Business Opportunities Weblog

February 1, 2007 by Rich Whittle | 1 Comment

Startup Journal:

Terry Jarvis describes his hand-powered lawnmower business as a hobby turned obsession turned enterprise.

A constant source of annoyance for me on weekends was the hours-long droning of power mowers, leaf blowers and other outdoor power equipment, including my own power mower. I remembered the heavy, clunky hand mowers I used when I was young and I reasoned that hand mowers were by now bound to be lighter and less clunky.

One impressed me as light, quiet, easy to push and easy to maintain. My wife, Sandra, gave it a try and within three weeks we were having discussions about how much fun it was to mow and who would get to do it.

At that point the business opportunity occurred to me. There were few vendors; reel mowers were barely visible in the U.S. market. I researched the market for a year and in 1997 my idea of importing and selling reel mowers became Sunlawn. The company grew well from the start. We found the Internet to be a superior way to sell our products.

Our warehouse, advertising and logistics groups are all in different cities. The accounting group is local and manufacturing is all overseas. The office in the garage serves mostly as the order processing, customer service and communications center.

Photo by Sunlawn, Inc..

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Tags: Ecommerce, Internet, Niche, Sales, Startup