automobiles, trains, and ?

We packed up the finished box and headed for Jasper. We have a 4 hour car trip and then we get on the train for 2 days and 5 hours.

Call from DD producer, Molly

I spoke with Molly today and went through our pitch. She liked the idea of us not offering a deal to Kevin. We will see if we can incorporate this into our pitch.
She also advised that Laurence is not going to be on the dragon's panel this season. His stand in is Brett who has lots of experience supporting small businesses. After talking with Molly she confirmed that Arlene would be a good fit for our business. We now have to decided about the other dragon's.

Business meeting

I realized that the business plan needed to be modified. I had let the people from the hospital know of my trip. One of the nurses, Jean is married to Les,who does this for the government on big scale projects, however he also does some consulting with small businesses. He agreed to meet with me for coffee. It sounded like I was on track with my ideas. He was very knowledgeable about the local business climate and the individuals that he can link me with once I come back from Toronto. He also would be able to refine my business plan and make it more professional.

Goals for our trip to toronto

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE JOURNEY, NOT THE DESTINATION.

During the planning phase of this trip it is easy to lose sight of the things that are really important. I decided that the first and primary goal of this trip was to focus on having a great time with my son Noah. If there was going to be distractions or stresses it is important to remind myself of this goal and keep things on track.

My goals for my business and being on the Den is to do the best that I can to ensure that the show is televised. In our acceptance letter the producers advised to accomplish this task you need to ensure that your pitch is energetic and interesting. I think that we are well on our way to this task.

What color do I dye my hair? Noah

I asked Noah what color his hair would be for the show. At our audition his hair was orange and green. He decided to go for a coordinated look a match his hair to his outfit. The final decision was purple. He had his friend Ariel bleach it blond and then put in the purple.

What box do I bring? (dad)

I knew that we would take our small cat box prototype to Toronto. We took the cross of the front of the box and had Ariel paint the dragon's logo on the front with the saying "or bust" on the bottom. This would provide lots of opportunity for people on the train to ask Noah questions and help prepare him for the big day.

Web presence

Part of my plan is to provide an avenue for the public to purchase my boxes directly. In order to accomplish this goal I needed to have a website with ecommerce capabilities. I contacted Tony, who used to be the marketing and sales director at Walmsley and Associates (the private counselling agency I worked at) Tony had gone back to school but was home for summer break. We met for coffee and he liked my ideas. He gave me some great advice about knowing my market base and focusing my marketing plan on this group. His design ideas for the website sounded great. He had determined that not only would he get simplepineboxes.com but also reserve other web domains and link them to my main site.

Dragon's Den research

I realized very quickly after getting the call that I needed to do a lot of work before we go to Toronto. My first step was to get more information on the show itself. I tried going on their website and viewing season 2 but my internet connection or computer did not process it well enough, the experience was very choppy. I decided to buy Season 2 on itunes. I watched the season a few times and tried to figure out what qualities of the company encouraged the Dragon's to buy into the company. I also recognized that getting a deal at any cost was not worth the price. I will share with you my thoughts on what I came up with on a later post.

We most likely with download the episodes on Noah's ipod touch so he can do some review of the show on the train.

Wendell Berry meets big business (people over profits)

How do you maintain the 'small is beautiful' ideal and apply it on a national scale? This has been one of the struggles for me these past few weeks. What I have come up with so far is that I do not want to use a corporate model: I would much prefer to utilize a co-operative business model. Here is the idea as I have formulated it so far: I would like to outsource all the raw wood production and milling. The end product would be boards that are ready to be used, kiln dried and possibly even have a groove in one of the sides. If I apply the above philosophy of 'people over profits' I am quick to conclude that it is esthetically unpleasing and unhealthy to create a sweat shop production line in order to maximize efficiency. In contrast, what I see as more balanced is to approach local carpenters and provide them with the finished boards; they would then assemble these boards into a simple box. They have the option of creating finished boxes and marketing these products directly but the surplus production would come back to necessitate volume to meet the demand. There are several principles incorporated with this model:

1. Supporting local industry which is consistent with my values

2. Keeping overhead low

3. Providing a flexible workforce. If I require more production I can provide incentives or find more woodworkers. If business slows, I don't have to lay off employees because they are self-employed and they will then naturally focus on marketing the product directly.

4. By using a cooperative model, I can reward individuals with additional shares in the co-op. The more they make, the more of the company they will own, therefore, a vested interest in making the business successful.

5. I suspect the reason is that many woodworkers have not chosen this craft is because they are uncomfortable with selling this type of product. With support, some will be empowered to acknowledge the valuable service they are providing to these families, others can simply focus on additional income while being unencumbered by the hassles of distribution.

We're going to Winnipeg

For those who have not seen the fountain tire commercial here is a synopsis. There is a guy who is wearing a flower summer outfit sitting on a plane chatting with his neighbors. He is terribly excited that he is going to Hawaii only to find he boarded the wrong plane. He is actually going to Winnipeg. This saying is a family favorite and is our new motto now that we got the news. Noah and I have been invited to the taping of Dragon's Den in Toronto. Our appointment is on May 28th. We should be getting more details in the next few days. They are giving us $750 for the trip.

I had been spending some time in thought about how we would get to Toronto. The easy way would be to fly, however I have been spending much time in thought about making this business as green as possible. How responsible is it for me to promote a green product but not live these principles. After much discussions we are going to go by train. It will take 2 days and 6 hours but there will be much benefits to the trip. We will be making 4 prototype boxes that we will use as luggage. One of the boxes will have the Dragon's Den logo followed with a "or bust" on it. It will allow us the generate much discussion with the other passengers on the train and assist Noah with developing his sales pitch. Another advantage is that this experience is more about the journey than the destination. The train will be a unique experience and very much an interactive part of the journey.