From Business Failure to Business Opportunity

This is a great story, showing how one can turn business failure into business lesson!

The story of George and Mary Ann Clark!They have a great product – carbonated milk – but have struggled mightily in making a thriving company out of it. Fully 10 years after they opened for business, the Clarks finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.

The Clarks invented a fantasy beverage for kids and parents: real milk that is carbonated like a soft drink! And now their e-Moo and RPM (Refreshing Power Milk) product lines – in fun flavors like Bubble Gum and Orange Sparkle – have made their way into 31 school districts, serving tens of thousands of students, around the United States.
But their company, Mac Farms Inc., could be so much more than it is. Only now do the Clarks believe that they’re solidly on a path to long-term success. “It would have been easy to give up, but this wasn’t just a blind labor of love,” says George, who is 72 years old. “There was clearly a market need out there and also a market opportunity, and we were given a unique chance to solve the problem.”

The appeal of a genuine dairy beverage with soft-drink bubbles would seem to be a no-brainer. But it still took about a half-million dollars to get off the ground. The Clarks were willing to invest much of their life savings, but they needed more capital. So George made a move that can be successful for startups: seeking business financing from a potential supplier. The dairy-farmer members of St. Albans Cooperative Creamery in Vermont – the same savvy organization that once bankrolled another startup called Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream – ponied up because they saw the potential for e-Moo to increase fluid-milk sales.

George sees now that he and Mary Ann made a crucial mistake right out of the gate: they failed to line up enough outside capital for the company, which forced them to rent an existing production facility in Cooperstown, NY. The results were potentially devastating on two fronts. First, the market readily bought in to the Clark’s concept, but they proved unable to satisfy the demand. And second, during the early stages, when the innovative nature of e-Moo was starting to attract news-media attention from all over the country, the Clarks couldn’t take full advantage of the public relations spotlight due to that inability to keep up with orders.

Keep reading on how they managed to turn this failure into success: http://www.startupnation.com/articles/1236/1/business-failure-opportunity.asp