Cassmer Ward had been in an entrepreneurial situation before he helped found The ClearCollar (www .theclearcollar.com). For example, he joined a struggling engineering firm as the CEO. The engineering firm was losing money on revenues of less than $1 million. Over the next six years Cassmer was able to move the firm to profitability with revenues in excess of $25 million. In 2008, Cassmer found an opportunity that was too obvious and too good to ignore. Cassmer was in one of our EMBA Entrepreneurship courses and pitched an idea that had been crafted by his father-in-law years before but never developed into a business. In the early 1990s, Alan Donaldson who was an emergency-room nurse with more than 20 years of experience was frustrated with the classic cervical collar that must be repeatedly removed from a person’s neck to be checked following a neck injury. The new product was clear, allowing the emergencyservice professional the ability to continuously assess the patient’s neck without having to frequently remove the collar. One evening, using everyday household plastics, Alan created the prototype of what would become the world’s first fully transparent cervical immobilization collar. A man ahead of his time, he found that the technology and process to manufacture a comfortable, transparent cervical collar simply didn’t exist. In 2008, Cassmer formed a team of EMBA students and, with the blessing of Alan Donaldson, they developed a business plan that won the EMBA Business Plan Competition. The team then decided to turn the plan into a real business. Cassmer said, “It ended up being a perfect storm for success, the technology in TPE (plastic) technology was there, survey research indicating that the market was eager for this kind of product was there, and, of course, the patent was there. Now all we needed were start-up funds.” Cassmer and two other classmates dedicated themselves full-time to the effort for the next twelve months. The new ClearCollar team promoted the concept to angel groups, medical professionals, and medical investors across the nation. The new company formed a board of directors and a board of advisors. The group felt that they needed at least $1.2 million to bring the idea to life. The founding team contributed $50,000 to get things started and went out and raised the rest of the capital over the course of a year. They ultimately raised $2 million . For the ClearCollar team, getting molds cast, lining up manufacturers, working with distributors, and fighting an entrenched powerful set of competitors all proved to be substantial barriers to success. The biggest impediment to early success, however, was the ability to make the product accessible. While the company had built a sales model based on sales representative-based distributors, they found that those distributors were very slow to react. The distributors wanted to see customers asking for the ClearCollar. Once customers asked about the ClearCollar, then the distributor became interested. This created an issue, as the company had to market to both direct consumers and to the distributors. Another issue was the adoption time lag for a new technology in the emergency rooms. No one wanted to be an early adopter from the purchasing side. Although all of the direct users loved the ClearCollar, they didn’t make the purchasing decisions. The purchasing decisions were made by a number of different sources (e.g., the municipality, the hospital, a third-party owner) This made it an uphill battle. Even with some of what became Cassmer’s biggest accounts, it took 12 to 18 months to close the deal. The ClearCollar team never planned on the sales cycle taking that long and did not have the resources to deal with this issue. At the same time, response/capacity from the manufacturing partner created issues. New versions with improvements were delayed, and shipping to customers on time became a big issue. This all became a huge demotivating factor for the sales team. The result was, despite early strong interest in the product, the firm now has only one employee and is basically an order fulfillment company. The board is in the decision-making process deciding whether to sell the company now (which would be at a low valuation), bring in more capital (ditto), or selling/licensing all of the intellectual property (IP). What Advice Does Cassmer Have for New Entrepreneurs? 1. You need to have great internal operations to fulfill orders, support sales/customers, and manage inventory. You will get offers from a lot of people/partners who can help or have advice on how to do so effectively. Be cautious. Be sure to listen, but only do what is best for your business model, not what makes sense for them. 2. Everyone thinks sales come from a good marketing plan. Wrong. It is from an excellent sales plan. What does thismean? Not only know how to make your product accessible, but what are the hoops you need to jump through to make it accessible? Who does the purchasing? What is most important to the decision maker? Is the decision maker the user? If not, whom does the product benefit and how can that benefit the decision maker? Understand what it takes (and how long) to complete the sale. The decision-making process when you buy a pack of gum is completely different from when you buy a car. What type of decision-making process is used when buying your product? 3. Make sure you are accountable and/or hold any vendor partners, suppliers to the terms and conditions of your business. As a business owner, you want to provide your product as easily as possible to your customer. In order to do so, you are responsible for all factors from raw materials to delivery. Whomever you partner with to assist in the sales cycle must be a party that buys into and delivers the same message/service that is representative of your company. QUESTIONS 1. Why hasn’t the ClearCollar simply dominated this industry if the product is so attractive? 2. If an investor promises to invest an additional$2 million in this company, what would you recommend that the board do with that investment to improve the sales of the company? 3. How would you differentiate marketing from sales?
Cassmer Ward had been in an entrepreneurial situation before he helped
found The ClearCollar (www .theclearcollar.com). For example, he joined a struggling engineering firm as the CEO. The engineering firm was losing money on revenues of less than $1 million. Over the next six years Cassmer was able to move the firm to profitability with revenues in excess of $25 million. In 2008, Cassmer found an opportunity that was too obvious and too good to ignore.
Cassmer was in one of our EMBA Entrepreneurship courses and pitched an idea that had been crafted by his father-in-law years before but never developed into a business. In the early 1990s, Alan Donaldson who was an emergency-room nurse with more than 20 years of experience was frustrated with the classic cervical collar that must be repeatedly removed from a person’s neck to be checked following a neck injury. The new product was clear, allowing the emergencyservice professional the ability to continuously assess the patient’s neck without having to frequently remove the collar.
One evening, using everyday household plastics, Alan created the prototype of what would become the world’s first fully transparent cervical immobilization collar. A man ahead of his time, he found that the technology and process to manufacture a comfortable, transparent cervical collar simply didn’t exist.
In 2008, Cassmer formed a team of EMBA students and, with the blessing of Alan Donaldson, they developed a business plan that won the EMBA Business Plan Competition. The team then decided to turn the plan into a real business. Cassmer said, “It ended up being a perfect storm for success, the technology in TPE (plastic) technology was there, survey research indicating that the market was eager for this kind of product was there, and, of course, the patent was there. Now all we needed were start-up funds.”
Cassmer and two other classmates dedicated themselves full-time to the effort for the next twelve months. The new ClearCollar team promoted the concept to angel groups, medical professionals, and medical investors across the nation. The new company formed a board of directors and a board of advisors. The group felt that they needed at least $1.2 million to bring the idea to life. The founding team contributed $50,000 to get things started and went out and raised the rest of the capital over the course of a year. They ultimately raised $2 million .
For the ClearCollar team, getting molds cast, lining up manufacturers, working with distributors, and fighting an entrenched powerful set of competitors all proved to be substantial barriers to success.
The biggest impediment to early success, however, was the ability to make the product accessible. While the company had built a sales model based on sales representative-based distributors, they found that those distributors were very slow to react. The distributors wanted to see customers asking for the ClearCollar. Once customers asked about the ClearCollar, then the distributor became interested. This created an issue, as the company had to market to both direct consumers and to the distributors.
Another issue was the adoption time lag for a new technology in the emergency rooms. No one wanted to be an early adopter from the purchasing side. Although all of the direct users loved the ClearCollar, they didn’t make the purchasing decisions. The purchasing decisions were made by a number of different sources (e.g., the municipality, the hospital, a third-party owner) This made it an uphill battle. Even with some of what became Cassmer’s biggest accounts, it took 12 to 18 months to close the deal.
The ClearCollar team never planned on the sales cycle taking that long and did not have the resources to deal with this issue. At the same time, response/capacity from the manufacturing partner created issues. New versions with improvements were delayed, and shipping to customers on time became a big issue. This all became a huge demotivating factor for the sales team.
The result was, despite early strong interest in the product, the firm now has only one employee and is basically an order fulfillment company. The board is in the decision-making process deciding whether to sell the company now (which would be at a low valuation), bring in more capital (ditto), or selling/licensing all of the intellectual property (IP).
What Advice Does Cassmer Have for New Entrepreneurs?
1. You need to have great internal operations to fulfill orders, support sales/customers, and manage inventory. You will get offers from a lot of people/partners who can help or have advice on how to do so effectively. Be cautious. Be sure to listen, but only do what is best for your business model, not what makes sense for them.
2. Everyone thinks sales come from a good marketing plan. Wrong. It is from an excellent sales plan. What does thismean? Not only know how to make your product accessible, but what are the hoops you need to jump through to make it accessible? Who does the purchasing? What is most important to the decision maker? Is the decision maker the user? If not, whom does the product benefit and how can that benefit the decision maker? Understand what it takes (and how long) to complete the sale. The decision-making process when you buy a pack of gum is completely different from when you buy a car. What type of decision-making process is used when buying your product?
3. Make sure you are accountable and/or hold any vendor partners, suppliers to the terms and conditions of your business. As a business owner, you want to provide your product as easily as possible to your customer. In order to do so, you are responsible for all factors from raw materials to delivery. Whomever you partner with to assist in the sales cycle must be a party that buys into and delivers the same message/service that is representative of your company.
QUESTIONS
1. Why hasn’t the ClearCollar simply dominated this industry if the product is so attractive?
2. If an investor promises to invest an additional$2 million in this company, what would you recommend that the board do with that investment to improve the sales of the company?
3. How would you differentiate marketing from sales?
The engineering firm was losing money on revenues of less than $1 million. Over the next six years Cassmer was able to move the firm to profitability with revenues in excess of $25 million. In 2008, Cassmer found an opportunity that was too obvious and too good to ignore.
Cassmer was in one of our EMBA Entrepreneurship courses and pitched an idea that had been crafted by his father-in-law years before but never developed into a business. In the early 1990s, Alan Donaldson who was an emergency-room nurse with more than 20 years of experience was frustrated with the classic cervical collar that must be repeatedly removed from a person’s neck to be checked following a neck injury. The new product was clear, allowing the emergencyservice professional the ability to continuously assess the patient’s neck without having to frequently remove the collar.
One evening, using everyday household plastics, Alan created the prototype of what would become the world’s first fully transparent cervical immobilization collar. A man ahead of his time, he found that the technology and process to manufacture a comfortable, transparent cervical collar simply didn’t exist.
In 2008, Cassmer formed a team of EMBA students and, with the blessing of Alan Donaldson, they developed a business plan that won the EMBA Business Plan Competition. The team then decided to turn the plan into a real business. Cassmer said, “It ended up being a perfect storm for success, the technology in TPE (plastic) technology was there, survey research indicating that the market was eager for this kind of product was there, and, of course, the patent was there. Now all we needed were start-up funds.”
Cassmer and two other classmates dedicated themselves full-time to the effort for the next twelve months. The new ClearCollar team promoted the concept to angel groups, medical professionals, and medical investors across the nation. The new company formed a board of directors and a board of advisors. The group felt that they needed at least $1.2 million to bring the idea to life. The founding team contributed $50,000 to get things started and went out and raised the rest of the capital over the course of a year. They ultimately raised $2 million .
For the ClearCollar team, getting molds cast, lining up manufacturers, working with distributors, and fighting an entrenched powerful set of competitors all proved to be substantial barriers to success.
The biggest impediment to early success, however, was the ability to make the product accessible. While the company had built a sales model based on sales representative-based distributors, they found that those distributors were very slow to react. The distributors wanted to see customers asking for the ClearCollar. Once customers asked about the ClearCollar, then the distributor became interested. This created an issue, as the company had to market to both direct consumers and to the distributors.
Another issue was the adoption time lag for a new technology in the emergency rooms. No one wanted to be an early adopter from the purchasing side. Although all of the direct users loved the ClearCollar, they didn’t make the purchasing decisions. The purchasing decisions were made by a number of different sources (e.g., the municipality, the hospital, a third-party owner) This made it an uphill battle. Even with some of what became Cassmer’s biggest accounts, it took 12 to 18 months to close the deal.
The ClearCollar team never planned on the sales cycle taking that long and did not have the resources to deal with this issue. At the same time, response/capacity from the manufacturing partner created issues. New versions with improvements were delayed, and shipping to customers on time became a big issue. This all became a huge demotivating factor for the sales team.
The result was, despite early strong interest in the product, the firm now has only one employee and is basically an order fulfillment company. The board is in the decision-making process deciding whether to sell the company now (which would be at a low valuation), bring in more capital (ditto), or selling/licensing all of the intellectual property (IP).
What Advice Does Cassmer Have for New Entrepreneurs?
1. You need to have great internal operations to fulfill orders, support sales/customers, and manage inventory. You will get offers from a lot of people/partners who can help or have advice on how to do so effectively. Be cautious. Be sure to listen, but only do what is best for your business model, not what makes sense for them.
2. Everyone thinks sales come from a good marketing plan. Wrong. It is from an excellent sales plan. What does thismean? Not only know how to make your product accessible, but what are the hoops you need to jump through to make it accessible? Who does the purchasing? What is most important to the decision maker? Is the decision maker the user? If not, whom does the product benefit and how can that benefit the decision maker? Understand what it takes (and how long) to complete the sale. The decision-making process when you buy a pack of gum is completely different from when you buy a car. What type of decision-making process is used when buying your product?
3. Make sure you are accountable and/or hold any vendor partners, suppliers to the terms and conditions of your business. As a business owner, you want to provide your product as easily as possible to your customer. In order to do so, you are responsible for all factors from raw materials to delivery. Whomever you partner with to assist in the sales cycle must be a party that buys into and delivers the same message/service that is representative of your company.
QUESTIONS
1. Why hasn’t the ClearCollar simply dominated this industry if the product is so attractive?
2. If an investor promises to invest an additional$2 million in this company, what would you recommend that the board do with that investment to improve the sales of the company?
3. How would you differentiate marketing from sales?
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The post Cassmer Ward had been in an entrepreneurial situation before he helped found The ClearCollar (www .theclearcollar.com). For example, he joined a struggling engineering firm as the CEO. The engineering firm was losing money on revenues of less than $1 million. Over the next six years Cassmer was able to move the firm to profitability with revenues in excess of $25 million. In 2008, Cassmer found an opportunity that was too obvious and too good to ignore. Cassmer was in one of our EMBA Entrepreneurship courses and pitched an idea that had been crafted by his father-in-law years before but never developed into a business. In the early 1990s, Alan Donaldson who was an emergency-room nurse with more than 20 years of experience was frustrated with the classic cervical collar that must be repeatedly removed from a person’s neck to be checked following a neck injury. The new product was clear, allowing the emergencyservice professional the ability to continuously assess the patient’s neck without having to frequently remove the collar. One evening, using everyday household plastics, Alan created the prototype of what would become the world’s first fully transparent cervical immobilization collar. A man ahead of his time, he found that the technology and process to manufacture a comfortable, transparent cervical collar simply didn’t exist. In 2008, Cassmer formed a team of EMBA students and, with the blessing of Alan Donaldson, they developed a business plan that won the EMBA Business Plan Competition. The team then decided to turn the plan into a real business. Cassmer said, “It ended up being a perfect storm for success, the technology in TPE (plastic) technology was there, survey research indicating that the market was eager for this kind of product was there, and, of course, the patent was there. Now all we needed were start-up funds.” Cassmer and two other classmates dedicated themselves full-time to the effort for the next twelve months. The new ClearCollar team promoted the concept to angel groups, medical professionals, and medical investors across the nation. The new company formed a board of directors and a board of advisors. The group felt that they needed at least $1.2 million to bring the idea to life. The founding team contributed $50,000 to get things started and went out and raised the rest of the capital over the course of a year. They ultimately raised $2 million . For the ClearCollar team, getting molds cast, lining up manufacturers, working with distributors, and fighting an entrenched powerful set of competitors all proved to be substantial barriers to success. The biggest impediment to early success, however, was the ability to make the product accessible. While the company had built a sales model based on sales representative-based distributors, they found that those distributors were very slow to react. The distributors wanted to see customers asking for the ClearCollar. Once customers asked about the ClearCollar, then the distributor became interested. This created an issue, as the company had to market to both direct consumers and to the distributors. Another issue was the adoption time lag for a new technology in the emergency rooms. No one wanted to be an early adopter from the purchasing side. Although all of the direct users loved the ClearCollar, they didn’t make the purchasing decisions. The purchasing decisions were made by a number of different sources (e.g., the municipality, the hospital, a third-party owner) This made it an uphill battle. Even with some of what became Cassmer’s biggest accounts, it took 12 to 18 months to close the deal. The ClearCollar team never planned on the sales cycle taking that long and did not have the resources to deal with this issue. At the same time, response/capacity from the manufacturing partner created issues. New versions with improvements were delayed, and shipping to customers on time became a big issue. This all became a huge demotivating factor for the sales team. The result was, despite early strong interest in the product, the firm now has only one employee and is basically an order fulfillment company. The board is in the decision-making process deciding whether to sell the company now (which would be at a low valuation), bring in more capital (ditto), or selling/licensing all of the intellectual property (IP). What Advice Does Cassmer Have for New Entrepreneurs? 1. You need to have great internal operations to fulfill orders, support sales/customers, and manage inventory. You will get offers from a lot of people/partners who can help or have advice on how to do so effectively. Be cautious. Be sure to listen, but only do what is best for your business model, not what makes sense for them. 2. Everyone thinks sales come from a good marketing plan. Wrong. It is from an excellent sales plan. What does thismean? Not only know how to make your product accessible, but what are the hoops you need to jump through to make it accessible? Who does the purchasing? What is most important to the decision maker? Is the decision maker the user? If not, whom does the product benefit and how can that benefit the decision maker? Understand what it takes (and how long) to complete the sale. The decision-making process when you buy a pack of gum is completely different from when you buy a car. What type of decision-making process is used when buying your product? 3. Make sure you are accountable and/or hold any vendor partners, suppliers to the terms and conditions of your business. As a business owner, you want to provide your product as easily as possible to your customer. In order to do so, you are responsible for all factors from raw materials to delivery. Whomever you partner with to assist in the sales cycle must be a party that buys into and delivers the same message/service that is representative of your company. QUESTIONS 1. Why hasn’t the ClearCollar simply dominated this industry if the product is so attractive? 2. If an investor promises to invest an additional$2 million in this company, what would you recommend that the board do with that investment to improve the sales of the company? 3. How would you differentiate marketing from sales? appeared first on Superb Professors.
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