Ridiculous Small-Business Plan Encouraged By Friends | Hacker News Reader

Ridiculous Small-Business Plan Encouraged By Friends

theonion.com

63 pointsrms50 comments

Had this been a real front page article in New York Times or LA Times, she would have other newspaper and television companies contacting her to feature her story. She would also easily have enough orders to reach $100,000 in the first year. There are a lot of very, very rich people with dogs who would be in the market for this for novelty as well as health reasons.

And since she's making them by hand, she could customize each order with the owner's suggestions about what their dog likes.

For satire, it could be written better, without the "terrible idea" or "ill-conceived" remarks made by the author. There are a lot of stupid, low-volume ideas like this that aren't well-thought through and are just done almost as a hobby, without a business plan or addressing scalability, that can generate full-time income after a big media story about it. Sometimes the novelty of an idea, and reliance on one person, actually gives the person a "moat" and a small niche, both of which make it hard for big established companies to compete, as well as the credibility from having been the first person to get major press coverage about it.

Starting in Montana could also be smart, since it's a mail order business and she can likely get her ingredients much cheaper there, even though most of her big ticket customers would be in big cities across the US.

If this somehow didn't generate enough sales, she could use her new-found expertise as a "nationally-known dog chef" and work for somebody rich like Donald Trump, or even release products under the Donald Trump name.

The reason she would be an expert, by the way, is because by working on something full-time, even if she ends up making less money than expected, she would have become skilled and recognized as an expert, rather than a 2nd shift clerk at a store, or any other job you she have held before.

I was studying marketing when the 'super premium pet food' segment was invented. The idea that dog and cat were prepared to paid $US 3 per 4oz can of food was amazing.

At the time the best steak or fish was about $7 /lb

This could be a multimillion dollar company.

http://www.google.com/search?q=gourmet+dog+biscuits

About 350,000 results!

Not all ideas are bad, just because they didn't follow an MBA's market research. The guy that invented the super soaker came up with the idea while doing some plumbing in his bathroom. It took him years of determination to see it to success -- it's those years of determination that make the difference.

There's a huge untapped market for high-end dog treats made with natural ingredients, and I'm getting in on the ground floor. If you don't believe me, ask my friend Angie

http://www.doghousebagels.com/

A low carb diet for dogs - that is just sick...

Isn't a natural doggy diet just atkins supplemented by the dog's own poo?

She needs 4000% growth in sales by year end to remain in business. And I wouldn't be surprised if it grows by 8000%. God! Look at the way Karen Sabin speaks. The love and passion for her dream is clear in her statements. This woman is going to make it big. And I'm sure she's soon going to be the poster-woman of every business magazine very soon. Enormous passion! I bet she'll even easily crush Google if there's something called Google Pet Food.

Its a treat to aspiring entrepreneurial minds to read stories of such people with unique ideas.

Go Sabin! go!

Ouch! I didn't notice that the article dates back to October 29th, 2003.

@ordinaryman: thanks for pointing that out. I liked the story so much that I had just made up my mind to make an online store for her for free once my exams are over(I was searching the contact details of her business).

Anyways, I did some googling only to see onion and entrepreneurs.com pages talking about her. Nothing much.

But I pray she's doing good in business. I hate to see enthusiastic people, so passionate about their dreams, giving it up. If she's still in business I would like to see her in the headlines soon.

It's the Onion.

About 8 years ago I remember reading an advice column in which the letter writer was concerned because her child's friends were all reading Harry Potter. She referenced this article: http://www.theonion.com/content/news/harry_potter_books_spar...

The advice columnist was pleased to explain the purposes of the Onion

That particular story actually went much further than a single letter writer:

http://www.snopes.com/humor/iftrue/potter.asp

And it's not the only such incident:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Onion#The_Onion_taken_serio...

it's depressing that the onion correlates with reality to a higher degree than mainstream media.

it's depressing that the onion correlates with reality to a higher degree than mainstream media.

That's the whole point. If the mainstream media did its job, there would be no onion.

(Just like if the corporate world made any sense, there would be no Dilbert.)

No room for parody or farce? That's plainly false.

I think this could actually work. I'd say it would most probably work.

It's not the idea per se thats bad. There are a number of stories on YC which point to this problem: Most ideas are nothing without execution. (most recent: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=237096 )

Sure - dog food is not an area I ever felt much like getting involved with. But for some aspiring mom in the suburbs it might be just the thing. A lot of people love their animals more than their fellow humans, so the money would definitely be there.

In fact TV advertisement for dog food is already going the gourmet route, which is disgusting. I remember an ad where the icky meat heap was decorated with a thyme leaf.

Hell, I was in LA last week and saw a gourmet bakery for pets. No joke. They seemed to be doing brisk business. Several customers went in with their pets in the time it took me to drive by.

Apparently there exists a similar place in Tokyo. I remember watching a TV show where they rented a dog and took it there to eat. Apparently the humans and dogs could eat the same food.

Edit: Ah yes, Hello!Morning episode #331 and #332.

There's one here in Truckee, CA.

Seattle's version of this "ridiculous" idea: http://www.mudbay.us/

Mud Bay Granary isn't exactly a bakery, but it does nothing but sell expensive, organic, gourmet pet food. It's been in Seattle for years, and there are at least a half-dozen stores.

As I was reading this article, it reminded me so much of a bakery specifically for dogs I'd heard about.

http://www.threedog.com/ - Three Dog Bakery... 47 stores worldwide wtf?

It just goes to show, that with some niches, you can sell people pretty much anything.

Make something dogs want.

Because dogs can buy things.

Make a payment system for dogs. I am sure they would WANT to be able to buy things...

Hey, don't knock it - pets drive almost as much spending as children do!

so make something dog owners want. unlike children dogs don't typically whine until they get what they want.

Lots of dog owners want pampered dogs, just like lots of parents want spoiled kids ("I want to give them all the stuff I never had...").

According to the APPMA statistics on spending("Pet Industry Statistics and Trends"), Americans spent 34.4 billion dollars on their pets in 2004, which means pet-related spending has doubled in the last 10 years in the US.

The APPMA's reported the following breakdown for the areas in which money is spent on pets (2004 figures for the US)

$14.2 billion for food

$8.1 billion for supplies and OTC medications

$8.2 billion for veterinarian care

$1.6 billion for live animal purchases

$2.31 billion for other services such as grooming and boarding

http://exoticpets.about.com/cs/resourcesgeneral/a/petstates....

What are you talking about? Pets can't drive!

Your dog wants steak ...

oh wait, this isn't Fark, sorry

On the Internet, nobody knows you're a human.

I'm a seed-stage investor in the company. You think pets.com was big? You just wait.

Okay... on the one hand, I can see how someone could build a successful business around this.

On the other hand, if your business idea doesn't create and capture more value for humanity than this, I'd suggest going back to the drawing board.

Your standards may be too low, aim higher.

Businesses are sometimes built on the most unlikely of ideas. Selling tumbleweeds online, for example.

http://thatslifeinthecity.blogspot.com/2007/11/kansas-womans...

it's a funny headline, but the business idea seems completely plausible.

The idea seems plausible, but is it something that some random person at home can execute on? The numbers didn't look good.

I guess as soon as the orders start piling in, she could just knock on her neighbors doors and ask them for help baking biscuits?

Yes - in the article, she said she wanted to open a storefront with a bakery about a year later, and they estimated that she would need to sell 90,000 biscuits at $1.50 each to get there.

  $ dc -e '2 k 90000 365 / p'
  246.57

That's a lot of biscuits to make by hand. Let's take it a step further:

  $ dc -e '2 k 245.57 12 / p'
  20.46

If you assume each batch of a dozen takes an hour to make, assume typical kitchen equipment (i.e., no double oven), and assume a little pipelining, she would barely have enough waking hours to get it done. There's no time left for actually packaging or selling the biscuits.

I'm guessing you never baked before, but batches aren't one dozen and you can whip through them in short order. 240 cookies (er, biscuits) would be about 10 cycles if you have two half sheet pans. Depending on chill time (if any) you could knock through it in a regular home oven in three hours fairly easily. With some actual equipment and a helper, it would be half that. Bakeries make ridiculous amounts of baked goods and still time find to sell 'em.

I'm guessing you never baked before...

This discussion is already stupid. No need to make it worse.

> Due in large part to the encouragement of her so-called friends, 34-year-old Karen Sabin quit her steady job

Friends are the ones who you want to support you, not shoot you down so you're still on the ground with them. If your friends are silent/neutral/negative, hang out with other hackers/entrepreneurs (join/start a group in your locale).

The Onion, too real: http://www.doghousekitchen.com/

the problem is not the idea - pets are a huge market.

Through out the story (fake or not), her freinds kept encourage her to do wrong things, she should have started smaller, not quite her job until she got a solid amoutn of order, this is a web/ecomerce business and getting a store front would be the second this I would do after the web and whole sale business was rolling.

Also the name of the product is horrible: "Grandma Sabin's Low-Fat Biscuits For Particularly Finicky Dogs,"

way too long, and "Particularly Finicky" - how about: Grandma Sabin's Gourmet Big Biscuits. All Natural, Low Fat Delicious Dog Biscuits.

Now if she offered Gerber 2% of her equity to build a platform for her business...

Great work Onion, brilliant parody. But the business idea itself is not that bad.

I actually know someone who quit his job so he could work on his natural dog food business full-time.

Last I heard, he was doing well.

Taking in mind there are people buying diapers for their dogs, I don't see why such an idea wouldn't work (if marketed well).

The article dates back to Oct 2003. The outcome of the venture should already be known.

It's the Onion.

No. No no no no no no. Please no Onion on the Hacker News front page.

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