Build Your Own Business: An Entrepreneur Does It With Rubber Ducks, By Rod Kackley

Craig Wolfe is reshoring rubber ducks. He brought an industry back to the U.S. Not only is he bringing the production of rubber duckies back to American, he is bringing the rubber ducky back to where it was invented, the great state of Ohio.

Ten years of overseas production has been returned to America. The owner of CelebriDucks didn’t do this just because it made financial sense. It was not a question of price, or cost or delivery or bottom line thinking. Craig has a passion for bringing manufacturing back home. To him it is simply the right thing to do.

He believes offshoring is wrecking our economy and ruining the future for our kids. Craig thinks of it as a terrible nightmare and he is trying to wake up America. It is Craig’s mission to snap us out of it.

We get all of that. So we want it to stop. We want a do-over, big time. But do we really understand what it will take to bring all of these industries back to the U.S. Craig thinks not.

“It is like turning around the Titanic. You have set something in motion,” he explained. “Now everything the whole infrastructure, all of the skill sets, everything you had set up to do manufacturing in the past isn’t what it was.”

This complicates the mission. We have to do more than convince ourselves and corporate America that it would be wise to bring manufacturing back. We have to be ready when they agree.

“You have to put that all back together, along with delivery times and working with the type of speed and urgency that people overseas have gotten used to, that really is many ways is missing here,” Craig said.

The soft-rubber floating duck form was created in America. They were made in America. But, like so many of our manufacturing icons, we lost the rubber duck. “It’s sad,” said Craig. “This is an American art form, like jazz.”

When Craig started laying plans for bringing production of rubber ducks back to the U.S. he had to worry about things like the learning curve and the training cycle. Wait a minute. This is a rubber duck that floats in the bathtub. How hard can this be?

You would be surprised.

To begin with, they have to float. The resin has to be put into the body of the duck correctly. So much has to go in the top, just the right amount has to be placed in the bottom or the duck won’t float right. You don’t want to send out a flotilla of tipsy ducks. Then there are the thickness and molding issues. Most of the molds for the ducks weren’t made anywhere in the U.S. when Craig took on this challenge.

“You know what? I am dealing with some of the biggest plastics factories left in the U.S.,” he said. “This rubber duck is the most challenging thing they have probably ever done.” 

The steepness of the learning curve that went along with the skill set needed by the people who were given the job of creating American-made rubber ducks turned out to be a real challenge. “We took on a lot of work thinking that the people would be able to learn this,” he explained. “What we learned was that we should have taken another two-to-three months to train these people before we took on any of these extra jobs.”

Learning curves don’t come cheap. “Oh, that is so right. Honestly, we probably hemorrhaged thousands and thousands (of dollars),” he groaned. 

Craig has plenty of company in his misery over a lack of skilled manufacturing employees. If there is a common thread running through many of the conversations I had as part of the preparation of this book, it is that there just are not enough people who (A) want to work, and (B) have the skills that are needed in the workplace.

“You don’t even think about it. This is America. We are the manufacturing kingpins,” Craig said as he expressed his continued amazement with the lack of the skilled people he needed. “We have lost of a generation of skills.”

He pointed out that we still have people “who can do the big stuff.” Yet, the “devil is in the details” when it comes to high-quality manufacturing. Today’s manufacturing workforce, for the most part, is like a seventh-grade band filled with kids who play the notes but not the music.

Craig searched for people who were problem solvers, people with the engineering background to figure out how to get the rubber ducks out of molds and ovens in America. It was done one way in China. A new way had to be created in the U.S.

As Craig explained it, the smaller the item you make, the more intricate the manufacturing process becomes. Craig is still having trouble finding people with the skills to handle the “nuances” of that.

“Kids want to be a rock star or a venture capitalist,” complained Craig. “They don’t want to be a guy who works at a lathe or works as a machinist. But that is what America is built on. Once you give up manufacturing, you will lose your service industry too. One follows the other.”

Ever the optimist, as are most entrepreneurs by nature, Craig said that he, as his artists advised him to do, does look at the training time and money spent as an investment.

“At the end of the day, I can tell you this, and you can quote me, we will be the only company making rubber ducks in America.”

Well, they are making rubber ducks in America and CelebriDucks also launched the first rubber duck race in the U.S. involving only American-made ducks on Memorial Day 2012. 

“So it has happened. But we are still far behind. I still can’t fill all of the orders,” he said. “Already we have to find new painters and new factories,” he said. “Once people got into it, they realized the costs are so exorbitant they had to re-cost everything to us.”

Advice from Craig to the reader: Even if you find the manufacturing to bring a product back to the U.S., spend some time in the R&D process with them, as much time as it takes to get a product that you are really happy with. “That way you will know what the real costs are and how difficult it really is to do it,” said Craig. “Before that, you are really just kind of speculating.”

As tough as this was, it has worked. As Craig said, they are making rubber ducks. They are selling, shipping and delivering rubber ducks. Even though his company isn’t huge by General Motors standards, when it comes to rubber ducks there aren’t many competitors who are bigger. This is the company people come to for rubber ducks when no one else can make a deadline.

“When Conan O’Brien was launching his show on the Turner Network and wanted Conan O’Brien ducks there for the opening and no one else could get the job done, they gave it to us,” said Craig. “Two days before the show opened, those ducks were sitting on his doorstep.”

Craig’s company is good. They have never missed a deadline. They are used to being good. Not just good. They are used to being among the best. “(Rubber ducks for) the Houston Rockets, New York Yankees, the Cubs; we have always been dead on. You know your options. You know your molding times. You know where you can cut things, where you can fly things in; you get a feeling for it when you have been in the business long enough.”

Mistakes were made. The journey has been arduous. Perhaps an entrepreneur has to fail first to succeed later. 

“We were so used to ‘we can do anything’ that we didn’t really translate it into ‘when you are working in a whole other country, with a whole other cast of characters, you really have to make sure you have tested them,’” before you go into formal production and taking on work.

They didn’t do any of that. They had to rush. Mistakes were made. Expenses piled up. “Think of it,” he said. “Anytime you rush anything, you have excess Fed Ex charges. You are paying for overnight (shipping).” 

If Craig had it to do all over again he would have done a much better job of laying the foundation and building trust with vendors, partners and customers before they went into full production.

“I should have said, ‘not yet, we really don’t have it all tested, yet,’” he said. “We had to eat a lot of the initial investment expenses. That was a big cost to us.”

In the long run, it is all going to work out. He is convinced of that if only because his customers are so thrilled to buy rubber ducks that are “made in America.”

Craig loves making products in America just as much. He was watching the TV show “Shark Tank” when an inventor who wanted to give jobs back to the people to his North Carolina hometown was advised to send his manufacturing overseas to lower costs. “I wanted to reach through that TV and…,” said Craig. “They are not entirely incorrect. But if everybody takes that point of view, you will destroy this country. Sometimes you have to do what is ethically correct.”

Craig was headquartered in California, when I spoke with him in 2012. However, his art department is headquartered in Cincinnati and he found the factories he needed in Ohio, “Where it all began.” 

Buy Quenching The Thirst, an ebook to read the stories of the entrepreneurs building their own businesses with beer. It is available wherever ebooks are sold including Amazon, Barnes & Noble and iTunes.

Download the free Rod Kackley app for more BYOB: Build Your Own Business stories through the App Store or Google Play.

Build Your Own Business: Food Entrepreneur On A Mission, By Rod Kackley

After 25  years in business  Pete Palazzolo, the chief executive officer and founder of PGI of Saugatuck, said his business was finally at the point where he could afford to keep it in the 48-thousand-square-foot facility that he calls home.

This Fennville, Michigan entrepreneur had just added a new “DBA” to his company, “Palazzolo’s Dairy,” expanding into a new business sector when I spoke with him in 2012.

***

The self-described “food artisan”  moved beyond Palazzolo’s signature-brand gelato and sorbetto, to offer a variety of dairy products thanks to the purchase of the company’s first pasteurizer. This investment allowed the company to become an HACCP-compliant Grade-A Dairy.  For the first time, Palazzolo could  take raw milk deliveries instead of being relegated to whatever dairies made available to him.

“This releases me from the handcuffs of the dairy industry, so that I am able to give people whatever they want,” Palazzolo explained. “If someone wants a truckload a week of organic, non-GMO gelato, it is no problem.” 

Instead of being locked into minimum orders of 6-thousand gallons, he can go as low as 300-gallons per order.

“This is the kind of path that anyone with my history would do,” he explained. “This is the final stage, to be able to bring in milk from a dairy farmer and alter the base anyway my customer wants.”

As they got to know this new pasteurizer, Palazzolo said he and his 20 employees found  they could  do other things with it besides just making ice cream.

The company began offering  liquid yogurt and yogurt drinks, fluid and flavored milk, soft serve and value tiers of ice cream from economical to super premium. Customers could  also get very specific, asking for different pack sizes, price points, ingredients and options ranging from organic to non-GMO, to corn-syrup-free, to cow-milk alternatives.

As his corporate name would imply, PGI of Saugatuck Inc. started in Saugatuck, Michigan on the Lake Michigan shoreline. Palazzolo said they moved four miles inland to Fennville for two reasons. First,  because he found a facility that would work, and second, because he ran into so many problems dealing with city licensing and permits in Saugatuck.

Renovating their new home was a major project. The facility had never been used as a dairy, so they had to put in new health and safety systems to meet government regulations to become a Grade A dairy plant. 

***

Palazzolo gelato and sorbetto products are sold around the nation now, and overseas, to restaurants whose customers want more than just regular ice cream, to resorts, to “places that scoop even in the middle of winter,” as well as to retail stores

Grand Rapids-based Spartan Stores is Palazzolo’s largest retail customer in Michigan. The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island buys from his company, as do specialty shops like Martha’s Vineyard in Grand Rapids and Holiday Market in Detroit.

Business has been good, even during the Great Recession. Palazzolo said they moved about 3-thousand gallons of gelato every week in 2011, a 20-percent increase from year ago numbers. He was happy with that, but had to wonder how much they could have sold in a “bull market.”

“All of us are sick of throwing away money on something inferior,” he said. “It is no different with ice cream. It is something you don’t have to have, but if you are going to have it, why not have something that gives you the most pleasure.”

Palazzolo makes ice cream the old-school way, the way you might have made it in the backyard after a Sunday dinner a couple of decades ago, except on a much bigger scale.

He uses real fruit and nuts, putting them in at the beginning, instead of just accenting the flavor at the end of the process. It is a process born of tradition and of necessity.

Just about everyone in the commercial ice cream world uses what is called a continuous freezer, he explained.

However when Palazzolo was getting started 25 years ago, there was no way he could even dream of buying something like that, so he went with very small batch freezers. That was a system that was affordable. It also allowed him to make ice cream the old-school way, “with raw fruits and nuts and not be compromised.”

While the ice cream is freezing in the continuous freezer system, it has to be smoothed and with the more automated system the way you add flavor is compromised. You add the flavor at the end, almost as an afterthought. Palazzolo adds the flavor the traditional way, right at the beginning.

Palazzolo is not strictly a West Michigan food processing entrepreneur. He has also rolled-out a prototype mobile food truck on the streets of Los Angeles, selling $25,000 worth of gelato and sorbetto in a month. “I am in the process of wrapping that bad boy up.”

This turns out to be a case of innovative selling, thirty flavors, no scooping. The gelato and sorbetto is pre-packaged. “You just grab it and sell it,” said Palazzolo.

What could become a mobile fleet of gelato and sorbetto selling trucks is also an example of creative financing.

 He found banks to be hesitant to lend money for a storefront retail operation, but Ford Commercial Credit was more than willing to do a vehicle loan “so we were able to get a truck and we were off and running.”

“If we are not growing, we are going to be in trouble,” he said. “Our goal is to put a shout out that we are artisans and are ready to give you what you want.”

***

Palazzolo’s isn’t just ice cream, gelato or sorbetto made in Michigan. It is ice cream, et.al made with as many Michigan products as possible.

 Palazzolo said he uses Michigan-grown fruit and nuts in his products for a couple of reasons, but something as simplistic as taking pride in Michigan is not at the top of the list.

That sense of pride in Michigan is a factor, but Palazzolo feels it is more important to be able to work directly with the farmer-vendors that he chooses and to get fruit as soon after it is picked as possible instead of having it picked out of state and then sent to Michigan through a brokerage firm.

Then there is the issue of price. 

 “When you deal with Michigan farmers, you can have a set price instead of one that fluctuates,” he explained. “We can’t be raising or lowering our prices every other day. I mean who cares if fruit is selling for three dollars a pound in Brazil?We are in Michigan.”

But the top consideration is quality. As Palazzolo explained it, his motivation to buy ‘Made in Michigan’ has nothing to do with Al Gore urging him to reduce PGI of Saugatuck’s global footprint. Issue number-one is, and always will be quality.

“I truly believe these products are better than what we could find anyplace else on the planet,” he stressed. “I buy honey from a farm in Allegan, Michigan. This honey is so wonderful; I could take a bath in it.”

Buy Farm To Fork now to read more stories of West Michigan agricultural entrepreneurs. This ebook is available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iTunes.

For a Farm To Fork Free Read, please download the Rod Kackley app for iOS or Android devices through the App Store or Google Play and go to the Read Tab.

Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American  Community tells the story of the people of Grand Rapids and how they created a cluster of prosperity, the Medical Mile, while the rest of Michigan was collapsing around them.

Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community is available wherever books are sold, including Barnes & Noble-Woodland Mall, Schuler Books & Music-28th Street and West Coast Coffee-Monroe Center, Grand Rapids. 


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Build Your Own Business: Grand Rapids Brewers Used Relationships To Become Beer City USA, By Rod Kackley

Grand Rapids Brewers 

Used Relationships

To Become Beer City USA

(Social Media Helped, Too)

By Rod Kackley

"Whenever there is a need, before long, you will find an entrepreneur with a better idea."

Brewers in Grand Rapids didn’t like the feeling of a tie, so they used a well-orchestrated local social media campaign, along with an old-fashioned retail political blitzkrieg of local celebrities and politicians to claim the top prize in Brewers Association President Charlie Papazian’s annual contest.

As a result of their better idea, Grand Rapids is Beer City USA, one year after sharing the crown with Asheville, North Carolina.

Let's begin with the question, what does it mean to be Beer City USA?

This was Charlie Papazian's better idea.The president of the Brewers Association created the contest about five years ago through his column on the Examiner.com website. 

“The craft beer community gets inundated with so many statistical facts about volume and size and how many of this and per capita of that,” he said, “and they are useful tools, but I wanted to address a little bit more fundamentally what is really going in the relationships that brewers have with beer drinkers and beer drinkers have with breweries. That was at the core of things.”

Then he asked, just what is it that makes any city, a Beer City?

“What I found is that it isn’t just about taste, or volume, or dollars cents. It is kind of a relationship that is hard to measure."

Relationships between beer drinkers and the people who make their beer may be hard to quantify, but brewers in Grand Rapids were able to use their relationships with customers and each other to mobilize voters.

The 2013 Grand Rapids campaign began when Wob Wanhatalo, the head brewer at Mitten Brewing Company in Grand Rapids and one of the founders of the Grand Rapids Society of Brewers formed an alliance with Janet Korn, the vice president of marketing at the Experience Grand Rapids Convention & Visitors Bureau, the organization that has been leading the effort to market Grand Rapids as a beer-tourism destination.
This was their better idea. The first phase was traditional. Experience Grand Rapids created T-shirts and billboards to celebrate the 2012 Beer City USA first-place tie.

Social media was to play an important part of the 2013 Beer City USA campaign in Grand Rapids just has it has for the city’s craft brewers because it is relatively inexpensive, simple to put together and is very flexible.

“Starting up a Facebook page is kind of a useful tool for them to use as a communication vehicle,” Korn said. “It is inexpensive of course and it gives them a place where they can bring this group of people together. The platform really works for building that audience.”

Quenching The Thirst tells the stories of the craft brewers who have helped to change the way the world sees Grand Rapids, Michigan.
For a free preview of this ebook essay, please go towww.rodkackley.com

The marketing strategy included content specific to the beer industry to “tell the Grand Rapids beer story from an informational perspective and included pieces of content that people could take and share,” Korn said. “I think it was the sharing among the fan base that was part of the 27,000 votes for Grand Rapids.’

For social media platforms, they chose the Experience Grand Rapids blog, Facebook and Twitter.

However, the campaign would not rely strictly on social media. Some very traditional point-of-purchase elements were thrown into the mix.

Experience Grand Rapids made table coasters that read, “Vote Grand Rapids Beer City USA” that were handed out at all of breweries and beer bars in Grand Rapids. 

Then feet hit the street.

A grassroots, political style campaign was the final piece of the Beer City USA effort. MiBeers.com organized three “Tap The Vote” pub crawls featuring local celebrities, Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell and other supporters who targeted the beer bars in the Grand Rapids area.

“We knew we had the breweries supporting us, so we went to all of the beer bars in town that served Grand Rapids or Michigan beer,” Wanhatalo said.

Social media still played a role. They used the hashtag#Beer City GR on Twitter during the pub crawls. 

“We made sure people knew the voting was happening, and reminded them to vote, too.”

Of course, they didn’t forget the importance of beer. Wanhatalo said they decided to create some special for their customers. 

The Grand Rapids brewers collaborated on four “project” beers which were brewed on a single idea or theme. The first was Beer City Pale Ale.

“The guys all pointed at me and said, ‘You come up with the recipe and we will brew it,’” said Wanhatalo.

After that they did the Grand Pumpkin beer. Brewers could do whatever they wanted for that one as long as the recipe included pumpkin.

“The way we look at it as brewers and owners is a shared celebration. We are all in this together,” Wanhatalo said. “The more cooperation, the better.”

That was their best idea.

To order your autographed hardcover or softcover edition, please to gowww.rodkackley.com

Build Your Own Business: Learning To Be An Entrepreneur By Example, By Rod Kackley

Build Your Own Business, Be Your Own Boss, By Your Own Bootstraps — is inspired by a Paul Graham quote in The Launch Pad: Inside the Y Combinator by Randall Stross, which tells the story of Silicon Valley’s most exclusive school for entrepreneurs.  

Graham runs that school and is a legend in the Valley.

Stross asked him why Europeans seem to be less entrepreneurial than Americans. Graham said it is not  because they have “less balls” than Americans. Graham said Europeans just don't have the examples of entrepreneurs that Americans have to learn from.

Examples of entrepreneurs from which we learn.

Yesterday, I told you about how I found myself surrounded by examples of young entrepreneurs inside Start Garden, a startup business incubator in downtown Grand Rapids, Mich.

They filled the Start Garden’s lobby that day, and they are everywhere in Grand Rapids every day. It isn't that Grand Rapids’ balls are bigger or brassier. It is just that this community not only has entrepreneurial examples, this community applauds those entrepreneurial examples. 

Grand Rapids sees itself as a community of entrepreneurs.

It is the same for the Detroit area,especially with the rebuilding effort underway there, except maybe they are not applauded like Grand Rapids’ entrepreneurs because of the Motor City’s Big Three, big company mentality.

What’s it like where you live? 

Build Your Own Business will help today’s entrepreneurs tell their stories, along with looking at the history of entrepreneurs not just in Grand Rapids, but wherever there are stories to be told.

The idea is to learn by all of their examples, and yours too. Let us know what you are working on, dreaming of, and who is inspiring you. Please share and help us learn by your examples, too.

For more examples of entrepreneurs, check out the BYOB section of the Read Tab in the free Rod Kackley app that you can download for iOS or Android devices, or go to www.rodkackley.com.

Quenching The Thirst tells the stories of the entrepreneurs who started Grand Rapids craft brewing industry.

Download your ebook through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or iTunes.

Farm To Fork tells the stories of the agricultural entrepreneurs in West Michigan. 

Download your ebook now through Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community tells the stories of how the people of Grand Rapids changed the way the world sees their community and the way they see the world. 

Order your hardcover, softcover or ebook edition from Abbott Press, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes or your favorite bookseller.