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A Million Dollar Marker

Get ready to be inspired and go down a rabbit hole! 

Evan Van Auken had finished his firefighter bootcamp and the group entrusted him to create a plaque to commemorate the occasion as woodworking was his hobby.

When he tried to use a soldering iron to burn in their motto it looked horrible. 

So his wife and him worked out a chemical formula that they applied on the wood with a stencil and then used a heat gun to activate. It worked!

A coworker at the firehall was making $8,000 a month selling paracord Apple watch straps. It got Evan thinking. He asked his wife if she thought anyone would buy their wood burning chemical if it was in a marker. They decided to spend $500 and see. 

Evan bought a bunch of empty markers and in his mom’s garage filled them. Scorch Marker was born. He put them up on Amazon and they started selling. It was 2018. 

By christmas 2020 Evan retired from firefighting and went full time on the crafting business. He needed more products so he reached out to his customers and asked them what they didn’t like about the commonly used sealer Mod Podge. 

The customers came back with a bunch of issues. He focused on the nine common issues and worked with a chemist to formulate a better option. Evan soon had his second hero product, Makers Magic. 

Best part! He didn’t know if it would work. So instead of buying a giant order from a supplier he spent $600 on a piston filler, label machine and a foil sealer and got to work. Great video on his garage set up!

In a month he could mix up, pack and label 10,000 units of Makers Magic. It let him get product into his customers hands right away and get feedback. They’ve since moved it to a manufacturing partner who is filling 25,000 units a month. 

Evan has an amazing YouTube channel where he talks about his business, check it out here

He covers the difficulty of building a business from $1 million to $10 million where all your profits are going back into the business (they’re currently close to $3 million per year). 

He even goes through his expenses: 

  • 20% Cost of Goods

  • 25% Sales and Marketing

  • 25% Salaries

  • 15% Shipping and Fulfillment 

  • 7% Processing fees 

  • 8% Margin

Evan’s goal is to build Scorch Marker into a $10 million brand and then a $100 million company. I love that he’s capturing the entire journey on video for us to share the ride.  

There’s money everywhere.

Sources:

Business Ideas of the Week

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