Re: Course Info...

In a message dated 5/5/05 12:18:05 AM, webdealz@cox.net writes:

I have a successful online business that is growing rapidly.

***I am going to accept this at face value, although I read this to mean your
net profit and the business is supporting your lifestyle. I am also going to
guess that you are involved in music room accoutrement; one day you saw the
spread between USA prices and China costs, and you now have a business
arbitraging the difference. Correct me if I am wrong, becuase what follows will
be
based on my guess of your story.***

I need to deal with manufacturers in China direct within the next 2 years
and am EXTREMELY skeptical of dealing with them due to perceived evasiveness on
their part...

***Hang on, it seems you are arguing from the narrow basis of comparison;
China is not getting rich being evasive, they are getting rich delivering prodct
to specification, oon time, at a fair price. Your job is to avoid the bad
apples in the bunch. Your word "need" throws me, if you mean "plan"...ok, I
like
when people have studied trade patterns and "plan" to meld there business
with present currents. Why China, and how did you come by this one supplier?***

Have bought your book and will probably be taking your course at SDSU
extension June 4.

***Your perspicacity is to be emulated.***

The following is response to an offer I was recently approached on and is an
example of the issues I have w/them. Will your course cover these issues?
Simply put; will you be able to show me how to avoid the nightmare of accepting
delivery of a container front-loaded with defective product?

*** Yes, I cover how not to get burned, that is the good news. The bad news
is I say "don't do what you are doing." Don't buy stock items from overseas.
Don't buy whole container loads. Don't work with people you have not
determined to be the best. On the other hand I cover how those you see thriving
in
small biz int'l trade do it.

But if you want to proceed with your plan, why not just stipulate in the
agreement that you will be present on the day the shipper loads and counts the
goods and you will physically survey and QC the goods yourself. It will cost
less than any third party QC, and you'll be sure. Further, you can put your
seal
on the container... (any trucker can give you one here in usa...) Lastly, if
you pay at that point, you can have the steamship line issue the bill of
lading directly to you, and you go home confident and the owner.***

They want Arbitration in Singapore in case of disputes - and I don't see how
and/or why any U.S. based business would subject itself to that...but they
do...?


***lemme see... having a standard contigency for dispute arbitration means
disputes must be fairly standard with them. And they want them resolved in
Singapore where it is unlikely anyone will resort if there is a problem anyway.
Hard fact: there is no recourse in small biz international trade if a deal goes
bad. None whatsoever. Hard rule...know your suppliers and have a good
relationship with them.

This I do teach in the class and the book.***

John

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Might Be Useful

*Hi John,


Since email formatting can break long urls, it is often

useful to compress them into more compact ones.

This can be accomplished by going to:


http://tinyurl.com/


There, one can enter a long url & get back an equivalent,

compressed one.


You can for example enter:


http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Savinganddebt/Savemoney/P103041.asp?GT1=61
13


and get the equivalent:


http://tinyurl.com/6jmjj


which you can then post. You might want to suggest this to the group.


Cheers,

Roman

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Another Case In Point

Re: [spiers] Another Case In Point

below is the entire article:
(P.S. the URL address takes up 2 lines so i had to
make sure to use all 2 lines for the URL address; then
the link works....
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Savinganddebt/Savemoney/P103041.asp?GT1=6113




The Basics
How to make a million dollars



Forget the joke about starting with $2 million. These
people had better ideas. Here are nine stories -- and
tips -- about making that first million.

By Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine

Being a millionaire isn't what it used to be -- but it
sure beats not being one. Just ask the 8.2 million
U.S. households -- an all-time record -- that had a
net worth of more than $1 million in 2004, excluding
the value of their primary residence. That was a 33%
increase over the previous year, reports a survey by
TNS Financial Services.

The surge was driven mostly by consistent investing in
the stock market. But there are other ways to make a
million -- start a business, invest in real estate,
put yourself in the right place at the right time.
Kiplinger's sought out people who did all those things
and more. We found that although they had taken
different routes, they followed a pattern; you might
call that pattern the nine habits of highly successful
millionaires. And all of them had a 10th trait in
common: They never lost sight of their goal.





'Do whatever it takes'
Marco and Sandra Johnson started out saving lives in
their community of Lancaster, Calif., and ended up
running a multimillion-dollar business whose customers
come from across the United States. Don't let
retirement
sneak up on you.
Create a perfect plan.



The idea was born on the job. Marco, a full-time
firefighter and paramedic, would come home from an
incident and complain to Sandra that lives might have
been saved if bystanders had been able to administer
first aid. At the time, the Johnsons were trying to
have a second child, and Marco was particularly upset
when "children died unnecessarily because no one at
the scene knew CPR," says Sandra.

In 1997, they began offering CPR and first-aid classes
to local businesses. Sandra handled scheduling and
other arrangements, and Marco taught classes between
shifts at the firehouse. At first they borrowed
material and equipment and brought it to each site;
after a few months they scraped together enough money
to rent a 400-square-foot office.

The business started to take off when workers whose
jobs require CPR certification, such as schoolteachers
and bus drivers, sought them out. Then students asked
them to start training emergency medical technicians
because local junior colleges had a two-year waiting
list for EMT classes. Within a few years, the Johnsons
had become accredited for EMT training and moved their
Antelope Valley Medical College to bigger quarters.
"Everything was happening fast," says Marco.

Riding the momentum took seven-day-a-week stamina.
Marco alternated shifts at the firehouse with
classroom duty, and Sandra was "always on the phone"
setting up appointments. The couple didn't want to
take out a business loan, so they plowed their own
income into the school and sometimes put off making
mortgage payments on their house to pay their
employees. Says Marco: "There were times when it was a
gut check. We looked at each other and said, 'What did
we get ourselves into?'"

Now the Johnsons can breathe easier. In 2004, their
school was expected to pull in revenues of $7.5
million, and their corporate clients have included
businesses from Boeing to Burger King. That boom in
business has given the couple the means to own several
houses and to treat their extended family -- a group
of 12 -- to vacations in Hawaii.

Even more rewarding, says Sandra, is the example they
can set for their children: To accomplish your dream,
"do whatever it takes." As for herself, "We're saving
lives. It's awesome to know I was part of that with my
husband." And Marco is finally planning to retire his
fire helmet.

TIP #1: Go flat out. Between shifts at the firehouse,
Marco Johnson, with his wife, Sandra, started a school
to teach emergency medical techniques.

'I put my money where my mouth is'
Elmo Shropshire had a day job as a veterinarian in
Marin County, Calif., and a side gig as a bluegrass
singer when he recorded the holiday song that put him
on the map -- and put his vet business out to pasture.
The song, "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer," has
sold 10 million copies, inspired a music video and a
movie, and made Shropshire a millionaire five times
over.

Shropshire first heard the saga of the tipsy grandma
and the renegade reindeer after bumping into
songwriter Randy Brooks, who wrote the piece, at a
bluegrass performance. Convinced that the ballad
suited his twangy voice and comic singing style, he
shelled out $500 to record it himself and another $700
to make 500 singles. "Grandma" aired on a San
Francisco radio station in 1979 and caused an instant
ruckus. "Kids were calling in and saying, 'Play it,
play it,'" says Shropshire.

Despite the enthusiastic reception, he couldn't find a
record company to take "Grandma" national.
Nevertheless, the song was frequently requested over
the next several holiday seasons. Says Shropshire, "It
was one of the few songs in history where public
clamor rather than company hype drove demand."

Shropshire went for broke in 1983, investing $30,000
to produce his own "Grandma" music video and $10,000
to make an album featuring the song. The gamble paid
off when MTV picked up the video (it still appears
regularly) and Columbia Records offered him a
distribution deal. In the three weeks before
Christmas, the company sold 500,000 "Grandma" singles
and 100,000 albums. Shropshire got a royalty check for
$50,000.

The singer retired from his veterinary practice in
1995 and now works full-time on "Grandma"-related
enterprises, which include sheet music, a stuffed
singing reindeer and a recently released album called
"Christmas in the U.S.A." Says Shropshire of his
unlikely success, "I had this blind belief in the
project. I put my money where my mouth is."

TIP #2: Support your idea. Elmo Shropshire, who
recorded a hit holiday tune, invested over $40,000 of
his own cash to produce a music video and an album.

'Figure out your strengths'
Soon after Scott and Mandi Leonard were married in
1996, they took a big risk. Scott quit his job as a
stockbroker and started his own financial-planning
business. He had no clients, no income and a big
mortgage -- the Leonards had just put a 10% down
payment on a $320,000 house in Redondo Beach, Calif.

For three years, Scott and Mandi lived on the income
from Mandi's jobs with technology companies. Employed
by Oracle and PeopleSoft, she earned valuable stock
options during the go-go years of the late 1990s.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More million-dollar stories • Start on your first $1
million at age 16
• 8 lottery winners who lost their millions
• Is $1 million enough to retire on?
• Game plans from the NFL's instant millionaires
• Is your degree worth $1 million -- or worthless?
• Kiplinger's "Meet the Millionaires" forum (live
through Jan. 31)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By 2000, Mandi wanted to quit working: Son Griffin was
a year old and Jacob was on the way. Her PeopleSoft
stock, for which she had paid $6 per share, had risen
to $43, and Scott was getting nervous. They decided to
sell the stock, trade up to a bigger house and stash
some of the money in the bank. Says Scott, "Having a
safety net was more important to us than trying to get
an extra $10 per share on the stock." And a good
thing, too. Within a year, the price had dropped into
the teens.

The Leonards also made a smart real-estate investment.
They sold their first house for about $500,000 and
moved up to an $800,000 house in Hermosa Beach. With
an ocean view and a rooftop deck, the house was
recently appraised for $1.45 million.

Meanwhile, Scott's business began to take off -- he
now manages about $100 million in assets for his
clients -- and once again the Leonards decided to
invest in real estate. About two years ago they paid
$1.25 million for a historic but dilapidated house
overlooking the water in Redondo Beach. They spent
about $250,000 -- mostly in cash -- to renovate the
property for Scott's business. That building was
recently appraised for $1.8 million.

Having astutely ridden California's real-estate surge,
the Leonards have enough home equity plus savings to
put them comfortably in millionaire territory. They
also have about $175,000 in 401(k) and IRA retirement
funds invested in stocks, which they plan to beef up
now that they have renovated their business property.
"I'm very much in favor of diversifying investments,"
says Scott. But if the real estate market turns soft,
he'll take the opportunity to "look hard at picking up
another property."

The Leonards owe their success to knowing the
difference between a calculated risk and a gamble.
They felt more confident about starting a business and
investing in real estate than about hanging on to
their tech stocks. "Stand back and figure out your
strengths and weaknesses," says Scott, "and keep your
eye on your long-term goal."

TIP #3: Know what you do best. Scott and Mandi Leonard
ditched their tech stocks to concentrate on real
estate.

'Sometimes a big risk pays off'
When most kids are seniors in college, they're writing
résumés and cruising toward graduation. Not Kevin
Plank. Nine years ago, when Plank was in his last year
at the University of Maryland, he began developing
sportswear that now outfits most professional and
college sports teams and makes a fashion statement on
high-school playing fields. As the founder of Under
Armour, Plank, 32, presides over a Baltimore company
that employs 450 people and grossed more than $200
million last year.

Plank owes a debt to sweat. As a player on the
Maryland Terrapins' football team, he wore a cotton
undershirt that turned into a soggy liability during
games. Already an entrepreneur (he was running a
thriving floral-delivery service out of his dorm),
Plank began searching fabric stores for a lightweight
material that would fit snugly, wick away moisture and
replace the undershirt.

Once he had found the perfect fabric, Plank paid a
tailor $400 to come up with several prototypes and
asked his teammates to try them out. "They said the
shirt was great for football -- and baseball and
lacrosse, too," says Plank. "I realized this wasn't
just a shirt but a marketing opportunity."

Plank hit New York City's garment district and
returned with enough fabric to make 500 undershirts,
which he promoted to players on major college and NFL
teams. "I would ask them to try this product, and if
they liked it to give one to the guy in the next
locker," says Plank. Eventually, teams on both sides
of the field were wearing Plank's "compression
apparel" -- and showing it off on TV.

After graduation, Plank raised start-up money by
maxing out his credit cards to the tune of $40,000. He
tried to patent his idea, but gave up after racking up
$7,000 in legal fees. For the next several years he
took no salary from the business, and he lived and
worked rent-free in a house owned by his grandmother.
He later got a $250,000 loan from the Small Business
Administration and used almost half of it to repay
debts.

Under Armour is now the official supplier of
compression apparel to Major League Baseball and Major
League Soccer, and its garments are worn by about 30
NFL teams and nearly 100 Division I-A college football
teams. It was a high-stakes gamble for a kid barely
out of college, but Plank thinks youth worked in his
favor. "When you're 22 or 23, there's no better time
to take a big risk. Sometimes it pays off." In his
case, the rewards have included buying a Cadillac at
age 26 and gaining VIP access to major sporting
events, such as the Super Bowl. "For someone who is
passionate about sports, that's a big part of my
payoff."

TIP #4: Go for broke. Just out of college, Kevin Plank
ran up $40,000 in credit card debt to launch Under
Armour, his sports-apparel company.

'I knew I would have to earn this'
Scott Patterson, star of the "Gilmore Girls" TV
series, worked for years to get into the big leagues,
honing his craft in small towns and throwing a
curveball or two to keep things interesting. And that
was just his baseball career.

Patterson pitched in the minor leagues during the
1980s, and came tantalizingly close to the majors. He
was traded to the Yankees and then cut from the team.

Undaunted, he started a second long-shot career,
moving to New York in 1986 to study acting. He worked
with members of the Actors Studio and appeared in a
couple of commercials a year to earn money to pay the
rent. "I knew I would have to really, really earn
this," says Patterson. "It turned out to be an
endurance game."

He made a short-lived breakthrough in 1991, when ABC
flew him to Los Angeles to audition for a TV movie,
but that "crumbled very quickly." Back in New York,
Patterson landed a few theater credits and then
returned to L.A. He crashed on friends' couches and
slept in his car -- a 1966 Pontiac Le Mans -- as he
made connections that led to small movie roles and TV
appearances. Eight years later, he says, he read for
the part of Luke Danes, the male lead in "Gilmore
Girls," and "I felt like I was home."

He didn't get rich the first year. "The money was
good," he says, "though not as good as you'd think."
But his salary has risen with the series' popularity,
and as his character has grown. With a net worth in
the millions, thanks to some astute investing,
Patterson says he "can parachute out of this series
and be pretty comfortable for the rest of my life."

Now Patterson shares his wealth by helping raise funds
for a new pediatrics wing at Johns Hopkins Hospital in
Baltimore and for the National Children's Alliance.
His advice: "Even when you've been pounded for 20
years, don't give up. If you stay in the game long
enough, you get lucky."

TIP #5: Don't let setbacks get you down. It took actor
Scott Patterson of "Gilmore Girls" 14 years and
several big disappointments to become a Hollywood
star.

'I was trained to work hard'
Petro "Pete" Kulynych made his millions the
old-fashioned way: He started at the bottom . . .


'I was trained to work hard'
Petro "Pete" Kulynych made his millions the
old-fashioned way: He started at the bottom, as the
bookkeeper for a small hardware store in North
Wilkesboro, N.C. Eventually, that store grew into the
Lowe's hardware chain and he ended up a top executive.


Actually, Kulynych, 83, started below the bottom. The
son of Ukrainian immigrants, he left Pennsylvania's
coal-mining country after high school to work for the
Civilian Conservation Corps and helped build the Blue
Ridge Parkway through the Appalachians. "I earned $21
to $25 a month, and sent part of it home to feed other
family members," says Kulynych. "I was trained to work
hard."

He later moved to the National Park Service, attended
the Merchant Marine Academy, got married, served in
World War II, then used his GI benefits to pay for
accounting school. In 1946, he was hired by two
brothers-in-law, named Lowe and Buchan, who owned what
was then North Wilkesboro Hardware. His starting
salary was $25 a week.

As the first employee of the Lowe's chain, Kulynych
was always on the executive team -- "We were all
CEOs," he says. He became a managing director in 1978
and retired in 1983. Spending his entire career with
one company never got boring, says Kulynych, because
the company was growing by leaps and bounds, and
because he did so many different things -- such as
running the company's foundation and working on its
retirement plan. "I enjoyed fulfilling our dream of
expanding from coast to coast," he says of Lowe's,
which now has more than 1,000 stores nationwide, with
annual sales of more than $30 billion. "The man I went
to work for in 1946 said, 'Stick with me and I'll make
you rich.'" That might not be as easy to do today, but
"you have that guy who started Microsoft in his
college dorm room."

Kulynych's fortune grew with the company. When he
retired, he not only benefited from the profit-sharing
plan, but also had accumulated "lots of stock options
from the early days." Because of splits and dividends,
one share of Lowe's stock bought for $12.25 when the
company went public in 1961 is now worth $28,000.

Like many members of his generation, Kulynych has
always been cautious with money. "I never bought a
Cadillac until I could write a check for it," he says.
"I live in a small town and I don't stick out any more
than the guy down the street who works in the service
station."

One of his proudest accomplishments has been paying
for the education of his two daughters, six
grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. And he has
spent lavishly on philanthropy, donating millions to
two family foundations run by his daughters, Brenda
and Janice. When he was told that teens in the North
Wilkesboro area needed activities to keep them busy,
he financed a teen center and theater and helped
create a soccer field and skateboard park.

Being able to distribute considerable income "makes
you get up in the morning and go to work," says
Kulynych. "It's been a good life."

TIP #6: Take the long view. Over his 37-year career,
Pete Kulynych rose from bookkeeper to a top executive
of the Lowe's hardware chain.

'Invest a little and let it grow'
Neil McCarthy started investing in the stock market
when he was 34, in the depths of the 1970s bear
market. "It got scary for a while," he recalls, "but
my philosophy was to invest a little bit and let it
grow. When stocks went down, I would buy more."

McCarthy contributed the maximum to both his IRA and
his 401(k) at Union Carbide, where he started as a
research chemist and got a boost from a 100% employer
match. He and his wife, Maureen, who worked as a
teacher for several years, continued to save for
retirement, even while they were paying for their two
sons' college educations.

Their big payoff came with the 1990s bull market.
"Everything kept adding up and compounding, and then
it doubled in three or four years," says Neil. "It was
$500,000, and suddenly it was $1 million."

The McCarthys invested mostly in stock funds, but
avoided technology companies. "People were going wild
with Internet stocks, but it didn't make sense to me,"
says Neil, who did financial analysis when he worked
in marketing for Union Carbide. "When I saw P/E ratios
of 200 to 300, I thought it was absolute nonsense."

Their practical investing style preserved their
millionaire status when the market crashed. They also
benefited from a bit of fortuitous timing when Neil,
who spent the last 14 years of his career working for
BP Amoco, retired in 2000. He took his retirement
payout as a lump sum and invested part of the money in
an immediate annuity just before interest rates
started to fall, getting a bigger payout than if he
had chosen the company's pension annuity.

Neil, 65, and Maureen, 61, have $1.3 million in
savings, which they haven't had to touch. Counting the
annuity and Neil's pension from his 20 years with
Union Carbide, they have a net worth of about $2.1
million. And that doesn't include their house in
Roswell, Ga., valued at about $525,000, which is
almost paid off.

The McCarthys are classic stock-market millionaires,
reaping the benefit of steady investing through bull
and bear markets. But one piece of simple advice made
all the difference: "If you wait to save out of what's
left over from your salary, it's not going to happen.
Pay yourself first."

TIP #7: Don't cut and run. Steady investing through
bull and bear markets helped Neil and Maureen McCarthy
build a comfortable retirement kitty.

'Take desperate measures'
A year and a half ago, Chip and Kim McAllister of Coto
de Caza, Calif., were paddling furiously to stay
afloat in their real-world version of "Survivor."
Their company, an information-technology firm, had
just gone bust, victim of a bad business partnership.
Their house was in foreclosure. They had two kids at
home and no jobs.

"In desperate times, you need to take desperate
measures," says Chip, who came up with the idea of
vying for a spot on "The Amazing Race," a reality show
in which 12 couples take part in a stunt-packed race
round the world. With time on their hands and nothing
to lose, the McAllisters embarked on a six-week,
country-hopping expedition that won them a cool
million at the finish line.

Not bad for a pair of middle-aged desk jockeys. But
their biggest challenge was competing against 9,000
other applicants to get on the show in the first
place. To qualify, the McAllisters submitted a video
that was eye-catching enough to make the cut. They
also survived several tiers of interviews, culminating
in a weeklong vetting by a team of producers. "They
liked my husband's personality," says Kim. "He likes
to talk."

Once chosen, the McAllisters spent $1,000 of their own
money on equipment, then grabbed their new backpacks
and set off on an adventure that included scaling
cliffs, luging down mountains, trekking up ski slopes
and scarfing down a stomach-churning two pounds-plus
of caviar in one sitting. They won the race by booking
a flight that got them to their final destination 10
minutes ahead of the second-place team.

Chip and Kim each got a check for $500,000, so they
held a million bucks in their hands before paying
about $350,000 in taxes. The rest of the money spared
their house, valued at $1.8 million, from foreclosure,
and they now have more than $1 million in home equity.
They donated a portion of their winnings to their
church and invested the rest in their business
enterprises. Considered the most likable of the
participants, the McAllisters have parlayed their TV
exposure into a career as "inspirational speakers,"
giving lectures (for a starting fee of $7,500) on
teamwork and how to build a successful marriage.
(Learn more at www.chipandkim.tv.)

Aside from winning the money, Chip says he and Kim
"enjoyed every single second we were on 'The Amazing
Race.'" Even the caviar? "I enjoyed that after it was
over."

TIP #8: Make your luck. Chip and Kim McAllister beat
out 9,000 other contestants to win a million bucks on
"The Amazing Race," a reality TV show.

'Be in love with your idea'
In 1980, when the younger of her two daughters started
kindergarten, Doris Christopher "started feeling this
urge to get back to work." But not just any work. "I
wanted to do something meaningful that had
responsibility attached to it."

After months of deliberation, Christopher came up with
a concept that accomplished her aim, and eventually
put her at the helm of a $700-million business. She
founded the Pampered Chef, a Chicago-area company with
a sales force of 70,000 "kitchen consultants," who
sell kitchen tools to guests during in-home
demonstrations. Her company went big-time when it was
sold to the Berkshire Hathaway investment group
(Christopher remains as chairman), but she cooked up
the idea around her kitchen table.

Christopher, a former home-economics teacher, loved
cooking and teaching, but was wary of the demands of a
full-time job. While brainstorming ideas with her
husband, Jay, she noticed that friends often didn't
have the small kitchen tools that she considered
essential. "When people were in my kitchen, they'd
ask, 'Where did you get this? Can you get one for me?'
That was the notion that finally clicked."

Selling kitchen tools suited Christopher's background
and her desire for flexibility, but her husband's
entrepreneurial experience was critical. "My husband
had the idea that you could try something and it might
work, or it might not," says Christopher. "That was
very helpful."

Borrowing $3,000 against a life-insurance policy,
Christopher prowled the Merchandise Mart in downtown
Chicago, picking up good-quality kitchen tools at
wholesale prices. At her first home show, in October
1980, she sold $175 worth of vegetable peelers,
kitchen shears and other gadgets. By year's end, she
had grossed about $7,000.

The business grew slowly. Says Christopher: "You have
to be in love with your idea because you're going to
spend a lot of time with it." It wasn't until 1987
that the Pampered Chef surpassed $1 million in annual
sales. But "I was as busy as I wanted to be, and I was
successful."

TIP #9: Enjoy what you're doing. Doris Christopher's
affinity for cooking led her to found the Pampered
Chef, a purveyor of kitchen tools.




M. Charon
fax (408) 716-2568
cell: (650) 776 5028
email: mcharon@yahoo.com

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Patents...

Re: [spiers] patents...

I think part of the url was cut off. The article may be hard to cut and paste
because of the lay out. If this link does not work just let me know and I'll
copy the article:

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Savinganddebt/Savemoney/P103041.asp?GT1=6113

fyi...the article can also be found by going to the msn special report at
http://special.msn.com/msnbc/entrepreneurexcellence.armx and click on "How to
make a million dollars" which is in the middle of the page on the right. It is
the first article in the blue box. There great articles on innovation here

Hope this helps

Tom


P.S. I think this is one of the best articles in the special report but I
forgot to mention it before:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4725189/ It deals strictly with innovation and
actually has some interesting facts. I had no idea just how big of a deal the
IBM patent news was but according to MSN's statistics, it is as big as it
possibly could be. Also at the bottom of the page there are links to various
interesting articles --- almost all of them shock traditional ways of thinking.



wileyccc@aol.com wrote:
ooops..this url doesn not work...can you cut and paste the article into an
email?


http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Savinganddebt/Savemoney/P103041.as
p?GT1=6113


John

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Patents...

ooops..this url doesn not work...can you cut and paste the article into an
email?


http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Savinganddebt/Savemoney/P103041.as
p?GT1=6113


John

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Another Case In Point

I found a another great example of why patents do not matter at the
small, and even large business level. The article can be read in its
entirety here:

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Savinganddebt/Savemoney/P103041.as
p?GT1=6113


It is actually part of a larger MSN Special titled "Entrepreneurial
Excellence" which focuse on innovation and I recommend that you all
check it out here:

http://special.msn.com/msnbc/entrepreneurexcellence.armx


Although there a quite a few lessons that can be learned from this
story and ones like it, I think we should all pay special attention
to the 5th paragraph. Also, remember that you are reading about a
$200 million dollar a year company.

Enjoy!

Tom



When most kids are seniors in college, they're writing résumés
and cruising toward graduation. Not Kevin Plank. Nine years ago, when
Plank was in his last year at the University of Maryland, he began
developing sportswear that now outfits most professional and college
sports teams and makes a fashion statement on high-school playing
fields. As the founder of Under Armour, Plank, 32, presides over a
Baltimore company that employs 450 people and grossed more than $200
million last year.

Plank owes a debt to sweat. As a player on the Maryland Terrapins'
football team, he wore a cotton undershirt that turned into a soggy
liability during games. Already an entrepreneur (he was running a
thriving floral-delivery service out of his dorm), Plank began
searching fabric stores for a lightweight material that would fit
snugly, wick away moisture and replace the undershirt.

Once he had found the perfect fabric, Plank paid a tailor $400 to
come up with several prototypes and asked his teammates to try them
out. "They said the shirt was great for football -- and baseball and
lacrosse, too," says Plank. "I realized this wasn't just a shirt but
a marketing opportunity."

Plank hit New York City's garment district and returned with enough
fabric to make 500 undershirts, which he promoted to players on major
college and NFL teams. "I would ask them to try this product, and if
they liked it to give one to the guy in the next locker," says Plank.
Eventually, teams on both sides of the field were wearing
Plank's "compression apparel" -- and showing it off on TV.

After graduation, Plank raised start-up money by maxing out his
credit cards to the tune of $40,000. He tried to patent his idea, but
gave up after racking up $7,000 in legal fees. For the next several
years he took no salary from the business, and he lived and worked
rent-free in a house owned by his grandmother. He later got a
$250,000 loan from the Small Business Administration and used almost
half of it to repay debts.

Under Armour is now the official supplier of compression apparel to
Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer, and its garments are
worn by about 30 NFL teams and nearly 100 Division I-A college
football teams. It was a high-stakes gamble for a kid barely out of
college, but Plank thinks youth worked in his favor. "When you're 22
or 23, there's no better time to take a big risk. Sometimes it pays
off." In his case, the rewards have included buying a Cadillac at age
26 and gaining VIP access to major sporting events, such as the Super
Bowl. "For someone who is passionate about sports, that's a big part
of my payoff."

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