OK, here's our shameless promotional
plug. Looking for a great Father's Day Gift? Go buy The
MouseDriver Set at Brookstone!
Lessons
Learned
We've finally paid ourselves!!!
On June 16th, 2000, exactly one year after donning the
cap and gown at The University of Pennsylvania, we cut
ourselves a modest paycheck. Now, from a financial perspective,
we're still below our initial sales estimates, but at
least we know we'll be able to pay ourselves through the
summer and hopefully through the end of the year. Of course,
we'll need to make a lot more money before deeming this
venture a financial success, but it's pretty cool when
you're able to take an idea, bootstrap that idea with
mostly personal savings and credit cards, sell that idea
to others and then watch that idea provide you with some
badly needed income. It wouldn't be the same if we had
millions of dollars in funding!
MouseDriver is now being sold
in all of the Brookstone stores in North America. In fact,
MouseDriver has been in Brookstone stores since late May
and has been in such demand that Brookstone reordered
within one week of putting the product on their shelves.
We can't begin to tell you how huge having this product
in Brookstone will be for us. Last year, Brookstone sold
over 800,000 electronic BBQ forks (you stick it in your
piece of meat and it will tell you if your piece is well
done, rare, etc.), and this year they're expecting to
sell alot more. Go into a Brookstone store and its BBQ
Fork city...they're promoting this thing everywhere. We're
not expecting to sell over 1M MouseDrivers in Brookstone,
but we're hoping that they will provide a significant
amount of our sales revenue. 2000 sales projections will
be given to us shortly after Father's Day and then we'll
have to deal with financing (again) another inventory
investment...we're waiting anxiously. By the way, our
new hobby is walking into Brookstone stores, talking up
the product to random shoppers and watching people purchase
The MouseDriver Set. It's a pretty rewarding feeling.
Given our recent increase in sales,
we found it necessary to put together a marketing budget.
Granted, our budget is very, very small, but it allows
us to strategically think about the most effective ways
of promoting MouseDriver to the public and generating
some brand recognition. After much debate, we've decided
to allocate about 90% of our marketing budget to obtaining
business PR. Our goals with obtaining business PR aren't
necessarily to increase sales, but rather, to help tie
the "story" to the product and hopefully, give people
an emotional tie to MouseDriver. The "story" that we're
pushing is a combination of two things: 1) Why would two
Wharton MBA's forego other lucrative career opportunities
to manufacture and sell a novelty computer mouse out of
their kitchen?.and 2) You don't have to have a complex
business idea to reap personal and financial reward...sometimes
the simplest ideas are the best. Since we can't afford
to pay a major PR firm $20,000 a month, we're researching
more affordable independent PR consultants to help us
take The MouseDriver Story to the media. We hope this
works.
We've got Cabin Fever...Big Time!!
Not to say that working out of your apartment doesn't
have its advantages, but we are seriously hurting for
some additional interaction. Sometimes, regardless of
how much work there is to be done, we found ourselves
lacking energy and motivation. We'd love to obtain office
space, but it just doesn't make sense to spend $80/square
foot when we can take our "virtual" office anywhere. So,
we're going to start making an effort to work in other
places...coffee shops,the beach, friends offices, exotic
travel destinations, you name it...we'll see if that helps
us.
What We've
Done
- Finalized the initial design of our
new retail single unit package and our retail bundle
package.
- Placed and ran our first consumer
ad in Golf Extra Magazine (Southern CA publication).
- Donated MouseDrivers to be used as
tee/awards prizes in several high-profile charitable
golf events. Hoping that this will generate brand awareness
and goodwill towards MouseDriver.
- Initiated our own business PR campaign
and began researching independent PR consultants.
- Began preparing for the 2001 Holiday
Season. Seriously! Retailers/distributors start making
product decisions 18-24 months out.
Priority Goals
- Obtain accurate sales estimates from
our current retailers and distributors.
- Determine what our next inventory
investment is going to look like and quickly determine
how we're going to finance this investment. Oddly enough,
even if you do have access to cash (i.e. investment,
bank loan, etc.), credit cards are sometimes the cheapest
way of accessing money...especially if you have good
credit and large credit lines!
- Find a PR consultant and launch our
business PR campaign.
- Find for 3 or 4 more large gift distributors
in different regions of the country (i.e. Northeast,
Midwest, West Coast, Southeast).
- Begin looking into guest lecturing
at local universities.
Mood Meter
Mood Meter: We're not too sure
what our mood is this time around. Once all of the Father's
Day numbers are obtained, we'll let you know what we fee
like.
Questions, comments, or criticisms
about the Insider? Email us at info@mousedriverchronicles.com.
© 2000 Platinum Concepts,
Inc.
