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Why Should We Put Cayenne Pepper In Capsules

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Early in 1972, having been discharged from the U.S. Army, I was desperately trying to figure out how I was going to support my wife and 2 small children. Many times in my life, I have often said that I could never find a job, so I had to create my own. This is the period of my life when this saying came about.

One evening, Linda and I were visiting with several of her aunts and uncles. We had pooled $1,050 to start a family business, but found that it wasn’t large enough. What kind of a business could we begin that wouldn’t require much money? Linda’s Aunt Kristine spoke up and said, “Why don’t we put cayenne pepper in capsules?” We all looked at her and I said, “Why would we want to do that?” She said “Several years ago Gene (her …show more content…

We went to a little store called the Cottage Health Food Store in Provo, UT. Gene drove us in his Volkswagen beetle with the 30 bottles in the backseat. With one bottle in my hand, we walked into the store. Upon entering, a little, old lady walked around the counter, introduced herself to me as Emma Chittock and said, “What can I do for you?” I handed her the bottle of cayenne pepper capsules and said, “I think we have a product that you would be interested in.” Taking the bottle, she stared at it in complete silence for what seemed like an eternity. I didn’t say a word, as I didn’t know what to say. Finally, she said, “I will take 6 of these.” I was in shock as I had not even figured what price to charge. I knew that every bottle cost us $1.00 to produce (not counting the hours that it took to fill the capsules and put them in the bottles). I quickly thought a 15% markup sounded pretty good. I said, “How about $1.15 per bottle?” She retrieved her checkbook and wrote a check for the product., As she was doing that, Gene went out to the car and brought in an additional 5 bottles. She placed the bottles on a shelf in a less than ideal spot. We thanked her and left. We were elated - our first store and first …show more content…

Once again, I took a bottle and Gene and I entered and found the manager up on the 2nd floor. As we approached the manager’s desk, he looked up and said “What can I do for you?” Because my last sales approach with Emma had worked, I handed him a bottle and said, “I have a product that I think you would be interested in.” He took the product in his hands and looked at it - again that quiet, silent moment that seemed like an eternity, and said something much different than Emma, “Why would I be interested in this product?” I quickly thought of Gene’s story so I related it to him. He thought some more and finally said, “I will take a gross.” 144 went through my mind and I knew that we only had 24 left. That is the only time in my life that I ever reduced somebody’s order as I said, “Would you settle for 24 bottles?” He agreed, so Gene went out and grabbed the additional 23 bottles. The manager wrote us a check, found a spot on the shelves next to the candy and placed them there. We were ecstatic - 2 stores and 2 sales. What a successful day! We hurried home and put the family members back to work in producing more capsules by hand. It quickly dawned on me that at $1.15 we would never make a profit to pay for the labor that it too so we readjusted the price. A week later, Gene and I went to the health food store, and found that one had already sold. We then

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