Diary of an Entrepreneur

 

Overcoming the Obstacle of Product Promotion on a Startup Budget

 

By Ryan Coombs

 

Exhibiting your product at CES = $18,000

Promoting your product at CES = $150

Amid the countless challenges of growing our startup, we found ourselves writing off the opportunity to promote our product at the 2007 Computer Electronics Show (CES) because of the outrageous expense of exhibiting there. However, with a little creativity and community support, it's amazing to see what your entrepreneurial mind can do.

Exhibiting at trade shows has been an essential part of our business model, primarily because our target market focuses on companies that give presentations and exhibit. Through our company, PlasmaGlass, we provide advertising that captures your audience's attention as they walk down the aisle and view your presentation. This is accomplished through using a projector and our rear-projection acrylic screens, which are thin, lightweight and produce a brilliant picture that is more eye-catching than a plasma television.

Our goal this year was to exhibit at some of the largest trade shows to get maximum exposure for our new screens. We quickly realized how unrealistic this would be on our startup budget. How could we demo our screens at places like CES and InfoComm? Our goal of exhibiting at large tradeshows was quickly diminishing from unlikely to impossible.

Recently, I was driving up to Park City to introduce our screen to the notorious Skullcandy team. Skullcandy CEO, Rick Alden has been a mentor of ours for quite a while, so I thought he could benefit from our screen, and we could get some great exposure at his events. After seeing the product Skullcandy was pretty stoked about what we had, and mentioned that they were exhibiting at CES and that they wanted the biggest screen we could provide. Perfect! We loaned the screen to them and they picked up the expense of modifying and shipping it so that it could be suspended from the ceiling directly over their booth. As a result, we had our product at the show and I was able to walk around and make some connections, all for the cost of one night at the Oasis, gas, and a couple meals.

Similarly, we've been able to team up with iApplicants, Podski, and other companies to cross-promote our product at some of their venues. iApplicants CEO Ryan Kohler was looking for a new way to show off his Web-based hiring tools to trade show attendees at an HR conference. We loaned him one of our screens and projectors and he said the response was amazing, "the screen was so unique that every one who passed by the booth would pause and stare to see how it worked . . . and that gave us the opportunity to speak with people who normally wouldn't have stopped."

Within our niche, it has been beneficial to use existing inventory instead of cash to help businesses accomplish their objective, while concurrently helping us promote our product. Surprisingly, it has lead to invaluable contacts with potential customers and new dealers for our screens.

 

Ryan Coombs is a partner in PlasmaGlass, a Junto company. He'll graduate in Business at UVSC, and is enjoying his first year with his new bride, Rebecca. He may be reached at ryan@plasmaglass.com.

 

Launch - Mar/Apr 2007