early business ideas

Around the time we lived in Southern California, sometime between 1988 and 1992, Judy was grant writing and I was doing freelance desktop publishing while filling in slots and our back account with tips from bartending here and there. This was a time we had this great idea for businesses startup, we called it Korporate Komedy Koncepts. You know, replace the “C” with “K” to make it stand out. In short hindsight, not such a great idea.

Anyway, the idea was for us to write jokes and scripts for employee recognition events using humor, but after some reflection, and what it would take. It sounded fun. Maybe the joke was on us.

Dropping that idea pushed us right into our second idea, which was a gift basket company called, What’s the Occasion. We would deliver to businesses and executives that high-end stuff, uh, you know, hitting the people with money.

And like the previous idea, we got business cards before anything else. ’cause that’s really the fun part. Back then I was just getting into design. So yeah, it’s great to have business cards to look at and to dream about. Anyway, we got more serious and we started thinking about the word capital haunted our rational thinking.

Where would that come from? At the same time we were introduced to someone who ran a company in both Southern California and China that was very successful gift basket distributor. Did a lot of holiday stuff, lots of Easter baskets, and we even visited one of their warehouses, which was amazing in itself.

She shared with us a little bit about inventory and fulfillment. Hmm. And that led to many other horrors that left us with business cards from both biz ideas. In the end our lesson learned was that maybe, someday, we would start that perfect business.