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We'll get started
this morning.
KC Roundtable is a group of
20- and 30-year-old
entrepreneurs
who come and help and support
and collaborate together.
Kansas City has an award,
it's the 20--Ingrams'
20 in their Twenties award,
and at a reception,
I met one of the other
recipients, his name was Seth.
We decided to go out
to breakfast and at the end
of the breakfast,
he asked if I wanted to meet
the very next Thursday
for breakfast again.
And at the end of that
next Thursday breakfast,
he asked if I wanted to make it
a regular Thursday thing,
so we started inviting
other friends,
other entrepreneurs,
who were part of
the Kansas City community
and over four years, it grew.
It has a board and a president,
so it's quite a fantastic story.
As president,
it's my responsibility
to make sure that we have
the right leadership team
in place for the group,
to make certain that we
determine kind of
our message and goals
for the year and that
we're staying on message.
We're following through
with the different events
that we have said
we're gonna have,
that we're being consistent
with our meetings.
I'm in charge of getting
the speakers and the other
content for the KC Roundtable
group and we have speakers
every three out of five groups,
usually, and the other
two times, we talk about
each other's businesses,
helping each other out,
what problems they're seeing,
and how we can solve some
of their issues.
Today, we're very honored
to have Barnett Helzberg
who has a very interesting past
and a successful past
and we'll learn much more
about him.
Except for your questions,
I mean, if I could
share one or two of the things
with you, that'd be great.
The reason why I got
involved, when I did
my internet company,
I had no idea
what to do, where to go,
or even where to start,
and so I kind of found
KC Roundtable and went to
the first meeting and realized
that I don't know
a lot, I needed--
a lot to learn,
and so that's why I got involved
with KC Roundtable
and when I launched,
it helped out quite a bit.
Being an entrepreneur's like
being on an emotional
roller coaster, and oftentimes
when you start a company,
it's just you.
You don't have anybody to share
those experiences
or fears with,
or even any of your
great successes,
and KC Roundtable gives us
the opportunity to share
our experiences,
get advice from other people
going through the exact
same thing.
Our key message is that
this is a place to come
and be authentic, be real,
and be vulnerable.
And if you're not willing
to be vulnerable,
you're not willing to
expose, kind of, your areas
of pain or needed growth,
then you're really not gonna
get much out of this group.
You don't always have
to be on and have to
be sellin' all the time,
you can just be honest
and authentic at this group
and really get good feedback
from peers who care about you
and your business.
And we're all lucky enough
to have mentors and advisors
who could give us
the right answers
on what we should be doing.
But it's more fun
to be around peers
who are having the same
struggles you are,
who can just commiserate
with you.
The magic of KC Roundtable
is that we are vulnerable
to one another,
that there is a lot of trust,
and that we can--we can go
to one another and say,
"Yeah, business is going okay,
but I'm really concerned
about this particular threat
or this particular weakness
and how can we really
improve upon the--
in those areas?"
To get involved
in KC Roundtable,
just show up at the First Watch
in Westport.
We meet the first and third
Thursday of every month
at 7:30 in the morning.
You can visit our website
at KCRoundtable.com,
you can also follow us
on Twitter at @kcroundtable.
Kansas City, as a lot of
people know, is a blooming
entrepreneurship city,
and that comes all the way
from the top all the way down
to the entrepreneurs
who are actually building
the companies.
And there's a lot of great
events happening in Kansas City
and most of them happen
at night after work
and so our little niche
is to bring in
like-minded people,
kind of a peer-to-peer type
of group that you can share
and collaborate with,
and we help everybody else out
in the startup community as well
by going to their events,
they come to ours
and, you know, we're trying
to build Kansas City
into the entrepreneurship city
in the country.
This is Reality TV
That Works.
Startups:
Made in Kansas City.
♪
♪
Well, it's a--
it's a pretty big warehouse
and I grew up on roller skates
so back in the days
when we used to have to count
our own inventory
before we had all these
wonderful people to do it
for us, I used to roller skate
through these places.
Ha-ha-ha!
Here we are in our Title Boxing
headquarters, our warehouse
distribution center right here
in good Lenexa, Kansas,
and think we're gonna be
shippin' close to
1,000 orders today.
♪
When we first decided to
get in the equipment business
you know, David and I
bantered around a couple names
and there was an apparel brand
called Champion and I'm like,
"Oh, Champion, you know,
you're a champion, okay,"
and I'm like, "Well, in boxing,
you win the--
you win the title,"
and I'm like, "Oh, you win
a title belt, yeah, title."
We ran it through, uh--
through our trademark attorney
and he's like, "Yeah,"
and that's how we came up with
Title Boxing and--
I sometimes like
to take credit for the name
but he's actually tellin'
the truth.
Fortunately, we're in
the position where
Title is popular enough
to where, if it says "Title",
we can sell it, so our brand
is where we want it to be
and we continue to come out
with more and more apparel,
whether it's warm-ups
or jackets or fight shorts,
workout shorts.
We continue to come out
with more stuff,
and the old stuff continues
to sell, so we're--
we're in a good spot right now.
I actually started boxing
when I was eight years old.
I was small for my age,
so I wanted to get into
something that went by weight.
I went to a boxing workout
and the first time I walked in,
I was just enamored
with boxing,
and it's been a passion of mine
ever since I was
eight years old.
My father has a company
that sells roller skates,
and he's been in
the distribution business
of sporting goods
since I was ten years old,
so I grew up in
a warehouse atmosphere
and I worked in sporting goods
my whole life.
I boxed amateur
for ten years,
won the Golden Gloves
a couple times.
I got a Golden Glove
scholarship.
I was able to attend
Kansas State University,
and graduated from there.
When I got out, I always
wanted to try and continue
doing something with boxing,
'cause it was a passion
of mine.
We worked together
at another sporting goods place
and got together
and not only did we become
friends but we decided,
you know, let's do something
on our own, and I think
we can do--we can get into
this boxing business
and be as big as we can.
So this is our, um,
our Title Boxing Warehouse.
We, uh,
we started at less than
3,000 square feet.
Now we have 165,000 square feet
to house 16,000 different SKUs
of inventory.
So, you know, each one
of these spaces,
that means we have 16,000
of these within the walls
of this warehouse, um,
we'll have over--
over $20 million
worth of inventory
at the present moment.
When we started in 1998,
the internet was--
really didn't have shopping
carts at that time,
so the mail-order business
was you produced a catalog,
you sent it out
to a mailing list
and crossed your fingers
and hope your phone rang
to get some orders.
We were hopin', uh--
We were hopin' to be
doin' 20 orders--
20 orders a day, so, um,
Tony and I would
answer the phones,
and then we'd come back,
come back to the warehouse
and pull 'em and pack 'em
ourselves, and now--
and now we do--
knock on wood, we'll do
20 orders in a minute.
Our goal at the time was
you know, we were just hopin'
that the two of us could make
a living selling boxing
equipment and that was--
you know, that was our goal,
that was our dream.
You know, I heard *** Vitale
once say, you know,
he said, "I'm the most
blessed guy in the world
'cause I gotta get up every day
and do something that I love,
and I get to talk about
basketball," and you know,
as soon as he said that,
I'm like, "Wow," I mean--
It was the same thing for--
It was the same thing for me,
same thing for David.
It's like, I get to go every day
and go to a job I have
a passion for and that I love.
And I--I've never, ever
woke up in the morning
and regretted saying, "Boy,
I have to go to work today."
One of our very first orders
was from Don King Productions,
gloves for one of his
title fights that he ordered
from us.
We have a very good
relationship, we still--
we still work with them,
you know, on a continual basis
and deal with accounts like
Top Rank and UFC and, you know,
we supply all kinds of
big promotion companies,
we supply people
that are working out
in their basement.
Our orders can range from
two items for $100
to this is, uh,
one big order going out
overseas, so, um,
it's all over the map, so--
It's a broad spectrum
of customers and, you know,
there's, you know,
men that are punching
a bag in the garage,
you know, to world
heavyweight champions.
We do, uh--
We do belts for, you know,
everything from professional
fights to, you know,
here's one for, uh,
Mid-East Athletic Conference
Champions,
and we customize 'em and put--
we'll put their medallion,
we'll put their logos,
put 'em, and...
You know, these belts weigh
about five pounds
and these are the same belts
that, you know,
world champions receive.
♪
And one of our claim to fame
is we've done, uh,
a lot of belts for
the Green Bay Packers,
and they've, uh--
they do it for, like,
the Special Teams
Player of the Week or--
And we're almost positive
that's where--
That's where they got
the "Discount Double Check".
♪
In regards to
one of our first customers,
Don King,
he was famous for
ordering last-minute,
and we would ship everything
next-day air,
and it would always make it.
There was one time when it was
just way too late.
He ordered it way too late,
and we literally put
one of our guys
on an airplane
with a bag of fight gloves
for a huge Pay-Per-View event,
and made it in
just the nick of time and--
He landed and literally
got off the plane,
got in a cab,
walked in to the MGM Grand,
holdin' the bag,
walked into the--
they were having the weigh-ins,
and they always inspect
the gloves at weigh-ins,
both camps, so--
inspect the gloves.
He comes walking in
with the bag, like,
"Oh, that's perfect timing,"
and comin' in, you know,
he puts them out there and--
Twenty-year-old guy.
We're back here sweatin'
bullets and, "Oh, no," you know.
We were wait--you know,
HBO's gonna come on tomorrow
and say, "Fight's cancelled,
there's no gloves,
there was no gloves
for the fight," you know.
How could that happen?
It all worked out.
Five, four, three,
two, and turn it out.
Let's go, pick it up.
High knees, high knees.
In 2008--actually it was, uh,
November of 2007,
Tom Lyons came to us
with an idea to start
Title Boxing Club,
and Title Boxing Club
sounded like a decent idea.
We thought maybe a club
could work in Overland Park,
Kansas, and said to Tom,
"Yeah, let's try it out."
Our initial goal was to open
we didn't know, maybe three
or four in Kansas City,
if it could hold that many,
or afford that many.
I thought one.
You may have thought three
of four, I thought one.
And so we opened up
two corporate ones, and then,
one of our general managers
came to us and said,
"Boy, I love this concept,
I love this idea.
I would like to open up
a franchise one."
And so our first probably
five or six that opened up
were all either members
or employees that said,
"Boy, this is a great concept,
this is awesome.
I wanna do this," you know,
and "I wanna do this in Belton,
I wanna do this in St. Joe,
I wanna do this in Topeka."
Currently, we have, uh,
just over 400 Title Boxing Club
franchises sold
and we just opened our 70th
of those 400.
And we plan to open about
two or three every week
for the rest of this year.
The great thing about
the fitness boxing market,
you know, the Title Boxing Clubs
is it's probably about
70 percent women--
female members,
and for us, that's been
kind of our biggest growth.
It's outside of our box,
you know, it's outside
of the amateur boxing,
the professional boxing,
the, you know, male, man boxing.
And so that's been our biggest
growth area is
the fitness boxing.
People that'll never get
into a ring, they'll never
go into a real boxing gym.
They just want to go
hit the bag and get
the best workout possible.
Five, four, three--
We never thought, you know,
to this day,
all we thought about
was tomorrow, you know,
how do we get 20 orders a day
where we can each make a living
selling boxing equipment,
and so, you know,
we never thought about
the big picture, we just
thought about the process.
You know, we never had a victory
dinner or celebration dinner,
or anything else,
it's always--
There's always someone chasing
you, there's always someone
trying to get to the top,
so we've never looked back,
we've always looked forward.
What can we do tomorrow
to get 12 orders instead
of 10, what can we do--
you know, what can we do
on Friday to get 15 orders
instead of 13,
and so it was always about
the process and just--
just getting bigger
or stronger and better
every day.
You know, win the day.
You know, we just always
concentrate on what do we do
to equipment to make it
different, make it better,
make it--
you know, make people want it?
I guess it would be easy
just to say,
you know, "Here's the--
here's the boxing gloves
that have been used and popular
since, you know, 1925,"
and people will still buy 'em,
people will still want 'em.
Our goal obviously was,
you know, how do we
make 'em better,
how do we get different
technologies in there,
how do we get something
that wasn't available last year
into this year,
and so, you know,
things like the gel,
things like, you know,
different linings,
different leathers.
Used to pretty much be
boxing gloves were either
black or maroon, you know,
we came out--we have blue,
we have pink, we have white,
we have, you know,
all different colors
so if, you know,
if they make tennis shoes
in 85 different colors,
why shouldn't you be able
to get equipment
in 85 different colors?
We do a lot of, uh,
custom apparel.
Whether it's amateur boxers
or professional boxers,
most of what you see,
either on ESPN or HBO, has
actually, probably gone through
our warehouse.
You can see a few examples
of some of the crazy stuff
that we're capable of.
You can get trunks, robes,
any colors, any styles,
any--any--
You know, we put the names
on 'em, we do, uh...
♪
You know, we just do--
we just do different, um--
These were--
these were Tony's
when he fought.
They called me
pretty-boy, so.
Yeah, the early advice we got
from David's father
was that you'll never have
enough money,
and you'll--
it'll be double the amount
of work than you're expecting.
I think he told us--
When--he wanted to see
our business plan
before we started,
so we took it to him,
we were like, "Oh, here's a guy
that's been in business
for 25 years in the same--
you know, sporting"--
and he looked at it
and he said,
"I'll give you two words
of advice:
Cut your revenue projections
in half,
and double your expenses."
And he gave it back to us.
And I'm like, "You didn't
even read it," he's like,
"I don't need to read it,"
so that was, uh,
those were true and wise words.
We always just--
we kept reinvesting in
the business, so we never--
you know, we skimped on
ourselves and just always
kept puttin' all the--
all the profit back in,
and just kept--
kept growin' it and we never--
you know, we never took
anything--
took anything out,
to the detriment of our spouses.
You know,
working with friends,
they typically say,
"You shouldn't really do that."
But he's been a great partner.
We, uh--our very first hire
was a friend of ours, again,
and he's still with us.
He, uh--he runs our warehouse
and, you know, funny story.
He asked us, he said
his mom's moving into town,
and said, "Hey, is there any way
that we could hire my mom?"
Tony and I are like,
"No, we can't hire your mom,
are you serious?"
And sure enough,
he talked us into it.
She's still working here, too.
Hi, Rita.
Hi.
She's been here for, uh,
12 years?
Thirteen years.
What's it like
working with these crazy guys?
Oh, it's awesome,
it's awesome.
Great bosses.
We've got a great staff here.
Started off with those two,
I think we have--
Our third employee was
David's mother-in-law.
Yup.
And she still works here.
And today, we have, I believe,
105 employees, 110 employees.
And so we grew from
the two of us to...
we're presently at 110.
The first employee we ever
hired, I probably didn't sleep
for two nights.
You know, when it came
to a point where, you know,
someone's utility bill
or someone's car payment
was reliant on me to
make the business successful,
I got a little nervous,
but that was one of the key
hurdles that we got through
when we were starting out.
♪
He actually still has it.
I learned that from
Sugar Ray Leonard.
Fortunately, we've been
very blessed, you know.
We have a national brand now.
But that was never our
thing that we were striving for.
What we did was, we just said,
every day, let's just get
a little better.
You know, what--
do we need to add new product,
do we need to make something,
you know, put better technology
in it, different foams,
different colors,
different ideas?
So ours was kind of about
the process, we never had
a big vision or big dream
of we're gonna be this big
or be that big.
It was just, let's just
get better every day
and see where that gets us.
A co-production of KCPT.
And Outpost Worldwide:
at home in Kansas City.
♪
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