I've been talking lately about starting a business without being too specific. One idea I've had for a while is to start a paint manufacturing company making acrylic artist paint. It would sell by the tube and by the jar for maybe $10 to $15.
Artist paint is made from various materials in the earth, pigments, and a binder. It's basically pigment and binder. To get just the right consistency or color, quite a few artists buy the raw materials and make their own paint. It's not difficult. I've identified an easily available pigment material that I've never seen used as a paint color. The idea would be to use it to make my own pigment and specialize in that color as a niche market. If I wanted to do other colors, I would have to buy the pigments and manufacture from those. Alternatively, for the other colors, I could use private labeling, a tool that's widely used for a variety of products.
One of the drawbacks is cost of entry. Not only would I have to buy paint manufacturing equipment, I would have to buy the equipment to grind raw material into pigment powder. A certain amount of the paint packaging side of it I could do by hand the same as others are doing for their own paints, but I would need real equipment for processing the pigment. I would also need a place to set all this equipment up and store containers and labels and pigment, etc. And if I got a lot of orders, doing things by hand, while fine for getting started, would not be a realistic option.
I mentioned Shark Tank last week. I've still been watching it. One of the questions investors ask business owners is, What's to stop the big companies from doing the exact same thing and crushing you? That's a huge drawback to the paint idea. If it's successful, anyone else could mine this material and make the same color. I would be first to market, but they have huge name brands already.
On the other hand I might could make a decent business selling raw pigment to paint manufacturers. If I was established and already making the pigment, it might make sense for them to buy from me. The goal with either business would be to build it up to the point where a big player would have to buy it from me.
Let's talk money. According to the internet, the average yearly salary in the U.S. in 2016 was $44,148. Assuming 30%(not a real number) profit per paint tube sold, I would have to make $147,160 in sales to make that. If the price was $10 a tube, I would have to sell 14,716 tubes a year or 40.3 tubes a day. Realistically, I would have to put a certain amount of the profit back into the business. Equipment upgrades or repairs, a part-time employee, advertising, etc. Those kinds of sales would likely not happen the first year and maybe not for a quite a while. Starting out, I might sell only a handful at first.
When I talk vaguely about starting a business, this is the kind of thing I mean. I'm looking at things I could start small and then grow into something. This kind of gives an idea of how complex and slow the process of building something really is. I'm trying to find something that's relatively inexpensive to start that wouldn't drive me crazy while I worked at it. Some businesses require specialized knowledge or the right contacts. There are so many factors involved.
Is He Still Alive?
Is he still alive is a new segment to the blog. I saw an interview of Groucho Marx on The Dick Cavett Show. I was very surprised to learn that Groucho Marx died in 1977. Growing up, I had the vague impression he was somebody from the 1930s, which he kind of was. He was born in 1890 and made multiple movies in the 30s. I heard of him all the time as a youngster, and people did impressions of him a lot. Hawkeye, Alan Alda, on M*A*S*H, for example. I would see people doing the impressions but never see Groucho. I assumed he had died a long time ago. Seeing the interview made me wonder how many of the people I used to see or hear about so much are still alive.
He was before my time, but occasionally I would hear and still occasionally hear mention of Dick Cavett. Is he still alive? I assumed he was dead, but no. He's still alive! He's 80. Congratulations to him for beating the odds.
Have a great weekend.
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