Babson Summer Venture Business: Ball and Buck
• Name of business: Ball and Buck www.ballandbuck.com
• Mission: The first sustainable lifestyle brand to offer one-of-a-kind products which enable consumers to use their personal style to change the world.
• Began in : 2008
• Revenues: Over $30,000
• Initial Investment: Family and Friends
• Where: Babson College, MA
• Your name, email, cell: Ugrad Mark Bollman (President and Founder) www.ballandbuck.com mark@ballandbuck.com 404-210-4103
• Employees: 2
• Founder’s Past Life/Business: I Started my first business when I was 14 years old, getting dropped off at people’s houses to detail their cars before I could even drive. This company “Atlanta Premier Detailing” was my first experience in the business world. From there, I started a media services business called Media Conversion and Protection LLC. In my senior year of high school. This business earned revenues of $10,000 every month in its first summer and went on to be a finalist at Babson’s Student Business of the Year Award my freshman year. After running that business for the next couple years I decided I wanted to start a business that really helped the world around us, so I started a environmentally and socially responsible lifestyle brand which enables regular consumers like myself, the opportunity to become a part of the sustainable movement without having to make changes to their current lifestyle. That company Ball and Buck was founded by myself and a Babson graduate Becca Eltzroth in 2008 and I continue to run it to this day.
• How The Idea Began: I wanted to start a business that really helped the world around us, so I started an environmentally and socially responsible lifestyle brand which enables regular consumers, like myself, the opportunity to become a part of the sustainable movement without having to make changes to their current lifestyle.
• Initial Preparation to Germinate Idea: We spent over four months thinking of the best way to enter the sustainable market. And wrote, and then re-wrote the business plan until we finally decided that we wanted to be a mainstream sustainable lifestyle brand. Our primary product was going to be the one-of-a-kind pocket tee in which clients would combine one of five styles of shirts with up to 14 different colors and more than 100 different pocket materials to create a completely original shirt which they could really believe in.
• Favorite Thing about the Business: I like knowing that at the end of the day, my business is already making, and has the potential to make, even more significant impacts on the world through the mainstreaming of organic and sustainable products.
• Worst Thing about the Business: Waking up at 6AM and going to sleep at 2AM. Starting your own business is a never-ending process and at the end of the day there isn’t anyone to give you a pat on the back.
• Biggest Challenge: Educating the consumer as to why organic cotton is such a key component of living a sustainable lifestyle. Especially when the cost of organic cotton is about 30% higher meaning that we make lower margins on our sales.
• Lesson Learned: Even though it is time consuming and tedious, knowing 100% about yourself, your business and the competition is vital to a successful business. Or as Sun Tzu said it in The Art of War, ”If you know both yourself and your enemy, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.”