Last weekend I was in Tampa for the IceMule’s first Kayak Fishing Tournament, the Whiskey Joe’s Mammouth Slam Classic, part of the Tropic Bay Kayak Fishing Classics Series. First, nothing held at a place called “Whiskey Joe’s” can be bad – it’s against the laws of the universe. Second, Captain Pat and the crew put together a first class event and it was awesome to be present when three IceMules were presented as prizes. I took the opportunity to shoot some video on my Flipcam and the results are in the YouTube video below.
Now here’s the thing. This is the first video I’ve ever edited using iMovie on my Mac. I’m using standard Mac templates and staying pretty safe with background music. I’ll get better as we go along here…for now, I’m fairly certain no one in the “Shorts” race for the Oscar is sweating.
In fact, the whole Sponsorshippin’ thing has taken off in a MAJOR way. We are now sponsoring over 50 tournaments! I’ll provide a complete list soon.
In the meantime, enjoy and provide feedback (but take it easy on my directorial debut!):
If you’ve read the “About Us” section of the IceMule Cooler site, you know the basics of this story…
A few years back, my then girlfriend (now wife) and I were planning a day hike around Brown’s Island on the banks of the James River in Richmond, VA. Since we had planned to be out most of the day, I wanted to pack some sandwiches and water for a picnic lunch, but I didn’t want to carry a cooler around all day. So a few days before, I went looking for a cooler I could carry on my back that would use real ice (I had used that blue pack stuff before and, while it might make it great icepack for a bruise, I don’t know anyone who thinks it will actually keep drinks cold in a cooler). Simple enough, right? Nope. I went to every sports / hiking / fishing / camping store I could find and then I went online. No portable, waterproof, leak-proof, backpack coolers were to be found. Plenty of cheap sewn coolers that I knew would leak, but nothing good.
So, on the day of our hike I grabbed my trusty daypack and two kitchen-sized garbage bags and dropped in ice, sandwiches and bottled water. In less than two hours the bags broke, the ice had melted and the cold water ran down my back and legs.
We finished our hike but I left that experience a little obsessed. I looked even harder for the cooler I needed but I still could not find it anywhere. I couldn’t believe it – this was SUCH an obvious need. My obsession to find the cooler I needed morphed into an obsession to make the cooler I needed. I was, in fact, becoming an entrepreneur. Unfortunately, if I had managed a little less obsession and a bit more planning, I could have saved myself a lot of trouble. This post is about helping other folks avoid some of that trouble.
What follows is my take on what you should do once your new business obsession sets in like a virus you can’t shake…including a few tips on how to conduct concept testing, getting a prototype made and finding the right manufacturer.
Do some concept testing on your idea
It was an obvious need (to me, anyway) but this is when I made mistake #1: I conducted zero market research. I didn’t even bother to ask anyone if they would buy the cooler I was envisioning (other than a few friends, who will often just support your idea to be, well, supportive).
Now, I got lucky. Turns out I guessed right. But you don’t want to be on the wrong side of an expensive and time-consuming multi-month prototyping journey to find out that no one wants your widget.
So – test the concept. There are several ways to do this. Tim Ferriss gives some great tactical advice on how to use Google Adwords to test a new product concept (see 4-Hour Workweek). There are also several reasonable omnibus online testing services – google “product concept testing” and explore the options.
Do some market research on your industry
Although I didn’t do any concept testing, I did have good idea #1: I researched the Cooler market. I wanted to know how many people bought coolers, what the annual sales of the cooler industry were, who the big players were, etc. The idea was to see if there was room for my cooler and, if there was, what that room would be worth in terms of annual sales.
Turns out this was more difficult than you’d think. The “cooler industry” isn’t as closely followed as, say, the computer industry. You can find decent market research on the Sporting Goods industry, you can even get some numbers on “sporting goods accessories”. But coolers? Not so much.
Rather than giving up, I hired a specialty market research firm (google “custom market research”), spent about $350, and got a fairly good report. That, supplemented by what I could pull together from public sources told me that between $600-$900 million of coolers are sold in the U.S. each year. Igloo and Coleman are the big players (duh) and then there is a second layer of moderately-sized companies and then a big pile (50+) of smaller companies. I reasoned that if this market can support that many companies, there is probably room for me – and a half-a-percent of market share would be worth $3MM in annual sales (not there yet BTW!).
Time to dive in! Next, I had to actually make the cooler of my dreams.
Build your prototype
Okay, so the first thing I’ll tell you is that, unless your product is really, really simple to make, it is much better to build prototypes of your product with a professional firm rather than trying to do it yourself. There are two reasons for this:
Unless your product is an offshoot of something you are already expert in, and you also have manufacturing expertise and the right materials & tools, you may not be able to do much more than mock up a prototype, as opposed to building one that truly works like you envision, and
There are a ridiculous number of firms out there that will build your prototype for you at a reasonable cost. In many cases, OEMs (original equipment manufactures) will make your prototype for you at a reasonable cost in hopes of getting your manufacturing business. Another avenue is using a marketing firm that will help you build a prototype and then help you find a manufacturer, typically in exchange for handling your marketing.
Of course, I did not do any of the above. This was mistake #2.
In my case I had a good idea of what I wanted the cooler to do – how it should perform & the attributes I knew it had to have (waterproof, leak-proof, soft-sided, able to fit into a backpack, collapsible, and with cooling properties as good as a hard cooler). But I had no idea how to build it. I was so clueless that I actually, in a fit of entrepreneurial madness, went out and bought a sewing machine and a few yards of plastic coated material. Never mind that I had never so much as sewn a button back on a shirt. Or that sewn seams would leak (duh). Or that I had not even sketched out a proper design. None of that mattered – I was an inventor now. Ha. Take my advice here, knock your self out with rudimentary mock-ups if you have to, but when you really want a working prototype that people could see themselves buying, work with a pro.
For the IceMule, I finally stumbled onto a dry-bag in a sporting goods store (dry-bags are used by paddlers to keep their gear dry) and it occurred to me that the waterproof seams in a dry bag were exactly what I needed. It still took me a couple of months of messing around with “waterproof zippers” – which I found to be difficult to use – before I finally realized that creating an insulated dry-bag was actually the simplest, most elegant design.
If you’re anything like me, you have to go through the most difficult, complicated set of options you can imagine before you settle on the simple path that actually works. So, when you’re knee-deep in a complex execution of your idea and your brain is aching from trying to figure out how to make it all come together, stop. Then step back and ask your self how you would do it if it had to be so simple you could describe it to a manufacturer in one sentence.
Find the right manufacturer
To find my first manufacturer, I used the Thomas Directory of Manufacturers (now ThomasNet). Back in the day, you had to go to the library to find this. Now, it’s online and very easy to use.
Still, though, I made another mistake (that’s mistake #3 for those of you keeping up). After talking with literally dozens of potential manufacturers – some even before I figured out how to make the product – I settled on a firm in Chicago that was willing to give it a go with a very limited production run (500 units). It took us several weeks to get a working prototype and after the initial run they decided they did not want to make any more IceMules because they were so difficult to manufacture.
Why didn’t this manufacturer work out? Because they were not already a dry-bag manufacturer. They were experts in radio-frequency welding and working with waterproof fabrics (the right expertise to make the IceMule), but they had no real expertise in my kind of product. The lesson for me (and you) here is – find a manufacturer that has build something so similar to your product before that they can build it with a short learning curve, good cost estimates and a reasonable chance that they will be there for the long haul.
After so many mistakes, I was due for another good idea, and I finally had one. That’s good idea #2 (the mistakes were still winning 3-2 for anyone keeping score). The idea was this – get a referral from a trusted source. This actually happened quite back accident. I was talking with my brother-in-law about the product and he mentioned that he had a friend who ran a company that had it’s product manufactured in Asia. I contacted his friend and was in turn introduced to a manufacturing broker in Taiwan. Now here is the important part – my new friend trusted the broker. After working with him now for a few years, I trust him also. He prices fairly (and I have gotten other quotes) he provides good quality control, and he stands behind his work. In fact, if we have too many defects in a production run (over an agreed-to percentage) he will set up a production run specifically to replace defective units, at his expense. That’s the kind of relationship you want. So – find someone who makes a similar product and ask for a referral to their OEM – that’s a better route than any directory can provide.
That’s it for this round, folks. Thanks for hanging in!
Next – Start Up Notes 3: Final touches and liftoff – Protecting yourself, outsourcing your fulfillment & building a web presence
I received an email yesterday from an old friend from my consulting days. My old buddy Greg was uncharacteristically polite and solicitous (“how are you? the IceMule site looks great…I’m so impressed” etc etc etc.).
Now this is a guy who is much more likely to ask me how I can even get around at my age without a walker while wondering aloud how a woman as beautiful as my wife could have possibly married a schmuck like me. The last time I saw him was when a few of us met in DC for a day of golf and spent 5 hours on the course and probably 3 off the course thinking up creative ways to get the other guy riled enough to blow any chance at the huge 50 cents we had bet on each hole.
So, as you can imagine, when Greg sent me such a, well, nice note, I knew I was being set up. And then he hit me with the punchline: he’s been working on an idea, an idea he thinks could be a business, and he wanted to pick my brain about how I got the IceMule off the ground.
What’s interesting to me is that he didn’t need to be so cautious – of course I’ll share my experience with him. Heck, I will (I am) sharing it with anyone reading this post. If only to keep you from making some of the seriously dumb mistakes I made, and maybe to help you navigate some potentially dicey areas I stumbled all over.
So – here goes. I’ll periodically write a post (for the Entrepreneur Notes section of CoolerNotes) about one aspect of starting a business using my own experience as an example. But – caution – if I didn’t do it you won’t find it here. There are plenty of books out there about how to start a business and they range from step-by-step instructions (many of which have great practical advice) to more inspirational tomes (many of which I read because I constantly need to maintain a good mental pump). But I haven’t seen that many that deliver the blow-by-blow – and that’s what I’ll write here, for whatever it’s worth.
Of course, the first place to start is with product – every business has to sell something – either a product or a service. My story relates to developing a product but having spent years marketing bank services, I can tell you that what follows is relevant to service-oriented companies as well.
I’m going to give you the Reader’s Digest version of the 6+ months it took me to get my product out of my head and into my hands. I’ll give a bit of advice also but feel free to disregard it – if you are anything like me, you’ll do exactly what you want to anyway.
Installment 1 next: Start Up Notes – From a cold back to a cool idea
Whew. What a week. This whole Blog/Sponsorshippin/running a cooler company by myself thing is tiring!
It has been a heck of a ride this week, though, and all of it good. Punchline: I am TOTALLY into the whole sponsorship scene. Plus, tons of extras that have come my way as a result of reaching out through CoolerNotes and offering to sponsor some of the good people in the Kayak Fishing community. In fact, the extras are what are so surprising and they really speak to the power of social media / online-based marketing.
Let’s recap:
Sponsorships. As I reported a few days ago, Joe Cambria at KayakFishingMagazine.net (which rocks) suggested that I sponsor a few kayak fishing tournaments to promote the IceMule. Ok – seems like a lot of work, but…OK. So, I sat down, grabbed the tourney calendar on KayakFishingMag’s site, jumped to each event organizer’s site, found the contact info and sent each tournament director an email asking if they had any sponsorship opportunities for a young, growing cooler company with an extremely limited marketing budget. I even suggested that I could sponsor without paying but by providing IceMules as prizes or for raffles.
I contacted 7 groups, some that run individual tournaments, some that run a series of 5 or 10 or more events. Within 24 hours (in some cases, within a few minutes) 5 of the 7 had contacted me back. EVERY ONE was excited about our participation. Of these 5, I have already committed to 4 and all but one will be unpaid sponsorships. I fully expect to hear from the others soon.
These four are listed below (I’ll include an event calendar on CoolerNotes.com and IceMuleCooler.com soon) – go to their site & check them out. In some cases, the tournaments support worthy charities so if you’re so inclined drop them a check, I’m sure they would appreciate it.
And – here is the first extra of the week…my (beautiful) wife Meg and I invited some friends over for dinner this past Saturday night. One friend, Lisa, mentioned that she didn’t know that the IceMule was my product (she had seen it promoted on Facebook) until she got a note I posted on Facebook about CoolerNotes.com. So, we got to talking about it and she mentioned that her son was playing in an enormous Lacrosse tournament held in Fort Mill, SC this summer. She’s one of the event organizers and thought that the IceMule would be a great sponsor. I agreed.
What is interesting is how easy this is (that said, several of my weekends just got booked!) and how much exposure I’ll get. I estimate that – just from participants and guests, the IceMule will be seen – in context – by over 3,000 people. I’ll pay (all expenses in, including product value) about $2 per. I’m paying up to that much for certain Adwords right now and somehow I think that seeing an IceMule in action will be a heckofa lot more impressive than clicking a link. But that’s just the surface – as one of the tournament media kits pointed out, the community of anglers in these areas (NC – GA – FL) is very large but very interconnected. In GA alone there are almost 1 million fishermen, and they all will know about the kayak tournaments there (or even know someone who competed). Plus, each tournament has well-trafficked websites where my logo will appear, plus emails, newsletters and, in some cases, magazines. The reach can be staggering.
Early this week I got an email from Kayak Fishing Magazine, somewhat out of the blue, asking if they could do a product review of the IceMule.
Well, um, let’s see….I target kayakers, and specifically kayak fishermen through adwords, I have spent hours and hours trolling (that’s a fishing term kids) kayak blogs and message boards to better understand the needs of this audience, and I’ve been tinkering around with the idea of spending real money on a print ad (old school) in a competitor magazine. So, yeah, you bet you can review the product. How many do you need and where do I send them??
Why this market?
First, I am a kayaker and a fisherman (though I haven’t become a kayak fisherman yet – something I will remedy this spring), and I KNOW the IceMule is the perfect cooler for this market. Kayaks have hulls that are irregularly shaped so traditional coolers can’t fit well. Other flexible coolers will leak (but the IceMule never will) when they are filled with ice, and when you are fishing you need ice to keep the fish fresh.
Second, this is the perfect outdoor market. Like some other markets, these guys and gals are devoted to their sport. De-vot-ed. And when you care that much, you want the best gear. Heck, the gear is half the fun. And when a unique product comes along, you must have it.
Third, I have gotten this same inquiry from a competitor magazine before but the review never happened – so I am anxious to see what the pros will say.
Forth, Kayak Fishing Magazine gets thousands of unique hits a month – this kind of exposure would typically require a big ‘ol check to Google and the eyeballs wouldn’t be nearly as targeted.
First, nothing held at a place called “Whiskey Joe’s” can be bad – it’s against the laws of the universe. Second, Captain Pat and the crew put together a first class event and it was awesome to be present when three IceMules were presented as prizes. 
I took the opportunity to shoot some video on my Flipcam and the results are in the YouTube video below.
