What: Delivery pizza baked on the go
Who: Scott Matthew of Super Fast
Pizza
Where: Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin
When: Started in 2004
Going to sleep on an empty stomach is usually a bad thing. But
for Scott Matthew, 48, nothing but good things have come from a
cold January night when he decided not to order delivery pizza
because of the wait.
"I went to bed hungry, and I woke up thinking about vans
with ovens in them where you cook the pizza on the way to people.
By doing both these things at once, I thought you'd be able to
deliver it in about 20 minutes," Matthew says.
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Eight months later, Super Fast Pizza began delivering pizzas under
this premise. Matthew, who retired in 2000 after selling his first
company, Realty Electronics (known for creating the "talking
house" concept), used $500,000, mostly from savings, to start
the company. Thanks to locally customized software and
Mercedes-Benz Sprinter vans converted into licensed mobile
kitchens, customers are able to place orders via phone and e-mail
while Matthew's eight employees receive them on the road.
Matthew says that by cooking the pizzas in the van, not only are
they delivered faster, but they're also of a higher quality
because the gap between oven and customer is minimized.
The pre-made pizzas come in only one size--medium--and cost
$8.99 for the first and $5.99 for each additional pizza. There are
10 basic kinds on the menu, as well as a revolving "pizza of
the month."
With buzz on the street and two new vans planned for the near
future, Matthew anticipates 2005 sales to reach $300,000. But he
doesn't plan on stopping there: "We envision 20,000
vehicles nationwide over the next 10 years, and whatever it takes
to make that happen, we'll do [it, with] both company-owned and
franchise [locations]." -- Jeran Wittenstein
Toast With the Most
What: Toaster that imprints designs on toast
Who: Linda Carlish of LC Premiums Ltd.
Where: New York City
When: Started in 1993
When Linda Carlish heard last year that a grilled cheese
sandwich said to bear an image of the Virgin Mary sold for $28,000
on eBay, she laughed. "I could do that [on toast] every day
and be making lots of money," says Carlish, inventor of the
Pop Art Toaster, which imprints fun images on bread as it
toasts.
Carlish, 46, who previously worked for a costume jewelry
company, created LC Premiums back in 1993. She set up shop in her
studio apartment with a laptop, a fax machine and $2,000, and
initially set out to develop premium jewelry and glassware.
But that focus changed in 2003 while Carlish was on a business
trip visiting a Chinese factory. She spotted a "rickety"
toaster, spent six inspired months redesigning its inner plate
system, and then approached Target with a novel idea: How about a
toaster that could imprint Target's bull's-eye logo onto
toast? The company loved the pitch, but the idea really took off
when Carlish won New Product of the Year at the January 2004
Promotional Products Association International trade show.
Her success with additional corporate clients like Fox TV and
Trump Plaza inspired her to make the product available to consumers
as well. After enlisting help from a factory to remodel the inside
of the toaster to allow for interchangeable plates, the Pop Art
Toaster was born. Now, fun images like smiley faces, a sunshine
design, a Santa hat and more can be branded on toast.
Starting at $29.95, the toaster is sold at retailers such as QVC
and Target.com. And sales are sizzling, with 2005 projections at
$3.3 million. Says Carlish, "This has changed the entire face
of a toaster." --Sharon Tang-Quan
Doing Your Bidding
What: eBay consignment store that serves businesses
Who: Mark Cohn and Chuck Welle of The Auction
Stor
Where: Hopkins, Minnesota
When: Started in 2004
Mark Cohn and Chuck Welle are friends, neighbors and business
partners, but they'd really like to be known as
anti-liquidators. Cohn and Welle are founders of The Auction Stor,
an eBay drop-off consignment store that caters to businesses in
Hopkins, Minnesota. Cohn and Welle, both 48, help local businesses
sell extra or unwanted inventory on eBay instead of having to sell
at a loss to liquidators.
Customers come in to drop off their products, and The Auction
Stor does the rest, from setting up a selling strategy and
photographing the products to listing them on eBay and handling
shipping--all for a 25 percent to 30 percent commission.
"Hopefully, we become part of a strategy for many
companies," says Welle. "There's not a company out
there that doesn't have some kind of stagnant inventory from
time to time."
When Cohn and Welle started out in spring 2004, they decided to
research the business idea by traveling around the country,
checking out other eBay consignment stores and developing a solid
business plan. In September 2004, they invested nearly a quarter of
a million dollars in a warehouse, equipment, staff and a location
for their first store in Chaska, Minnesota. They quickly opened two
more stores, one in Plymouth and one in Hopkins, with the intent to
service both the consumer and corporate markets.
Says Cohn, "There was always going to be a parallel path to
our strategy--a consumer path and a corporate path--and the
question was, Which was going to outperform the other?" After
seeing disappointing returns in the consumer market, Cohn and Welle
narrowed their focus, closed two stores and now project 2005 sales
to be in excess of seven figures. --James Park
Let There Be Light
What: Online retailer of LED products
Who:StreetTags.com's Jake and Jared Peters
Where: Broken Arrow, Oklahoma
When: Started in 2002
How much: $1,000
Brothers Jake and Jared Peters had years of entrepreneurial
experience when they started their web-based retailer of LED
products, StreetTags.com. But their budget meant they could
start with only a few products, including LED name badges and
license-plate frames, to save on manufacturing costs.
The brothers made sales through guerrilla marketing and
word-of-mouth advertising. To minimize costs, Jake, 27, and Jared,
28, kept inventory low, using what Jake calls "just-in-time
inventory tactics" to plan purchases.
In 2004, LED products lit up the club scene and proved popular
with the young-adult crowd. Now customers worldwide purchase LED
phones, caller IDs, clocks, toys and electronic signs from the
website. The pair still saves money by using cost-effective
pay-per-click affiliate programs, selling directly to dealers and
manufacturing products overseas.
Extra cash might once have been hard to come by, but Jake and
Jared look forward to six-figure sales in 2005. And success keeps
coming: This year, they produced the Bling-Bling LED Belt Buckle
for R&B group Pretty Ricky to sport in a music video. Is the
future bright? Says Jake, "[LED fashion is] kind of a fad
right now. We hope it lasts a long time." --Genevieve
Jenkins