but in a way it’s all still balanced out composition wise. So Series 2 is more about patterns and shapes.

Hero: It’s hot in the Summer, so you’re indoors a lot and there were a lot of video games growing up and a lot of different systems. So this is a collage of the Atari joystick, the original Nintendo controller, the original Playstation controller, and the original Xbox controller in this explosive burst. It says `Everyday Hero’; the idea that you can be a hero everyday playing video games = you’re always saving lives, winning the game, saving the princess, killing the bad guy.

Mister Shape’s business…

Mister Shape is actually an art design project. It’s an art project that happens to be a business. So I’m selling art, which happens to look, feel and wear like a T-shirt. Mister Shape also has the opportunity to collaborate with other artists, with their products and help them with design, marketing and sales.

Quality over quantity…

I would rather have a super high-quality product at a slightly higher price; I don’t want the brand ever associated with poor materials or poor printing. I use American Apparel even though it’s 4 times more expensive then what’s possible on the low-end, but I like the quality of the material – how soft it is, and I like that its form fitting and light-weight. Mister Shape has a large screened-in label which isn’t cheap to produce; it means every shirt has to be hand flipped inside out so that label is screened in that big. Every shirt has a woven label; it’s not a paper label or a printed label. The experience that someone has with the brand and product needs to be great, they need to have a great feeling and see all the details, its part of the experience of wearing Mister Shape.

Connecting with the customers…

I have the Shifter blog and I’ll get comments and email about my posts. I posted about the amazing Nintendo DS and some games for it and I get a ton of email about it all the time, people letting me know they’ve purchased it and love playing with it. Then there’s this one guy in Georgia who owns a pool cleaning business, and he bought the Poolhopper because that’s what they do – they hop around from pool to pool cleaning them. And so he emailed me and was interested in getting a Poolhopper for every one of his employees!

Mister Shape’s tips on starting a business…

Everyone makes starting up out to be a big deal. I think that puts too much pressure on what it really is. I think you just do it, and you do it on the side first. Start small; do a little bit here and there. Gain momentum without jumping in and facing a situation where you can’t support yourself. I think you have to have the right mind set and you have to have a lot of confidence that you can do it. I’ve always believed that a designer should be an author not a short-order chef. Designers have this great opportunity today to self-publish, to create the future. Today all you need is a great idea, as the tools and means of production are becoming very inexpensive. I realized if I wanted to have the complete creative freedom and quality control, I had to start this business to do that. Look in the design industry and many of the designers that do innovative, engaging work, that have a unique voice; they’ve started their own thing. They’re all authors and they control all aspects of their products. I’d recommend Ellen Lupton’s book, D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself, which touches on a lot of these ideas, and provides a lot of examples and bios of designers taking on their own product design.

For any entrepreneur, my advice is to use all of those great web tools that are out there that are practically free. When I sell my shirts, I don’t have a merchant account I just have PayPal. When someone buys a shirt, then that’s when I pay a transaction fee. They provide all the systems – you can track shipping and you can print shipping labels. For my email campaigns, there’s no reason to build a custom email system, collect emails manually, and then try to send out emails. I use Campaign Monitor; you only pay when you send out an email. I send out infrequent emails, only 2 or 3 a year, and so I only pay when I send them out, yet the service allows me to store and manage my email list for free. I use Blogger for the Mister Shape Shifter Blog. Blogger’s 100% free, it’s simple and easy to use. So take advantage of the free tools that are available to you.

The future of Mister Shape…

Regarding ‘the future’, I like to be really flexible; I always try to keep the focus to the next six months. When you look beyond that time horizon, the world will have changed significantly and you don’t want to be trapped in an old plan that no longer applies. I change methodology and delivery tactics a lot, though the greater goal of creating great design and experiences and telling stories stays the same. Think about our lives and experiences and how they change so fast. Technology, for example, is changing at a rate that we don’t know what the new opportunities are going to be in 6 months, yet as they come, I want to turn on a dime and be able to do different things.

So in the next 6 months, Mister Shape could go in a dual track where the shirts appear in larger retail stores, but then there’s also the more exclusive limited edition line that you would find in the small boutiques and online. It looks like Mister Shape will provide more than shirts in the future. Mister Shape will collaborate with other artists and create other things. It’s all about creating art, solving problems and having fun. The profit will come because people want real, authentic, great products that matter – products that mean something. At Mister Shape it’s not about looking at the `market’ and trying to `capture the market’, it’s just about the design conversation I can have with my customers, my friends, what problems can be solved, what experiences can be created, and what are we are all into and how Mister Shape shares in that.

-Ward Andrews
Founder of Mister Shape

Go Non-Governmental Organizations, or Go NGO, was started in 2004 by Jon Beekman, an ASU alumnus and Fullbright Scholar. After spending time in Mexico and being heavily involved with the nonprofit sector there, he realized that many nonprofit organizations used the internet, yet only a select few utilized it as a mass communication and marketing tool. Go NGO has since served as a thesis project for business students at ASU, and its vision is to help bridge the gap between non-profit organizations in developing countries and the underserved individuals they intend to help.

Go NGO’s has currently focusing their “beta” efforts on Mexico due to its close vicinity to the US, and the increasing need for non-profits in Mexico to establish a web presence in an ever increasing online population. Future plans are to expand their nonprofit solutions to other developing countries in need of help.

Thankfully, the organization has made some good progress. A recent trip to Mexico has helped gain interest in the organization and helped to collect concerns and considerations from potential users. In addition, close work with ASU’s CSE department has led to the possibility of Engineering students contributing to the organization through a Capstone Project.

So how can you help?

A big obstacle at the moment is figuring out a way to host clients’ websites. Commercial solutions are too expensive and don’t carry any specific benefit to the community, and in-house hosting through ASU’s IT servers has been met with resistance due to legal and security issues.

Also, if ASU does include Go NGO as part of the Capstone Project, then the development of an open source, multilingual, platform independent, web based content management system will be the focus of the project. In the meantime, assistance in the search and development of a compatible content management system would be ideal.

So this is where the Closet Entrepreneur has vowed to help out (for those that don’t know – I’m an ASU grad, my mother is from Mexico, and I have very close ties to Arwa Jamil). First and foremost, I’m hoping to try and help spread the word about Go NGO in the hope of finding web designers and developers who would be interested in working with Go NGO to develop solutions for their content management system and provide useful resources such as keyword search optimization, advertising techniques, and content layout techniques. Second, I’m hoping to start an NGO adoption agency where companies donate and allocate unused web space to help host NGO’s in need.

So, if you can help out in any way, please do not hesitate to contact Go NGO at info@gongo.org, or you can contact me and I will relay the info to Arwa Jamil and the gang.

Sincerely,
The Closet Entrepreneur

iBegin’s creator, Ahmed Farooq, has been chronicling the history of the site on his blog, and I really think he’s got something special going. Like many of the popular ‘user-driven’ sites out on the web, iBegin relies solely on word of mouth and user participation to generate local business and event content. And by ‘user-driven’, I mean that users not only submit content, but they regulate, screen, and correct it. The site also incorporates tagging, and utilizes a ‘User Rank’ (similar to Google’s Page Rank) which quantifies the value of a user’s suggestions, comments, reviews, et cetera.

I really like how much attention to detail has gone into the backend and inner workings of the site. Ahmed’s blog has quite a few posts dedicated to his attempts to create a solid and fast search algorithm, and all the work that has gone into ensuring that the pages load quickly. In addition, he’s integrated Ajax into various parts of the site to allow instant content manipulation and updates. As far as aesthetics are concerned, the interface and layout is good and it’s definitely more pleasing to the eye than my beloved Craigslist and other local search sites like Yelp and Open List.

So will it succeed? Well I certainly hope so; I’m rooting for the guy because I really think he has a good thing going. I think the major competition is Google Local; then again I really think that a large amount of dedicated users can nail more local level restaurants, venues, and events better than Google Local can. Ultimately though, the success of the site will depend on mass participation and lots of word of mouth, especially if the site hopes to make inroads into the US and abroad (the site currently only focuses on Toronto).

Ahmed and I played email tag and unfortunately plans fell through for an interview on the Closet Entrepreneur – he just started traveling and will be away for a few weeks. I’m hoping to be able to get a hold of him once he gets back into town, until then I suggest you check out the site and his blog whenever you get a chance; the iBegin philosophy is especially interesting and refreshing.

Sincerely,
The Closet Entrepreneur

So what if there was a place where there wasn’t a middle man, and individuals like myself could find people looking to make some extra money on the side? Well such a place exists, and it’s called myzoox. Myzoox cofounders Aaron Paul and Jimmy Smith envisioned a place where individuals could be given the opportunity to market themselves as their own entity and independent contractors. It differs from other sites because it is absolutely free to use, ads last 200 days, and 10% of the gross revenue – not profit – goes to a philanthropic organization of their choice.

Myzoox was launched on January 24th, and there are already 500 members contributing to the site. Jimmy, Aaron, and site developer James Moore have been hard at work spreading news of the site through a network of friends and word of mouth. I thought I would do my part by bringing their story to the closet blog so without further ado, I bring you my March 17th interview with myzoox’s cofounder and Chief Marketing Officer, Aaron Paul.

Aaron Paul on the Early Days of Myzoox

Jimmy Smith and I were fraternity brothers at Georgia Tech. We both have parents who are business owners and we’ve discussed business ideas for years, so it’s natural that we went into business together. Jimmy has a Bachelors of Science in Economics, and I majored in History, Technology, and Society with a minor in Spanish Business Language in Technology. Since I knew I was going into business on my own, I didn’t necessarily learn about business or economics when I was in college. Instead, my approach to college was to study what would be most interesting, and once I decided on a career, I would figure out what I needed to learn at that time.

Myzoox initially grew out of ideas and discussions we had. Jimmy initially had the idea, and I liked it, so we discussed it and did some research on the internet to see if we could learn from what other companies were doing. We also talked to my father, and then figured out exactly what we wanted to do.

Becoming Self Determinant through Myzoox

There are a lot of sites that are close to doing what we’re doing, but not truly hitting the nail on the head when it comes to giving the individual the opportunity to market themselves as their own entity and independent contractor

Myzoox follows our personal philosophy in life. We want to be self determinant, and we don’t want anyone else to determine how we spend our time. And although money is a big part of becoming self determinant, we’re not looking to make a ton of money. We all have day jobs, and we just want something to be able to maintain our lifestyle without having to answer to anyone else’s demands.

Yet we’re not the only ones who feel a strong desire to be self determinant. Looking around at today’s society, things are evolving in such a way to help empower the individual. Globalization and the internet has been a big part of that. Sites like eBay allow people to view their items as assets and present themselves as individual businesses, and we wanted to take that a step forward. What people need to understand is that their knowledge and skills are their real value, and sharing their knowledge and skill set with individuals in need is a way to empowerment and getting out of the daily grind.

The site has allowed us to be autonomous in our daily lives, and we want to enable everyone to be able to do the same for themselves.

Aaron Paul on Bootstrapping

Jimmy and I had pretty good business minds, but we were not web developers. The first step was finding someone to do web development, and I knew that if I could find somebody who could share our vision and our passion, we could get them excited about the site. We had a friend who was a web developer and was good at artwork and web advertising, so we talked to him about it and once he got excited about the site, he was all for it.

I also talked to an acquaintance that was an international student in business. The professor in her class started a company every semester, and he’s a big proponent of bootstrapping so I picked up a lot of info from his lectures. One of the things he talked about was how some new companies spent a lot of money trying to make a big splash, but ultimately couldn’t get out of the debt hole they created. He felt that this was a big pitfall for companies that were starting out. He felt that it was much better to grow a company organically through bootstrapping.

Myzoox and Advertising

Up until this point, we’ve been concentrating on a two-fold business plan. In order for site to be really useful, there needs to be plenty of people with service offerings. We realized that the biggest problem we have is the burden of educating the market place and informing people on what myzoox can do for them. On sites like eBay, if someone wants to sell a lampshade, they can just mail it to you. Yet if someone’s going to find an individual service provider, they need someone who is going to be near by.

So the first thing we’re doing is finding people to get on the site and list their services. One thing we did was email every friend we had and encouraged them to sign up and list some services. We really feel that everyone can offer at least something, and when you think about it, there’s probably a bunch of stuff you can offer. So far we’ve relied mainly on word of mouth, posting on websites, and communication through email.

Once we have enough people on the site, we will then shift our focus towards advertising the site as a place where people can come and find services.

Aaron Paul’s Advice for Closet Entrepreneurs

The most important thing is if you know there’s something you want to do, you have to do it as soon as you possibly can. Life has a way as time goes on where more and more responsibilities begin to pile on, and it becomes harder and harder to make changes.

And if you know there’s something you want to do then get out there and do it; money cannot be an obstacle. Passion is absolutely your greatest asset, not money. If you have passion, it can be contagious and catch on with other people who might share your passion and your vision, but money cannot be an obstacle.

Also, when you’re a true closet entrepreneur, you’re never not working. When you’re at your day job and come home, you’re immediately on your night job – on the computer, calling people, meeting up.

Aaron Paul on Empowering the Individual and Helping the World Community

We really feel that through globalization and the internet, this is the first time in human history where the individual has the power to get their voice out and have their ideas heard, and as a tool myzoox is great. Most people find that the limiting factor on their life is finances, so we wanted to create a site that not only let’s people share ideas and knowledge, but also empowers individuals to get out of the financial limitations on their life.

We also feel that we’re very blessed to be in a country where people have the ability to empower themselves in this way, so if we’re going to do something that will help people empower themselves, then we also want to do something that can help people assist others. That’s why we’re committed to pledging at least 10% of our yearly gross revenue to a philanthropic organization, and this year we have decided to give to the ONE campaign which is doing a lot of work to fight global poverty and AIDS. We want people to know that this is something we believe in as a worthy cause, and we want people to get behind the site since it is more than just a corporate thing – we feel it’s a movement. We want the site to be a movement and we want to revolutionize the way individuals think about themselves and the value they provide to the world.

-Aaron Paul
Chief Marketing Officer of Myzoox.com