The name of her new company may have come to her in a 3 a.m. epiphany, but Lisa Pertzborn-Whiting, founder and CEO, Imagination Trends, has her mind wrapped around business 24/7.
When your business is growing as rapidly as Imagination Trends, business-on-the-brain becomes a chronic condition. Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’ve probably heard how Imagination Trends has landed accounts with the suppliers of Disney and others, but you may not have heard about the steps Pertzborn-Whiting is taking to manage the anticipated growth. From taking advantage of the downsized worker pool to identifying strategic partners in Madison and beyond, she may be providing a case study for the entrepreneurial version of riding a rocket.
In fact, that’s exactly how Pertzborn-Whiting feels as her business prepares for the first of what could be several growth phases. “Absolutely, that’s how I feel, but you know what? It has been something I’ve been working toward all my life,” she related.
Poster Child
Imagination Trends, formerly Big Whopping Prints, makes recyclable wall posters in which characters can be moved around and stuck on by static electricity. The posters have scenes and movable pieces from three different movies: Fairies, Cars, and Toy Story. The poster product, called “You Make a Scene,” gives children an opportunity to direct and interact with the characters from their favorite movies, and serves as room decor.
The product’s applications are endless, and Pertzborn-Whiting, one of 10 winners in the national Make Mine a Million business competition, will soon become one of those women-owned businesses with $1 million or more in annual revenue. In fact, with $4 million in projected 2010 revenues, Imagination Trends will lap the $1 million mark several times before the year is done.
With growth comes the simultaneous need to ramp up staff, financing, equipment, and facilities, while managing growth so that Imagination Trends does not expand faster than it can afford to. That’s not an easy balancing act, but Pertzborn-Whiting, a mother of five who also owns Magellan Mapping, knows about multi-tasking, and she’s getting by with a little help from her friends.
Amped Up to Ramp Up
Imagination Trends is poised to take full advantage of a “downsized” economy in which companies have let go of a lot of talented people. The company, which intends to grow its staff from three to 35 by year’s end, already has found an unemployed person with warehousing and distribution experience to help build its distribution channels. “At the very beginning of this, we knew we were going to need people with industry experience that we didn’t have to bring up to speed,” said Pertzborn-Whiting, who has a track record of hiring special-needs employees. “That meant finding people with years of printing experience and bringing them on board.”
She then turned to local colleges and universities to find “contestants” for a competition among six interns, two of which will have a job following a four-month internship. The process has had unanticipated benefits, as Pertzborn-Whiting had interviewed 50 students from a cross-section of disciplines, not knowing she would need translation services.
“It was amazing to me because we are approved for Disney USA, and they said we want Canada and we want Hong Kong, and we want Tokyo,” Pertzborn-Whiting said. “Well, we had interviewed about 50 students for the internship. Of the six original interns we brought on, we have one that is fluent in French, and someone who is able to translate into Mandarin, the exact same things I needed at that moment.”
Now situated in 2,100 square feet in the Waunakee Business Park, Imagination Trends has leased a manufacturing facility in DeForest to handle short-term demand. Within 18 months, it plans to build a new facility in one of three communities, and needs 45,000 to 50,000 square feet of space, preferably near the Interstate and Dane County Regional Airport, and $4 million alone for capital equipment. It has looked at sites in Vienna, DeForest, and Waunakee, and while the municipal wooing may not compare to the courting of LeBron James, each municipality wants Imagination Trends and the potential tax base it represents.
“I actually ran the Chamber of Commerce here [in Waunakee] for seven years, so I’m very familiar with the community,” Pertzborn-Whiting noted. “It’s a fantastic community, but we have to look at logistics and availability, and for it to fit and grow. We’re being as open-minded and creative as we can be.”
Pertzborn-Whiting not only has new friends in municipal governments, she’s tapping into trusted business relationships, and launching new ones, to establish the network of strategic partners, “co-inventors,” and investors who bring business acumen to the table in addition to money. Some of these associations have been built over years of doing business, and while she can’t yet identify them all, they include Ramesh Bansal, who runs a printing company in India and will partner on R&D and material procurement.
They also include a print partner in Hong Kong, and Waunakee’s Larry Hooker, owner of Retail Sales Solutions. It was Hooker who secured a license to distribute Disney characters; Imagination Trends, as his customer, will develop the products.
When it comes to alliances, Imagination Trends also has fostered public-private partnerships. The company secured $350,000 in “gap” financing from Dane County, and after being told “great product, great idea, wrong time” from several banks, Settler’s Bank stepped up with a working capital line of credit, some equipment financing, and a line of credit to fund the receivables and inventory that will be needed as the business ramps up.
The bank opened in December of 2007 with a clean balance sheet, and its newness played a key role in its ability to lend. “They don’t have some of the ills that other banks have on their books, and they look at projects based on their merits, not on what a computer cranks out,” Pertzborn-Whiting said.
Tom Spitz, founder and CEO of Settler’s Bank, said the two parties discussed capital needs under various scenarios, including expected growth and slower-than-expected growth. He said Imagination Trends not only has a good forecast model, but also a good sense of how much equity it needs, how much bank debt it needs, and how quickly it will convert contracts into cash flow for payroll, debt service, and investors. “They have a tight business plan, and they had a good working command of their business model,” Spitz said. “They needed a certain kind of bank support to get started, and they have larger plans.”
Long Product Line
Those plans include collaborating with new employees to develop additional product lines.
Rick and Nicky Nelson, who joined the company earlier this year, have brought to Imagination Trends a complementary product called Traffix Graphix, which gives the appearance of a painted image. The product, which has an anti-slip component, is designed for outdoor displays, including stadium signage, ground- level parking and store signage and displays — and even hopscotch. Said Rick Nelson: “It was just an idea that we had over multiple years and, again, just forming the right alliance with Lisa. We all happened upon each other at the right time.”
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