Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Scott Kachlany, Co-Founder of Gardinnovations, located in Bridgewater, NJ, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

We are a gardening tool and supply company. We invent and develop many of our own innovative garden tools. Our customers are people around the world who love to garden!

Tell us about yourself

I am a career professor and microbiologist. I teach, do research, and founded a pharmaceutical company that will be testing the drug I discovered in a clinical trial for patients with leukemia and lymphoma in the near future. But I am also an avid gardener. And over the years, in my own garden, I have invented numerous tools and supplies that I could never find on the shelves of stores.

Therefore, I began making prototypes of these tools and then decided to start Gardinnovations so that other gardeners, like myself, could enjoy the tools that I was developing. My motivation comes from the satisfaction and pleasure I gain from knowing that other gardeners are also benefiting from and enjoying the tools that I invented.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

I think the biggest accomplishment as a business owner is being able to think of an idea for a product (which often just begins with a sketch) and then seeing it through to completion in terms of manufacturing, testing, packaging, listing, marketing, and ultimately selling the item.

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

Other than the inevitable financial challenges for any startup business, I think the hardest part to learn is how much inventory to the stock of your product(s). While you do not want to overstock and sit on inventory for very long, you also do not want to run out of product when it is selling well because this is a lost potential revenue. It takes several years to learn the market and the timing and frequency of sales.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. Be sure that you can make/manufacture your product(s). Producing the product as a prototype or on a small scale can be much different than mass-producing something for commercial sales.
  2. Be sure you have enough capital to get yourself to an important milestone. You do not want to run out of money before you have a chance to be successful.
  3. Whatever cost and effort you think it will take, multiply it by 5. But if you genuinely love what you are doing, it will feel effortless!

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://www.mygardinnovations.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mygardinnovations/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gardinnovations/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/gardinnovations

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-kachlany-719a3b/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/gardinnovations/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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