New Company...Need capital/partnership

**campusmuscle** · 11-29-2007 08:42 PM

My name is Corey Perkins and I am the co-founder of a website called thestudentshoppe.com. Last year, my business partners and I developed a website called campusmuscle.com at The Ohio State University. This website was devoted to providing health supplements to college students at an affordable price.The principle behind the company is that students could use their campus debit cards, which is an allotment of money that students have the ability to put on their student-ids and use as a debit card around campus at qualified retailers. When the student makes an order on our website we collect the funds from their campus debit cards, we then send an invoice to one of our distributors who then packs and ships our product directly to the student within 1-3 business days. Our mark up is between 20-30 percent which allows us to keep our prices low enough for students to afford. We saw a large demand for our service in a very short period of time, so we have decided to develop a new website called thestudentshoppe.com. Our goal is to have this siteoffer a wide range of products from consumer electronics to paperback books. Our current distributors provide drop shipping for us which makes it possible for us to ship products to our customers around the country in 1-3 days. During the development we were able to obtain contracts with Ohio State, Pennsylvania State University, Miami University, and Ohio University to use their campus debit cards as payment options on our website. Currently at Ohio State there is over 15 million dollars each year in the debit card system that students can use at certain retailers around campus. It is estimated that there are currently 150-200 colleges and universities have campus debit cards totaling over 300 million dollars.

We are looking to launch our new website in the fall and are looking for start up funds/ partnership to take our business to the next level. We are looking for person/people with prior e-commerce experience who can provide guidance to grow our business.

**campusmuscle** · 11-30-2007 10:39 AM

any thoughts would also be appriciated

**K25150** · 11-30-2007 04:13 PM

I would eliminate the word muscle and use campushealth or something. In your case, the word muscle may turn off girls. In the fitness and gym business, that word puts fear in baby boomers and women. It makes them think the gym is full of a bunch meatheads and that everyone looks better than they.

**campusmuscle** · 11-30-2007 05:39 PM

we actually dropped the name campusmuscle.com and changed it to thestudentshoppe.com since we are going to expand our products to include more products other than nutritional supplements

**K25150** · 12-01-2007 07:26 AM

There you go.

**MikeAnd** · 12-04-2007 09:17 AM

Interesting concept. I'd focus on finding the right team before you go looking for investors. Having a good team in place always makes finding money a lot easier.

**campusmuscle** · 12-05-2007 10:12 AM

Thanks for the advice. I currently have a small team (3 including myself) but I am looking for more team members. What type of people (finance, law, etc...) would you recommend be on a business team?

**BusinessAdviser** · 12-05-2007 02:15 PM

Originally Posted by campusmuscle

Thanks for the advice. I currently have a small team (3 including myself) but I am looking for more team members. What type of people (finance, law, etc...) would you recommend be on a business team?

The key to (and reason for) a management team, is to add a strength where you have a weakness. If, for example, you already have a programmer, that is not a weakness, and therefore you do not need to (and should not) add another programmer. However, where don't have a marketing expert, you have a serious weakness and need to add to it. List out each of your four team members, and list each of their prominent strengths, and I don't mean, "Jack took a Business Law class a couple semesters ago, so he can do the legal stuff," or "Ben is pretty good at selling stuff and knows a lot of people in the bar scene, so he can do marketing." I mean, "Steve majored in Finance, is getting his MBA in Finance, and has worked as bookkeeper for a local company for the last two years." Odds are, you do not have someone like Steve, but rather have Jacks and Bens. What you should look for then, is to bring on an individual or two to your management team who maybe would fit a couple of these weaknesses.

A good start might be to go ahead and list out your team and the experience that each has, or their strengths, and allow others to weigh in on their opinion of where you could look for help.

If you would like more pointed advice as to what bases you need to make sure that you cover, shoot me a PM.

**rogercbryan** · 12-05-2007 02:35 PM

Sorry.. off topic... GO BUCKS! See you in New Orleans Jan 7th!

**BusinessAdviser** · 12-06-2007 07:30 PM

I would put together a solid, solid business plan. Every detail accounted for. All your Ts crossed and your Is dotted. Then you need to decide what kind of funding you're looking for, which will be based on a number of factors. Debt? Equity? Combination of the two? Then you go pitch it. Over, and over, and over. But the key to it all, to provide a way to get funding, to help materialize all the ideas, and to help identify weaknesses and unanswered questions, is to put together a solid business plan.

**hl68** · 12-28-2007 09:09 AM

I would be interested in learning more about the business to see if my skills would be needed in your management team. Please pm me. Thank you and have a nice day.