LeGlue Update: On Filming An Online Series With Tan France And Growing Revenue To $204K/Year
This is a follow up story for LeGlue LLC. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published over 5 years ago, check it out here.
Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.
I am Tripp Phillips, I am now 16 years old and in the 10th grade at Dalton High School. I was honored by being awarded Georgia’s Most Distinguished Gifted Student award for the 2022 school year and to tell the truth, I don't like the attention. I just recently was able to purchase my 1st car which is a 2005 Lexus LS 430. It is awesome. I work at our Le-glue office a few hours each week after baseball practice. We have it streamlined much better than when we first started so I don't have to fill up jars with a spoon anymore. I do fill orders and mix/manufacture products.
My family started Le-Glue when I was in the 3rd grade and for a class project, I came up with the idea of a releasable adhesive to hold my Lego (or another type) bricks together. I wanted to be able to play with what I made and not have it fall apart so easily. That is how Le-Glue was born. We made some and started selling them to local kids and then we decided to try them on Amazon. My younger sister Allee and I would spoon Le-Glue into the container and wrap the label on it. She was better than me so we made her head of Packaging.
Tell us about what you’ve been up to! Has the business been growing?
In the last couple of years we have seen steady growth which may reflect kids staying at home due to the pandemic. We do a lot of our advertising on social media mostly on Facebook for 2 reasons. The first one is that we determined through market study that our product is purchased by adults for their kids and grandkids. So the demographic of our purchase points to 30 years old and up. And those are the folks on Facebook for now. At some point, we will transition to more Tic Tok video-based ads but that will be in the future. We have also been able to form a good relationship with Facebook and were part of an online series on How to Grow your Business with Tan France.
I was able to film the show just before the Pandemic hit but it did get shortened as we had a few more shots to run but no one could travel.
This was an awesome opportunity for my sister and me as we learned a lot from the Facebook folks and learned a lot about how commercials, shows, and movies were made. Acting with Tan was a little intimidating as he is a pro and we were not so we seemed a little slow in our delivery. I enjoyed the behind-the-scenes stuff learning about sets, lighting cameras, and sound. I am considering taking some classes in school to move toward that field in my career.
We do the majority of our sales online as it is hard to get into retail without running the toy circuit in New York, Dallas, LA, and Atlanta. Retail sales are down anyway so we have decided while I am in school to focus more on online direct-to-consumer sales. We are working on a trial with an Amazon fulfillment entity (didn't know if I could mention their name here, if so it is Firefly Buys in Atlanta)to see if they have better bandwidth in using those advertising dollars with them instead of us doing the ads. We have been pleased so far over the last few months but we did give them the easy Christmas season to sell in.
What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?
The first lesson I have learned this year is that inflation is not good for any small business. We have seen our product components go up, shipping is up and the cost of labor is up. But our price stays the same so we just end up losing margin. I know it is worse for other businesses that have to operate on lower margins like restaurants and grocery stores. My dad explained a simple lesson about money to me a few years ago when we were traveling to New York for the toy fair. The bottom line was supply and demand rule the economy so if you put too much money into it, the value of the money will go down. It seems simple to me but most do not get it.
You must like to work hard. Starting a business will take all the time you give it and more.
I am sure we miss opportunities not being heavily in the brick and mortar retail market but we try to maximize our time focusing on the channel that makes the most money with the least amount of output. Allee is on the golf team and I play baseball plus we are both in high school with a lot of homework. So our time is limited to what we can do. And all of our employees are from our school, except for my dad. It's a conscious decision and we believe it is the best for now.
What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?
Hopefully, with covid behind us, we can get back into the swing of visiting with all of Mr. O'leary's entrepreneurs from Shark Tank. Having insight from those folks helps teach me what it takes to be in business. Mr. Wonderful also has a little insight into that as well and he sure enjoys talking about himself. He is great to be partnered with and I do hope we can start meeting in person again soon.
My immediate plans are to make good enough grades to stay on the baseball team and keep my mom off my tail. I want to learn welding and some carpentry work over the summer so I can have better insight into what type of things I want to choose for college and my career. We will continue the path we have chosen for Le-glue and grow organically. We love helping kids of all ages protect their brick creations and love getting emails and calls from them.
Have you read any good books in the last year?
I watch a lot of videos on my phone and only read books when I have to in school. I do enjoy WWII documentaries and books if I have time to get into them. I have done a few podcasts about our experience on Shark Tank and running a business as a teenager.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?
I sort of always say the same thing when I am asked about being an entrepreneur.
Number 1, make sure you have the stomach for it. You will have trouble, it is difficult and you cannot please everyone. So people will hate your product and they will love it too. People will like you and they will not like you. You just have to always be kind, helpful, and respectful.
Number 2, you must like to work hard. Starting a business will take all the time you give it and more.
Number 3, Set a goal. Mine was fairly simple, Get on Shark Tank. I did it and now I have new goals. I always tell kids when I speak at schools, you can never meet a goal if you don't set it. So then you never know what you could or did not achieve.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
We hired my friends from school to help us. It gives them extra money, teaches them about business and we have fun while doing it.
Where can we go to learn more?
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
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