In 2012 I was serving on Active Duty in the Marine Corps. While deployed to Afghanistan I got the idea for trademark licensing the Marine Corps logo and turning it into a car air freshener.Once deployment was over I worked out manufacturing, secured a trademark licensing agreement, established a trademark for my own brand of air fresheners and started looking for wholesale/distributors.It wasn’t too long until I got some small orders and then I took those small successes about my reorder rates and pitched a company that provides products to all the military exchanges on base. This was actually pretty huge because the military exchange system is the 10th largest retail chain in America.My initial order from this distributor partnership was around $30,000 of product. It was a few months later and my original product was on store shelves at bases around the globe.It’s kind of crazy but I parlayed this minor product success into another business opportunity. I had met the founder of Dominos Pizza who was himself a Marine. He was trying to start a delivery hamburger business with a military theme. I agreed to be the first and essentially only franchisee and launch this concept with him. He started with an initial $125,000 loan but over time we probably had close to a million invested in my restaurant.I didn’t think I could run the air freshener business while also launching the restaurant so I told the distributor that I was shutting my doors. About a year later the Marine Corps trademark licensing renewal came around and I decided to let it lapse.I should also note that one of my big dreams was to take my brand and put military branded air fresheners in Autozone, Pep Boys etc. I was very green at business in those days so I hadn’t quite worked that part out yet.The Burger Delivery concept ran for about 18 months before we realized we were not going to be able to franchise it like we thought. This was 2013-2015 before Ubereats and the delivery craze. It was a spectacular failure but I learned a lot. It cost me my military retirement because I left active duty for the venture and the stress, money problems and time away led to the breakup of my marriage.I tried opening my own cyber security consultancy and it failed. I opened an e-commerce business in 2018 and as a side hustle it does around $80k in sales but it doesn’t make any profit.I’ve been very frustrated because I have had a lot of experience and am very much a do-er but I’ve not been able to either properly fund my ventures or I’ve had a lack of profit margin to properly grow.Today I was in a military exchange and I saw my original air freshener product with the same packaging and logos and everything - still selling after all these years. It’s been about 7 years now and I haven’t made a penny off it. Now I willingly gave it up thinking that my restaurant partnership with the Dominos founder was worth it and in many ways it was but I still don’t feel like monetarily I have much to show for my efforts.Anyway I needed to vent - sometimes we make decisions not knowing how they’ll turn out. I don’t necessarily regret dropping the air fresheners idea but I wish I would have kept a part of it somehow and not just gave it up… especially seeing my original idea with my distributors brand name on my packaging art some 6-7 years later. Pic of the product on the shelf todayI gave up too early or thought I couldn’t focus on more than one thing - but last month I also saw my same product at those auto parts stores as well. I don’t like to dwell in the past but this stings a little. I really hope I can connect on one of my ventures and not have a lifetime of regrets on the “one that got away.”TLDR- I had a product I created from scratch and then dropped it for the next opportunity which eventually crashed and burned. Today I see my product still on sale yet I let my stake it in go many years ago. see hubwealthy.com/wealthy
0 comments:
Post a Comment