Starting a Business- The Ugly, Dirty Truth Part II

The Idea:
Both me and my business partner were from the east coast and we along with many of our friends, enjoyed a sweet, cold product called Italian Ice (fruit, water, and sugar blended and frozen to create an all-natural frozen treat). Haha! Can't believe I remembered that whole tag line. It seemed like the perfect product to bring to the west coast, so we started making it with real fruit in our own kitchen (did I mention my male business partner and I lived together when we started this venture?)

Anyway, we went into our local bank and made friends with one of the head honchos there. He took a liking to us and he supported our business, so he supplied us with 4 business credit cards and a $25,000.00 loan without so much as a one-page business plan. We didn't have to talk to anyone else, we didn't have to make any sort of presentation, we didn't have to prove that our business would see growth. This was before the market crashed and banks were apparently just giving out money. How wrong they were to give us money. How wrong we were to take it. We used those credit cards and that credit line pretty quickly to buy all of the equipment that we needed to see this venture to fruition.

We had to figure out how to use the equipment and we had to nail down our recipe. Once we completed that lengthy project, we started going to events to sell our fabulous, all-natural product. We would set up a traveling store front at local street fairs and farmer's markets.

Every weekend, we would pack the truck with all of our supplies and then wake up at 5 AM to get to the location on time and set up. We would be all set up by 6:30 AM and then have to wait for 5-6 hours before anyone wanted to start buying our product, and did I mention our product sales were almost completely dependent on the weather. If it was cold or cloudy or rainy, no one would buy our product. Then, we also had to worry about the demographic of people to come to the event and also the location of our booth. Were we placed in the middle of everything, off at the end, or by the kiddie tent? It was a terrible way to try and make a living. We both hated it and decided that we would be better off attempting to take the lessons we learned and put them into another product.