Day Eight: Doubt

Doubt is setting in, I don’t know whether it’s because I’m probably three weeks away from going “live” but I’m currently starting to consider the “ifs and buts” of this little project. Then I remembered all those people who said I couldn’t do it, even my own mother wasn’t exactly supportive. Just to show them a single customer would be just sensational. This imaginary feeling is what is currently fuelling my desire to continue.

Today I looked at some potential competitors and did some smashing research. The wording of their website and locations of their images is all on purpose. They have succeeded in creating companies that have been running for several years so it’s great to be able to see what works and what doesn’t. I’m back to the drawing board on my website design but it’s for the best.

Got another meeting with the funding people tomorrow so much luck is required! 

Day Seven: Realisation

 Still lacking motivation for some reason. I decided to do more of the “fun” jobs that I had planned. I got a tad excited about designing business cards then realised I wouldn’t really have a business if I kept doing stupid things like this. I manned up and actually went back to the real work. Got a stage closer to getting my packaging situation sorted out which is some good news also replied to some potential suppliers and deleted my daily dose of spam.

 Really thinking about a date when I could get the business live. Still waiting on my friend who is doing all the illustrations to get them done so I can’t really set a date until they are done. I think that’s one lesson learned: Don’t expect friends to instantly complete work they said they would do for you. You’re not paying them and they are doing you a favour, remember that. Starting to realise that the fun-ness (I hope that’s a real word) of starting the business and writing this blog is slowly declining as its starting to feel, well, it’s starting to feel real.

Day Six: Moronday

I don’t know what happened over the weekend but today was awful. Spent most of the working day working on a future update for the website so people can actually buy my product. You would think that that was progress for the business however today was not a step forward at all. While playing around with a few back-end website settings I managed to delete the majority of the work I had completed over the past week. I actually made the same mistake twice and spent a good 10 minutes with my head in my hands in awe of my own stupidity. These mistakes cost me about 2 hours, which was incredibly frustrating.

After a week of my companies email address being live, spammers have found it. It would seem my spam filter enjoys watching me waste time as the only email it let into the junk folder was an email from one of the Japanese suppliers I’ve been trying to contact. I was going to adjust the settings of the junk folder but then realised today is probably not the best day for adjusting settings.

Stressed and annoyed I left the library earlier than usual, mainly so I don’t do any more damage. Good food, cheesy film and an early night is my prescription. No side-effects would be great.

Day Five: PGMHOFD

The fifth day or “potential get my hands on funding day” as it became known to nobody but myself (hence forth known as PGMHOFD.) In my head I had all these scenarios planned out that mainly went along the lines of talking to the big bad manager of the funding scheme and being outwitted in my shoddy small talk then having my business torn to shreds in front of my very eyes while he counts all his money that I won’t be getting. Thankfully this was not the case. 

Actually I could never have predicted the actual case that unfolded before my bewildered eyes. Yes, I explained my business. Yes, the manager was a fantastic, enthusiastic yet down to earth guy. Yes he gave me sound advice to further progress my quest for funding. However (this is a big however – note the subtle change of font size and the less subtle bracket telling you it was a big “however") I didn’t think for a moment that the man entrusted with the faith to guide young businessmen and businesswomen would also be a founding member of a 70’s tribute ect. Actually that’s not to unsurprising, it was more the fact that in this tribute act all the members wear huge black afros while singing their tunes. I may have to repeat that one more time for the people who aren’t paying attention. Huge black afros. 

To demonstrate the hugeness of this afro I’ve drawn a nice little sketch for you.

 It was probably my favourite funding meeting I have had to date mainly because of the high number of big black afro anecdotes and secondly because it’s my first funding meeting. I do hope all future funding meetings have huge black afro anecdotes involved.  I'm meeting with Huge-Afroman again soon to hand over bank details and ID. Promising. I don’t know when I find out if I receive the funding but it’s nice to be taken away from the office library to talk with real life human beings rather than being on the wrong side of a payment processed email. And thus ends PGMHOFD.

Day Four: Stop the Slaughter of Unicorns

Today my language barrier was Japanese. It’s pretty hard to find a “contact us” button in a foreign language in the middle of website with the colour scheme you would get if you slaughtered a unicorn. I, in fact, failed at this task and came away from that particular site with only 2^nd degree burnt retinas. Moving away from unicorn homicide, I’ve actually managed to accumulate eight companies that are willing to sell me stock. A few more contacts needed then I can move onto the next step of my endeavor.

As this project has been running, I’ve been applying for various enterprise funds that various councils, trusts and business offer young entrepreneurs/ students. I got a phone call (I actually missed the phone call but got a follow up email almost immediately) that asked me to come in for a meeting at 10am tomorrow morning. I have since been rehearsing a kind of pitch to sell my idea and with any luck, make out that I’m not a total numpty after all (some degree of acting may have to take place.) 

Day Three: eNay

Another day, another dollar or the potential to earn dollar/s in my case.  I spent the majority of the day trawling the many international eBay sites. I soon started to curse my earlier thinking that eBay would be the answer to all my acquiring stock based prayers. Seems like this little thing called postage costs and the other minute detail that other people want to make money from me (fancy that) meant that my end product would cost so much more than what anybody would actually want to pay for it. I was pretty damn stumped but then some bright spark on yahoo answers helped me out (indirectly though, seems that pretty much every question imaginable asked by the lazy, dim-witted and curious has been answered by some well-meaning, intelligent and coherent human being or more often than not a wannabe internet comedian.) So now I’m contacting the individual manufacturers of the products hoping they will lead me to a wholesaler that will help me out.  I’ve had one promising response, well I think its promising it’s all in broken English and a bit of Chinese but I can 梦想*

I’ve also had word back from the folk that hopefully will be doing my packaging. My cheeky request for a free sample has been met with a fee that would normally get me 25 of the boxes I wanted. It is currently a choice between two boxes and apparently if I do pay for the samples, then the money I pay will be taken from my actual order. Very cunning Box Maker Company (not its real name), very cunning indeed. Luckily it’s pretty damn cheap and I’m just moaning because I didn’t get my free sample.

*it’s supposed to say “dream” but more than likely says “This idiot copy and pasted this from a translation website.” Actually, in hindsight I’d rather it mean the latter due to the potential for tattoos that would make a Chinese fellow chuckle for the briefest moments.

Day Two: You Have 0 Contacts

I managed to fix all the problems that seemed to appear from yesterday’s work with a new problem popping out of nowhere which was a nice surprise. I also made a simple logo so I can have some sense of identity. I’m not an artist by any stretch of the imagination (which became evident during the first 30 minutes of having Microsoft paint open.) Nearing the end of an hour attempting to do this I decided to contact my newly graduated friend who is trying to make it as an illustrator. I asked politely if he could make the logo for me. He said yes, though I don’t know when I shall receive  the masterpiece. My monstrosity shall have to represent the company for now.

Today was also the day I started to find contacts of where to purchase the good that’s I require. I scoured the internet and landed on Alibaba.com (I’m importing goods from around the world.) For those not familiar with alibaba.com it’s basically where anything and everything is sold, though in such huge quantities that no start-up can actually afford the minimum order requirements. I wasted a good few hours on alibaba.com and found some great contacts, though only ones that would be useful when I have a few more credits in my pocket. For the small “testing the water” quantities that I require initially I looked at ebay. Not just ebay.com or ebay.co.uk but all the international variants to find products in smallish quantities that A. I could afford and B. I could actually sell. I noted down in my notebook that in the future I should make a spread-sheet with all the prices for the items that I require and eliminate them as I find cheaper as I glare deeper and deeper into the net.

I glimpsed at packaging for my product. Looking to get the packing to be less than a tenth of the actual product price seemed like a fun challenge. I managed it with time to spare, just need to cheekily ask for a sample to make sure I’m not going to have 200 cardboard boxes that I can do nothing with.  And with that day two was over.

Day One: Being Spider-man and Building a Web (site)

The alarm is ringing loud and proud, set for 8 o’clock, though it doesn’t wake me up. This is mainly due to the fact that I’m already awake from the excitement of actually going through with this. I’ve finished exams, celebrated finishing exams and re-celebrated finishing exams.  Now is the time to put the nay-Sayers to rest and get this thing moving. One benefit of telling everybody you know that you are setting up a business is, well, you kind of don’t want to do nothing all summer and fail and then have to listen to the “I told you so” story being repeated more times than a 70’s sitcom on cable TV.

I had roughly planned my first hours of “work” just to so I didn’t panic and “accidentally” press the snooze button on my alarm. I was to be in the university library for 9 and start by making the website that I can initially lead the doubters too just so I can bamboozle them for a minute or so.

I made it simple and smart. Design wise there was nothing in your face trying to pull the cash out of your wallet. It just stated “I’m here and this is a work of progress.” After all I didn’t have any wholesale contacts let alone a product.

It took me longer than expected, as things normally do. Not being technically minded I was constantly using my personal IT assistant (some of you may call him/her Google) to iron out problems as they creased and wrinkled their way onto the site. Hopefully only have some minor tasks to complete for said site that I can do tomorrow. Hopefully.

Day one is over, some might even say it was pretty productive and I actually have something to show for it. The next thing that I can show people, in terms of progress with the idea, would be stock. Looks like I’ll be looking for those wholesale contacts tomorrow.

The Summer Games

“So, what are you doing over summer?” I have been excited to answer this question ever since I had this idea. The response that I not so eloquently gave was “well, dear Sir/ madam, I shall be partaking in creating my own business.” The room would be filled with gasps and fainting women (this may or may not of happened) at the prospect of such a fine fellow attempting such a feat in these horrendous financial times. Annoyingly enough, I was less prepared to answer the following inevitable question “Oh that’s [superlative here], what is the business going to be?” Coughs and splutters and the occasional new word were my top 3 most frequent businesses according to my response. I knew what I wanted to do, it’s just hard to phrase it in such a slick and smooth way that they would demand to be my first customer. That’s probably something I need to work on.


 Basically the task is to set up a business over summer and then when it comes to university starting again (the end of summer) I would have a system set-up where I only have to spend a few hours* a week on it so I would still be able to succeed in my studies. Let the games begin!


 *May curse at the merest idea of this in approximately 4 months.