Sweatshop temptations - 26-06-2008 12:43
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Once I spoke to a music management class about Stay Human. A friend of mine was teaching the class and thought it might be a good chance for me to meet some future band and event managers, which it was. After talking for a bit about Stay Human and the like, one of them asked me if my business was a success because of our ethics or in spite of it.
I really feel like all the success that I have is because of the ethics and not in spite of it. Stay Human is a business that pushes it’s ethics right out the front and we are constantly getting positive feedback about it. I can’t imagine if an ordinary merchandise company sent out one hundred myspace messages to bands they would get ten replies saying they love what they are doing. The mission changes us from being a mundane company, into something special. Another one in the class asked me if I’ve ever been tempted by a dodgy order. Up until a point of about four years ago I had just never even been tempted to do the wrong thing. People knew we were an ethical company, they knew our prices and that was that. But one big corporate clients that we have wanted a product that we didn’t offer, temporary tattoos, they could be sourced in Australia for about .30 cents a unit, in china for .5 cents. They wanted me to get them for .10 cents. This was a huge order that would have netted us about $5,000 dollars in profit for basically sending this company in china an email with their artwork.
I’m not going to bullshit you, I was tempted. $5,000 profit was at the time about two months worth of trading profits. I was at the time pretty broke and planning to go overseas, what a nice little bonus for myself, pay back for the years of towing the line. The reason I think ethical businesses owners should think of themselves as self funded activist and not just business people servicing a niche market is because of this type of thing. A business person might be swayed by money, but an activist never could be.I wasn't about to turn the last four years of trading and talking into a lie. I was not going to make myself into a fraud and a joke for the sake of some money. So I had to say no to the order.
The funny things was in the next week I landed three really good orders from some of our other bigger customers that almost made up for it. Karma baby, karma.
-Rocket: visit my online zine:
ethical entrepreneur
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Starting an ethical business with no money - 26-06-2008 12:38
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While it’s not exactly true I started Stay Human with zero capital it is true that is started it with only one thousand dollars and I blew all that in the first week buying equipment. Now six years later it’s paying the rent and earning about 30-40k a year. Not a monster business by any stretch of the imagination but I’m pretty happy considering where I started off and what I want out of it.
I think most people would assume that you need a lot of money to start a business and that it’s also going to be a risky endevour that could involve you losing that money. While it’s true that 90% of small businesses fail within the first year and that often involves them losing a lot of money and basically going through self inflicted hell. Most people start businesses in ways that are a lot more risky than they need to be because they lack patience. People think start a business and they think open a shop. But the reason all these 90% of businesses are failing is because the people running them are really good at signing themselves up to fixed costs when they have no fixed income.
You can start a business with just a good idea and time. You can start off with a website that you run while still keeping your day job, you can start with weekend markets, you can start with a catalog and a home office, you can start by stocking other peoples shops with your items. These are ways to get the ball rolling. Stay Human is making me a living wage now, but it’s been going for six years and it certainly wasn’t making me enough to live on in the first couple. The reason I didn’t go bust is because I never expected it too and I never depend on it’s income to pay the rent. With a zero capital start up you have to be realistic in what you expect from the business in terms of return, if you invest no money in adversting other than some flyers and the website can you really expect people to give you the $50,000 a year you need to quit working? Or is it more reasonable to figure I’ll start off slow, build up and up over time and eventually I’ll be doing business full time and my call centre job will be just a bad dream.
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