By Hannah Whittenly
Mabel’s Labels, Pet Relocation and the Geese Police may sound like the names of indie rock bands, but they are actually three small companies that reached multi-million dollar valuations just a few years after they started doing business. If you would like to see your company generating phenomenal profits until it is valued at more than a million dollars, here are four things you should know:
Intellectual Property Protection
If you have a great idea for your business, you may want to think about adopting appropriate legal measures to protect it. You may think that no one else will think of your idea or that your business partners know how to keep trade secrets safe from competitors, particularly if your idea is very unique. This was the case with Geese Police, a service that provides cute Border collies to golf course managers who wish to keep Canada geese out of their facilities; the brilliant idea and business plan required intellectual property protection, which can be obtained by utilizing attorneys, such as Strauss Troy, who are experienced in multiple parts of the business law world.
Industry Certification
Mabel’s Labels is a startup envisioned by four Canadian women looking for a solution to reduce the incidence of lost cups, lunch boxes and cups that children tend to lose and mix up at school. Their idea was simple: labels that could be easily attached to children’s belongings. The problem was coming up with a product that could be genuinely marketed as being durable. This required getting various certifications from product testing labs that would allow them to sell the labels as being safe to throw into the dishwasher, microwave and washing machine.
The Right Team
If you really want your company to be profitable, successful and valuable, you need to assemble the right staff. PetRelocation.com started as a pet sitting service founded by an entrepreneur who survived the heady days of the Dot-Com Bubble. The idea of offering pet travel services was not put into practice until the founder of the business had put together a team of employees who could handle international pet travel. These days, the company is able to offer worldwide services thanks to its multilingual and multicultural staff.
Winning Marketing Plans
In the late 1990s, a small retailer of high-end audio products in Seattle decided that the time was right to invest considerable capital into a marketing plan that would make the company known beyond their neighborhood. Magnolia Hi-Fi did not hesitate to pay high prices for large newspaper inserts and even holiday buying guides. In the end, Magnolia Hi-Fi got the attention of Best Buy and ended up being acquired for $87 million.
If you want to see your business obtain a high valuation in 2017, you should review the steps listed herein a couple of times and start getting busy.
Hannah Whittenly is a freelance writer from Sacramento, CA. Most of the time she loves to write about business and family. She regularly interviews small business owners from around the world about their business practices, products, and services.
