My brother (Glenn) and I (Gregg) have mentioned in previous posts that we’ve been working on creating our own business. Though, at first we were hesitant to share our business ideas, we believe it will be for the better. That way we can post and track our progress on Business Twins and receive feedback from all of you - positive and/or negative.

Deciding on a Name
During the summer of 2006 my brother and I had lingering thoughts and ideas to create our own business. By December 2006, Christmas break away from school, my brother and I started to do some research. We knew exactly what we wanted to do; it was something we have a passion for and cannot live without. The last thing we had to do was think of a name we could brand, one that people would recognize, be able to pronounce, and would be easy to remember. The name we both agreed on was Swolled. For those of you who don’t know, Swolled is a slang term that has been growing in popularity in the weight lifting community.

We Began to do Research
Research has to be the most tedious and time consuming part of creating a business. It’s boring and there’s always more information available in the public domain to get your hands on. We found out some information on invisible drop shipping and it is something we wish to have an opportunity to pursue. If we can talk to different companies and convince them that we will market and sell their product effectively in return for drop shipping, it will help us in the long run. When a customer purchases a product off our site and receives the package, it will have our logo and name on it. By doing this the customer will see our name and will hopefully purchase products from us again.

Research also includes looking at your competitors and developing schemes on how to compete effectively in the market against them. There are many supplement and fitness related websites out on the web and one of the most popular is www.bodybuilding.com. Body Building dot com definitely has volume, traffic, and loyal customers that we hope to generate with Swolled.

Building a Business Plan
In order to create a successful business we decided to begin by writing down our goals for Swolled. What we wanted to do, how we wanted to do it, and when we wanted to be in full operation. Our first goal was to get a sleek, user friendly website design that will attract potential customers. Statistics have shown that an internet surfer judges a website within the first few seconds if not milliseconds upon landing on a page. We talked to a designer in town (Bakersfield) to have a fully managed website + design + coding and it would cost us nearly $8,000 dollars. We know what we wish our design to be, but we’re still looking at other design companies. We’re probably going to fill out a quote for www.innatemediagroup.com. They have quite an impressive portfolio and their designs are beautiful.

We ended up writing many goals down and what we wish to include on our website. We also sketched the basic layout of what we wish our website to look like on a piece of printer paper. A few of our goals was to create a user friendly website so users knew exactly where to navigate to reach their desired destination. We also wish to offer prices lower than that of our competitors. Another aspect is that we wish to separate ourselves from the competition is to create an articles section in which users can submit fitness and/or workout articles to the website. Registered users can than vote on the articles depending on how valuable and informative they were and top articles will show up higher on categorized lists. This will enable a more community based website keeping the potential customers at our website longer.

What Kind of Business will Swolled Be?
Our main goal is to create a merchandising business (reseller) selling fitness related supplements ranging from proteins, creatines, weight gainers, herbs, vitamins, and much more. We chose this niche because we’ve both been avid weight lifters since our sophomore year in high school. We both have a great passion for health, fitness, and weight lifting. Certainly the fitness market is oversaturated but we believe that we can separate ourselves from our competitors. There have been many successful business entrepreneurs who entered a saturated market and made their way to the top and there’s nothing stopping us.

We also want to eventually expand by creating our own energy drink as well. Research has shown that energy drink sales have been on the rise while coffee (Starbucks) sales have been declining. Annual reports have shown that Starbucks didn’t reach their projected sales for 2006, yet they still have plans to open over 2,000 new stores nationwide in 2007. Energy drinks may be at the peak of their introduction and entering maturity, but there’s always a demand for beverages. It’s a million if not billion dollar industry, and if we can get our hands on even 1% of the market we can still make some serious cash.

The Summer of 2007
Obviously my brother and I haven’t got a design yet, but we’re working on it. We’re both college students with hardly any money so we need to figure out a way that we’ll get enough for the initial startup (design and whatnot). Our father has also told us that he will help guide us through our journey. Our goal is to have a fully functional business by the end of the summer of 2007. Any of your thoughts and/or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

If you liked this post please consider adding us to your RSS Feed