Make It
In a global economy, it isn't easy to transform an idea into a product
Manufacturing once seemed a more straightforward enterprise. Draw up your product idea and crank up the assembly line.
But in a global economy, as technology advances by the minute and competition bears down, it's not so simple to transform an idea into a product, and a product into a viable business.
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Here are three entrepreneurs who are trying to meet the challenge in widely divergent businesses:
A Home Business Moves Up and Out
Since Wendy Almquist left her corporate job to launch a soy-candle business, she gets the occasional odd question from her teenage daughter, who has observed her mother's travails as an entrepreneur with some concern.
"Mom, if you don't pay that vendor, will he break your legs?" is one question Ms. Almquist recalls.
In its fifth year in business, BeansWax Co. is closing in on $1 million in annual sales, a milestone for any start-at-home enterprise. But it's still not without its struggles and worries, including long hours, no outside financing and the uncertainty of cash flow. "I didn't picture myself struggling so much at 40," Ms. Almquist says.
Ms. Almquist was in her mid-30s five years ago working for Carlson Marketing Group, a Minneapolis-based marketing company, when she decided she was ready for a change. If she had a home-based business, Ms. Almquist believed, she could have more control of her schedule and spend more time with her daughter and toddler son.
At craft shows, she had observed the popularity of soy candles. Made from soybeans, the candles burned more cleanly than petroleum-based waxes. So she decided to start a wholesale soy candle business and called it BeansWax.
Like many small start-ups, production began at home -- and with family savings. Her husband, Brett, built a shop in the garage, where the couple experimented for months on the proper formula and best designs. The pool table in the basement became the spot for materials storage, and the home's entryway became the shipping area. A first client, fortuitously, was Carlson, which included the candles in its incentive gift catalog.
Determined to be a smart and cautious business owner, Ms. Almquist visited buyers for "informational interviews" with samples before ever making a sales call. She created sleek, contemporary designs, because, she figured, she might be stuck with the inventory at some point. "No chicks or bunnies or canning jars," she says.
Demand was strong enough in the second year -- about 60% growth, with many new stores as customers -- that Mr. Almquist quit his job in mortgage banking and was hard at work making candles.
But demand was uneven. When big shipments had to go out, the Almquists had to call in friends and family to help load up boxes and sort out orders. It began to take over the house. "My 2-year-old son would say, 'Now, you clean up this mess!' " Ms. Almquist recalls.
THE FINISH LINE: Peter Amico and an Airtrax Sidewinder forklift
And after about a year, city officials complained when a few tractor-trailers pulled up in their suburban neighborhood. "They were very nice about it," says Ms. Almquist. "They said we might want to rethink our location."
So they arranged to outsource the production of the candles. But by the time they found a factory and struck a deal, with orders increasing all the time, they had outgrown the space. They now lease space in a facility that spends about one week a month cranking out their candles and the remaining weeks producing goods for other companies. Much of BeansWax's production run is private-label work for customers like Smith & Hawken, the home and garden retailer. The Almquists, meanwhile, handle sales and distribution from another location, which also houses 75,000 candles in inventory.
Even now, a certain amount of experimentation continues with the candles, which retail in the $10 range. Soy is more temperamental than paraffin, and its viscosity may change with temperature and other variables. The formula "always needs a bit of fine tuning," says Ms. Almquist.
Another challenge is the emergence of competitors who sell candles that are called soy but contain as little as 10% soy -- and are therefore cheaper. "We just hope our candles represent themselves well," she says.
And despite their more professional factory setup, the Almquists must call in favors at times of big demand. A big order from Wild Oats Markets Inc., the organic supermarket chain based in Boulder, Colo., called for BeansWax to ship to 70 different locations, rather than a central point. The Almquists had to line up a staging area in their manufacturing suite to get the goods out, with in-laws, relatives and friends filing up and down the hallways, filling orders, over two days.
Ms. Almquist recognizes the irony of her situation. "You quit your eight-hours-a-day job to work 16 hours a day," she says. "People think you have flexibility, but you become more of a slave to your business."
Bringing Military Tech to the Factory Floor
In 1997, Airtrax Inc. was one of several companies that each paid the Navy $2,500 for rights to the technology -- including old drawings of how the motors and controllers worked -- to build an "omnidirectional" forklift that could maneuver in tight spaces, such as the deck of an aircraft carrier.
"Imagine a vehicle that you control with a joystick," says Peter Amico, Airtrax's chief executive, of the machine. "There are no pedals. If you push the joystick forward you go forward. If you push it sideways, it goes sideways." Even more amazing, if you push the joystick in a 32-degree angle, the forklift moves in that direction, sort of like being in a video game. It can spin in place.
Airtrax, a Hammonton, N.J., start-up, thought it could significantly alter operations on factory and warehouse floors with such a machine. The company says a warehouse using the forklift could make use of 20% to 30% more of its space. "It can change material handling forever," Mr. Amico says.
Wendy Almquist and BeansWax's candles
But first the machine, known as the Sidewinder, needed a redesign. The algorithms that produce the ease of handling are incredibly complex. And the Navy version used a particular electrical system and motors that aren't practical or economic in a commercial vehicle.
The promise of a new vehicle in the $15 billion world-wide forklift market helped Airtrax raise cash from private sources to fund design work. "People aren't used to seeing a vehicle move sideways," says Mr. Amico, who formerly ran other industrial companies.
Fortunately for Airtrax, a forklift company in the area moved and left much of a talented staff behind. The engineers Mr. Amico hired were fascinated by the vehicle, and he let them experiment. "They'd come in and say, 'Pete, do you mind if we change this one thing?' " he recalls.
In the design, the engineers had to decide on questions like "What is backward on a vehicle like this?" They decided it was moving anywhere from 91 degrees to 269 degrees away from straight ahead -- anything out of the peripheral vision of the driver. Ultimately, the machine was rebuilt from the ground up.
Because of the grand scale required to construct such a machine, Mr. Amico thought it only made sense to outsource as much of the manufacturing as possible. But he first had to get on the radar of the sophisticated manufacturers that could produce the vehicle. And he had to convince them that Airtrax would be able to pay them.
To do so, he met with an array of company officials to demonstrate the technology. For instance, he started with a salesman for Timken Co. and worked his way up the chain of the Canton, Ohio, industrial-parts manufacturer, eventually securing a deal for Timken to produce the Sidewinder's complex wheels. (The original Navy design had wheels that were perfect spheres, but that wouldn't work well at speeds of six or eight miles per hour. The Sidewinder wheel is wider at the center, a nonround wheel that makes for a smoother ride). Danaher Corp., a Washington-based manufacturer, later signed on to produce the controllers, displays and AC motors.
Fund raising never ceased. After getting about $700,000 the first year for design work, Airtrax has raised about $10 million. Mr. Amico shot his own sales videos and edited them on a computer.
Interest in the technology has been so high that Airtrax stock began trading in the over-the-counter market in 1999 -- before a single machine had been sold. The company has an application pending to trade on the American Stock Exchange.
Mia Abbruzzese with Morgan & Milo shoes
Mr. Amico is currently lining up the first dealers to sell the vehicle. The Sidewinder will retail for about $38,000, which can be nearly twice the cost of a conventional forklift. But he hopes that its flexibility -- and potential space savings -- is a strong sales point, and adds that maintenance should be less expensive than on conventional forklifts.
In March, the first 10 Sidewinders rolled off the line, and the first one headed off to work at Bill Wahl Supply Inc., a wholesale building-supply company in Blackwood, N.J. An additional 42 are headed for dealers now.
"It was pretty exciting to see the first 10 trucks, all in a row, all the same," says Mr. Amico, "and you've manufactured them."
Shoemaker Scales the Great Wall of China
Mia Abbruzzese had to grit her teeth as she toured a Chinese factory to talk about production of her children's shoe line. Barely into the season, the factory was already copying her line of sneakers and sending them to Taiwan under a different label.
"I said, 'OK, they've already knocked them off,' " she recalls. "I put blinders on." she says, since she had other things to worry about.
It's been part of her education as a fledgling children's shoe maker in a land where business runs on a handshake and not everyone plays by American rules.
Ms. Abbruzzese, who ran cross country in high school in Boston and earned a degree in economics, did a stint in finance but found herself working for a variety of athletic and children's shoe manufacturers for 17 years, including New Balance, Fila and Stride Rite.
During those years, U.S. goods makers were moving production to Asia to take advantage of the low costs. She made a point of learning every facet of the business -- product development, marketing, manufacturing -- as she went from job to job, traveling the globe.
"It was absolutely fascinating," she says, recalling, for instance, how she presented lines of boots to the Singapore military for New Balance. As for China, in those years, she says, "it was just a bunch of factories and dirt roads." Few women in business traveled there.
A pivotal assignment came at Stride Rite, where she worked on special lines, called Baby Smart and Kid Smart, to be sold exclusively at Target stores. The lines were a success, and by then, she had been at Stride Rite for several years. Ms. Abbruzzese recalls thinking to herself, "If I can do this for Target, what's to say that I can't do it for myself?" She struck a deal to leave with six months of severance pay to attempt to launch her own line.
Ms. Abbruzzese doesn't have children, so she kicked around her ideas with her siblings and tried prototypes of her designs on her nieces. She envisioned the same market niche that Target has mined so well: inspired design at a midmarket price. She admired some European designs, not cutesy, but stylish and fun, and able to withstand a day of hard play. She called her concept Morgan & Milo, and she began sketching out designs and brochures.
She went back to her contacts in China, looking for factories that might want to take a chance on a new U.S. brand, including providing some upfront investment. Through an agent she knew from her travels, she found a shoe-component maker that wanted to begin producing complete shoes. The manufacturer invested the initial costs as a loan, payable, Ms. Abbruzzese says, over several years. No contracts, just a handshake. "It's based on trust there," she says.
She hired free-lance designers to sketch out her designs. Her agent oversaw the prototype production in China and sent the plain white leather prototypes for her review in Boston, with details and color to be addressed later. Ms. Abbruzzese traveled to the factories herself for the start of the production run to closely monitor quality. The first year's run in 2004 was about 65,000 pairs of shoes, a tiny first step for her brand, and about $800,000 in sales.
Her adventure hasn't been without bumps, however. Ms. Abbruzzese says she disagreed with her first sales representative, who was happy to sell the shoes anywhere without regard to the image of her brand. Soon, she replaced him with Mark McCormick, a veteran of the Keds shoe brand, who will take a 5% equity stake over five years on top of his salary.
"He's realigned our customer base, who we want to go after," she says, primarily upscale retailers.
What's more, the line is too small to warrant a full-time factory. And she requires two separate facilities, one for sneakers and one for dressier shoes. Ms. Abbruzzese says she would love to see fatter profit margins, but she's hardly in a position to negotiate forcefully about costs. "When you are small, you can't argue too much," she says. "You're grateful to have a product."
She had hoped to double the production run for the 2005 season, but managed to produce about 40% more. Profit margins weren't quite as thin, she says, and the line is in some Nordstrom and Macy department stores as well as some independent chains. She also scored a small coup in getting Morgan & Milo on the Zappos.com Web site for next fall.
Ms. Abbruzzese counts off her many responsibilities, and stops to laugh. "Had I known what I was getting into...," she says.
Indeed, she has been busy planning a trip for later this month to China's Guangdong province to oversee prototypes for the 2006 line.
经济全球化 独立创业难
制造业一度看起来是个很直接了当的行业，拿出产品规划，建立一条生产线即可。
但在经济全球化的今天，科技发展日新月异，竞争压力沉重不堪，要想把一份产品规划变成实实在在的产品，把一项产品发展成红红火火的业务，可就没那么容易了。
以下是三位创业者在高度分化的商业环境中克服种种困难的经历。
起伏跌宕的家庭作坊
温迪?阿尔姆奎斯特(Wendy Almquist)辞去大公司的职务，创办自己的大豆蜡烛业务后，她十几岁的女儿亲眼目睹了妈妈创业的艰辛，总是满怀担忧地问几个问题。
阿尔姆奎斯特记得女儿有一次问到：“妈妈，如果你不向供应商付钱，他会打断你的腿吗？”
在创业的第五个年头，BeansWax Co.实现了100万美元的年收入，对一个家庭作坊起家的公司来说不啻是一个里程碑。但公司仍然不能放弃种种努力，不能摆脱种种困扰，包括长时间的加班、没有外部融资、以及现金流不稳定等等。“真没想到快40岁了，我还要这样挣扎，”阿尔姆奎斯特说。
五年前，阿尔姆奎斯特30多岁，在明尼阿波利斯的市场营销公司Carlson Marketing Group工作。就在那时，她决定改变生活的轨道。她相信，如果能在家开展业务，就能更好地掌握自己的时间安排，能多抽些时间陪伴女儿和跚跚学步的儿子。
在一次手工艺品展览上，她发现大豆蜡烛很受欢迎。因为是用大豆做的，这种蜡烛要比石化产品蜡做成的蜡烛更清洁。所以她决定创办大豆蜡烛批发业务，命名为BeansWax。
和许多小型初创企业一样，BeansWax的生产过程也是在家中完成的，启动资金也是家庭储蓄。温迪的丈夫布拉特(Brett)在车库里建了一个小厂房，夫妻俩就在这儿用了好几个月尝试各种蜡烛配方和外观设计。地下室里的台球桌成了材料堆放场，房子的入口成了装卸区。他们终于幸运地迎来了第一位客户：Carlson。
阿尔姆奎斯特决心做一个机智灵活又行动谨慎的小业主。连一个销售电话都没打，她就带著样品去拜访了“了解信息式访谈”的买主。她创造了圆润时尚的设计，因为她担心某一天会库存过剩。
第二年，大豆蜡烛的需求就很旺盛了，公司业务增长了大约60%，许多新店铺都成了她的客户。温迪的丈夫也辞去了抵押银行的工作，一头扑在蜡烛生产上。
但是，蜡烛的需求很不稳定。一旦来了大订单，阿尔姆奎斯特夫妇就不得不找亲朋好友帮忙，要么装货，要么分拣订单。乱七八糟的东西堆满了整间屋子。“我那两岁的儿子会说，‘现在，你把这儿打扫干净！’”温迪回忆说。
过了大约一年，市政管理人员开始抱怨温迪家门外经常停著的运货拖车了。温迪说，“他们态度很好，只是说我们也许该重新考虑一下工厂的选址问题了。”
因此，夫妇俩开始安排蜡烛生产的外包工作。但在他们刚找到一家工厂，敲定了一份协议，订单就源源不断地涌来，地方总是不够用。现在，他们租用了一家工厂的一块地方，每个月有一周生产他们的蜡烛，另外几周为其他公司生产其他产品。BeansWax的大部分产品都是为Smith & Hawken等家庭和园艺零售商生产贴牌生产的。阿尔姆奎斯特夫妇要在另一个地方──储存著75,000支蜡烛的库房──处理销售和分销事务。
即使到了现在，他俩还在继续做蜡烛配方的试验，每支蜡烛的零售价大约在10美元左右。大豆比石腊更容易受温度的影响，它的粘性也会随著温度等因素的变化而变化。温迪说，配方“总要进行微调才行”。
他们面前还有一项挑战，那就是竞争对手的出现。他们生产的蜡烛也号称大豆蜡烛，但至多只有10%的大豆成分，所以价格更低。“我们只希望自己的蜡烛能有出色表现，”温迪说。
虽然他们对生产设施的安排更加专业了，但如果有了大订单，还是必须找别人帮忙。科罗拉多州玻尔得的连锁超市Wild Oats Markets Inc.下了一份大订单，要BeansWax向70个不同的超市地点分送蜡烛，而不是送到该公司的中心配送区。阿尔姆奎斯特夫妇不得不在生产区域划出一块装卸区，请亲朋好友跑上跑下地帮忙装货，填写运货单，整整忙了两天。
温迪清楚地看到了自己现在的尴尬处境。“辞了每天8小时的工作，换了一份每天16小时的工作，”她说，“大家都觉得你的时间安排更灵活了，可实际上你成了自己业务的奴隶。”
军事科技民用化
1997年，Airtrax Inc.还只是向美国海军支付2,500美元购买技术使用权的众多公司之一。这些技术包括一些旧的图纸，比如马达和控制器的工作设计图等。这些技术可用来生产一种“全方位”铲车，能在航空母舰甲板等空间狭小有限的地方工作。
“想象一下你用一根操纵杆驾驶铲车，”Airtrax的首席执行长彼得?阿米科(Peter Amico)说。“根本没有踏板。如果你把操纵杆向前推，它就向前走；如果向旁边推，它就向旁边走。”更让人吃惊的是，如果你沿著32度角方向推操纵杆，铲车就会沿著这个方向走。有点儿像电子游戏。
Airtrax总部位于新泽西州Hammonton，是一家初创企业，很有可能通过这类机械改变工厂和仓库里的货物搬运方式。该公司称，用它们生产的铲车能把仓库的利用率提高20%到30%。“它能永远改变材料搬运方式，”阿米科说。
但首先，这个名为Sidewinder的机器需要重新设计。让这台机器变得容易操作的设计方案复杂异常，而海军原来设计中的那套电路系统和马达都不适合商用。
全球铲车市场的规模高达150亿美元，这款新机器的美好前景帮助Airtrax从几个私人渠道筹得了现金，进行必要的设计改造。“人们还不习惯看到一辆铲车横著走，”阿米科说。在Airtrax之间，阿米科曾经管过几家工业公司。
Airtrax鸿运当头，当地一家铲车公司搬迁了，留下不少出色的员工。阿米科雇请了几位对新机器兴趣浓厚的工程师，让他们放手试验。“他们会走过来问我，‘彼得，如果我们改动一下这里，你不介意吧？’”阿米科回忆说。
在重新设计的过程中，工程师们必须回答这类问题：“这种铲车的不足之处是什么？”他们决定，设计成型的铲车除了能笔直向前走，还要能在91度到269度范围内任意行驶，也就是说，司机视野之外的任何方向。最终，这台机器被从头改造了一番。
生产这样的铲车需要很大空间和不小的规模，阿米科觉得唯一有效的做法就是把铲车的生产尽量外包出去。但他首先要筛选一长串的精密仪器生产商名单，还得说服他们Airtrax有能力付账。
为此，他拜会了一系列的公司管理人士，向他们展示铲车的技术原理。比如说，他从Timken Co.的一位销售员入手，顺藤摸瓜地找到这家工业零部件的高层人物，最终与Timken签署一项协议，由它们来生产Sidewinder铲车复杂的轮胎。（海军最初设计的轮胎不错，但如果每小时行进6到8英里时表现就差强人意了。Sidewinder的轮胎中心部分更大，行进起来更平稳。）后来，华盛顿的生产商Danaher Corp.也签约为Airtrax生产控制器、显示屏和直流马达。
融资压力从来也没有减轻过。第一年为设计工作筹集了大约70万美元之后，Airtrax又筹集了大约1,000万美元。阿米科自己拍摄了销售录像带，自己在电脑上剪辑完成。
人们对这项铲车技术的兴趣非常浓厚，1999年Airtrax的股票就开始在场外交易市场交易了，当时公司还没有卖出一辆Sidewinder。现在，Airtrax在美国证交所上市的申请正在等待批准。
阿米科现在正在挑选Sidewinder的第一批销售代理商。Sidewinder零售价约为38,000美元，大概是传统铲车的两倍。但阿米科希望，Sidewinder的灵活性，以及节省空间的潜力会是一大卖点。而且，Sidewinder的维修费用会比传统铲车更便宜。
今年3月，第一批10辆Sidewinders铲车排队走下了生产线，第一辆就运往建筑材料批发供应商Bill Wahl Supply Inc.的库房。现在，已有42辆铲车陆续运往代理商处。
“看到第一批10辆铲车时，我激动万分。它们排得整整齐齐，一模一样。”阿米科说，“想一想，是你生产了它们。”
在中国寻找制鞋厂
在一家中国工厂巡视，讨论生产自己的童鞋系列时，米娅?阿布鲁泽塞(Mia Abbruzzese)不得不咬紧牙关。销售季节刚刚开始，这家工厂已经在仿制她的运动鞋系列，并用另一个品牌向台湾某客户发货了。
“我说，‘好吧，他们已经做了’”她回忆自己当时的心情，“我假装不知道就是了。”因为当时她还有其他更重要的事要操心。
这就是她作为初出茅庐的童鞋生产商在中国大地上的一课。在这里，商人们握握手就做成了一桩生意，很多事情都不合美国的规则。
阿布鲁泽塞在波士顿读完高中，后来获得了经济学学位，一直在财务岗位工作。突然有一天发现自己已经在不同的运动鞋和童鞋公司工作了十七年了，包括New Balance、Fila和Stride Rite等公司。
这些年里，美国生产商不断将生产业务转移到亚洲，利用那里的廉价成本优势。米娅不停地转换工作，在世界各地出差，在这个过程中用心地学习整个业务的各种环节──产品开发、营销、生产，等等。
“这一切太有趣了，”米娅说。例如有一次，她代表New Balance同新加坡军方谈判军靴系列。至于中国，她说，那些年里，“那里只是一堆工厂，肮脏的道路。”几乎没有女性到那里出差。
她跳槽到Stride Rite后接受了一项重要的任务，在Baby Smart和Kid Smart童鞋系列工作，这两个品牌都是为Target店铺独家生产的，非常畅销。那是她已经在Stride Rite工作好几年了。阿布鲁泽塞回忆说，她当时想，“如果能为Target做这些，干吗不为自己做呢？”最后，她拿了六个月的遣散费，离开公司，走上了自主创业的道路。
米娅没有孩子，所以到处找兄弟姐妹的孩子们试鞋样。她梦想著和Target一样的目标市场：创意无限、价位适中的鞋。她看好一些欧洲设计的鞋样，一点也不做作，但很时尚，很可爱，小孩子疯玩一天都没事。她把自己的概念称作Morgan & Milo，然后开始草拟设计和宣传册。
她回头去找自己在中国的熟人，寻找可能会愿意尝试一下这个新的美国品牌的生产厂，同时愿意提供部分前期资金。通过她出差时认识的一位代理，米娅找到了一家想开始承揽全部制鞋流程的工厂，这家生产厂投入了一笔启动资金作为给米娅的多年期贷款。一切都没有合同，只是一次握手，米娅说，“在那儿，一切都建立在信任基础上。”
她雇请了几位自由职业的设计师，把自己的设计概念一一落实。她的代理人负责监督中国生产商生产的原型产品，然后把白色皮子的样品鞋寄给波士顿的米娅审阅，其他的细节和颜色以后再确定。生产开始之际，米娅亲自到中国的工厂视察，监督产品质量。2004年业务开始的第一年，就生产了大约65,000双鞋，迈出了这个品牌的第一步，年收入大约80万美元。
当然，她的创业之路也并非一帆风顺。米娅说她与自己的第一位销售代理有了分歧，这位代理根本不顾品牌形象，只要有人愿意买就好。很快，米娅请来Keds品牌鞋的元老麦考密克(Mark McCormick)做代理，除了定期拿薪水之外，五年任职期满他还会持有米娅这家公司5%的股权。
“他调整了我们的客户基础，这些客户才是我们愿意继续交往的，”米娅说，大部分都是一些高端零售商。
还有，米娅的鞋子产量太少，不能满足一条生产线完全开工所需。她联系了两家生产厂，一家生产运动鞋，一家生产时装鞋。米娅说，她梦想著有一天利润率会扩大，但现在她几乎没有和厂家谈判的优势。“你规模太小的时候，没法太多地讨价还价，”她说，“有人愿意生产你的产品就谢天谢地了。”
她曾经期望2005年的产量能增加一倍，但竭尽全力之后只提高了40%。利润率不算低，产品在Nordstrom和Macy百货店以及一些独立的店铺销售。她还在Zappos.com网站上为Morgan & Milo下个销售季节敲定了一笔生意。
米娅细数著她的一项项工作，突然笑了起来，“如果早知如此……”
的确，她已经在计划今年晚些时候再到中国的行程了。这次她准备到广东省的生产商监督2006年系列的原型生产。
