Hi John,

The problem is not usually growing the stuff, but finding the right market for it. 10,000 plants is a lot! You'll want to have buyers set up beforehand for as many as possible.

Good luck

Kevin

Unless you greenhouse them they won't grow over the winter. But you can get a lot of cuttings from the size of plant you have already. Before you invest so much time in getting to the 10,000 plant stage I would start selling cuttings as soon as possible to establish a name and be better able to gauge the market for brugs in your area.

If you could set up a booth at a local event (hopefully nature or gardening themed) with a few display plants to show the final size and flower colors - you could sell plenty of cuttings, and make lots of money in one weekend. Keep in mind that people attending shop in pre determined percentages - say 10% of the population (which is actually the norm). So if an event has 1000 people attending it over a weekend you could expect to sell 100 plants. This won't be the way to unload all of your stock but you can generate some cash for one weekends work. Good luck!

Ok, I was just revising the plans. So Here is the newer, improved (hopefully) OK, here goes. This spring (or should I do it now) I will be opening an online business. This business. It will include bananas, brugmansias, alocasias, colocasias, xanthosomas, and a few other aroids. I will also carry superthrive, and spray -n- grow products, along with a few other non-plant products. In the feauture I may start carrying named hostas, but not to many as I want to mainly focus on the brugmansias. How much do you expect website hosting and initial setup will cost? I will try my HARDEST to get my name with an A+ next to it, rather then selling spindly plants at a high price. I will start my bananas and aroids from tissue culture, I will put them in four inch pots and wait till they have grown enough roots to hold the soil in one ball when pulled out of the pot, that way I can send my plants out knowing that they are in deed healthy happy plants. I may try to see if I can supply enough plants from puping rather then TC but being in my zone it may be hard to do that. now, I will be doing this for retail, not wholesale. Thanks! John

John you are to be commended for your enthusiasm and dedication. I wish all sixteen year olds had as much motivation as y ou.

As others pointed out, finding a market for your product is the key to success. Growing will turn out to be the easy part. You might want to check over on the Professional Gardener forum for suggestions on marketing. There are a lot of growers on that forum.

If you sell on line, you can get web site hosting for as low as $100 a year. Registering a URL will cost around $25. You will need to think about how you are going to ship your product. Most box companies have very high minimum orders, often a full pallet. A good place to buy boxes is Uline.

Well, IW as going to do USPS priority mail, I have a PO right down the street, so that would be the easiest part of it. I can box up about a hundred plants, put the adress on them, and send them off per day, I did some math, and I came up with this number, so I should be able to do the whole thing by myself I can box on mondy tuesday and wensday and I can water and fertilize on thursday friday saterday and take sunday off lol. John

John -- Be sure to get your shipping charges in line. I worked for an on-line nursery in the past and many times they lost money on orders due to shipping costs. USPS priority mail worked far better than FedEx ground and UPS. If you have enough boxes on a regular basis the post office will pick them up for you.

And really, you need to figure doing 20 boxes per day. It takes far more time than you think. You need to produce invoices, process billing and sales (will you take credit cards?), package and box and label and record tracking numbers. More people can do more boxes -- but you add labor expense.

Great idea -- wonderful potential -- but don't bite off more than you can chew. You NEVER want to disappoint your customers.

Cathy

Can you explane this a little more cathy? When I was SOOO into trading I once did THIRTY FIVE boxes with 1-3 plants each in them each. I did this in 4 hours. I knocked the soil off of the plants in a trash can, dunked it in water, wraped in paper towels, and then foil. Put it in the different piles, looked to see what size/shape box I would need, in they went and taped, wrote the adress on each one, nonstop, all 35 took 4 hours. What is this invoice? and the other stuff I need to know about? Creadit card. That was kind of a problem, I want to do paypal shopping cart, but I don't know that much about it. How much do they charge? do you know? Thanks. John

>What is this invoice? and the other stuff I need to know
>about?

Accounting. You have to keep track of your incoming and outgoing money so that
a) you know whether you're making money at all, or enough to justify the work you're doing (eg are you making 10c or $10 an hour?)
b) you can do your tax return.

>Creadit card. That was kind of a problem, I want to do
>paypal shopping cart, but I don't know that much about it.
>How much do they charge?

Paypal shopping cart itself is free, but you have to have it linked to a Premier or Business Paypal account (not a personal account) and that takes about 3% of each sale. One drawback of the Paypal cart is that your customers have to sign up for Paypal to use it, and that can make them either confused (so they give up and don't buy) or annoyed with you. I have used it for some years on my Lego kit sale site and I've experienced those problems.

Accepting credit cards directly will cost you a setup charge, probably a monthly fee, and a percentage of each sale. You might have a lot of trouble getting this going at all because of your age. This is quite separate from the shopping cart, which will also cost you.

I highly recommend doing a budget comparing your expected sales and income to expected costs before you commit yourself to ongoing costs like web hosting and credit card acceptance. Do it for optimistic, pessimistic and middle-ground expected sales. Also make sure you know *when* the money will go in and out - most new businesses have a startup period where there is more money going out than coming in, and you have to know what to expect and have the money available to keep going until you reach profitability.

You might find selling via eBay a good way of starting (I don't know if eBay allows live plant sales). At least then you don't have any big commitments to start with and you can bail out if necessary without losing too much money.

How are you going to restrict web site sales to US customers? You won't be able to mail live plants outside the US without major paperwork.

Are you going to be working full time on this? It sounds like it from your time allocation. No school? :-)

Kevin

nope no working, and no school, Well, I do it at night usually(home school). Ebay dose allow for live plants, there are alot on there. Well, I made a promise to myself. I told myself that I would never work for someone else but ME. I have ben reading rich dad poor dad and that is what I told myself and I hope to do that. I will want a truck in a year or so, so I do have to save up some money :) I Would need it around next july assuming I pass the test. So if I do what I plan to do, I will set up the website, without the shopping cart, Put some plants up on ebay, and then link to m website that will have prices for my plants. Then I would tell people to email me with there suggestions/orders and then I will accept checks and money orders, do creadit later. Also I will have it a verry informative website so that people would be on there just for information. And mabey get a plant or two. I eventually want to grow into a large business, well one I can make a house payment and stuff on. Dose anyone know of any other small business that I Can get into this fall/winter that is easy and at least semi profitable that people like? Mabey something I make? I was thinking of making some of my paintings avalable, but I would want at least three hundred for them and I have ten or so all over my walls. Thanks, John

John, you are way ahead of most people your age, congratulations. Now you have to educate yourself on government regulations. First is to find out what type oinspections and permits are needed to ship live plants. See if the venture is even fesible. Then educate yourself about nursery licenses, business licenses, and taxes. These aren't roadblocks, just speedbumps to be crossed for all businesses. Good Luck! Tom

I know That you can send plants through the mail, Just not any illigal plants, or the invasive weeds that people are trying to iradicate in that state. I have sent plans to all states except alaska, and hawaii. Also I alredy did most of the startup for the nursury, but I think I am going to do the plan I was telling the people about in the other post. John

I am very impressed by this thread. I teach law students how to operate their practices as a business and am in the throes of finsihing a coursebook to be used in law schools. This thread covered most of the issues that I expect law students to address in their business plans. Excellent questions John and answers from the rest of you. My students (mostly undergraduate history majors) are absolutely flummoxed by such concepts as capital investment, cash flow, system development, government regulations, etc. Lawyers tell me practicing law is fun and easy; the hard part is running a business. Good luck.

Not to knock the wind out of your sails, but I would take "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" with a grain of salt. Some of Robert Kiyosaki's advice does not make sense or is just plain illegal.

I agree with his basic premise that you should invest in things that give you money (real-estate rentals, your business, etc) and not invest money in things that do not return money (car, boat, most consumer goods). That is about all.

Here is a link to a review of "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by a respected real-estate author.

Here is a link that might be useful: John T Reed's analysis of Rich Dad, Poor Dad

I am really interested in finding out if you started your business, how it is going, or why you did not start it up.....just a short quick anwer is ok, email me if you can because your thread is from last year

Cheri

We are all dying to know how your venture went and did you get your truck? It occurred to me that you would have to stop shipping during freezing conditions. Also, I am wondering what sort of greenhouse setup you've got. Robin in NC