Chopper 1 ax: Microbusiness review
The Chopper 1 ax is another
great example of a microbusiness product. Bob Kolonia invented
this firewood splitting ax in 1975, then went the old school route of
obtaining a patent and selling thousands of axes per day through major
retailers like K-Mart.
Reading between the
lines on his website, I assume that Bob started to burn out somewhere
in the midst of this marketing frenzy. I'm not surprised ---
trying to make a living by retailing your invention through other
people's big box stores is nearly always bad for the little guy.
You end up putting in a lot of time and getting very little money back
on each item sold. In 1989, Bob decided to quit while he was
ahead.
But people kept
contacting Bob and asking for more Chopper axes. Luckily, during
the intervening years, the internet had exploded. Bob can now
easily sell his axes on his own website for a good profit rather than
making pennies on the dollar through a big box store. His niche
product is now a microbusiness sucess story.
We found our
Chopper 1 ax at a yard sale, and the primary woodsplitter in our
family now swears by its use. My only complaint is that Bob
succumbed to the current trend of charging an arm and a leg for
shipping. We had to order some replacement springs from his
website --- worth every penny of the $6 --- but were shocked to see
$10.56 shipping added to that price. We got a bit annoyed when
the springs came in an envelope with less than a dollar's worth of
stamps in the corner.
My advice to microbusiness owners is to always minimize the shipping
add-on costs. Getting "free" shipping leaves customers with a
much better taste in their mouths (even though the price is added onto
the up-front cost) than getting socked with a big shipping and handling
fee.
For more tips on starting
your own microbusiness and quitting your job, check out our ebook.
Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed.