The King of Dog Shit

I am the King of Dog Shit. A title of dubious distinction but one I have earned the right to bear. It was bestowed upon me by a friend to acknowledge my talent for weaving elaborate schemes with scant chance of a payoff. I am a creative dreamer. So was Thomas Edison. He is only remembered as the Father of Electricity. I was named a King.

Years ago I worked in an office, one of many salaried drones wishing he was somewhere else doing anything else. I had a coworker named Benny. We hit it off immediately. I think we each recognized in the other something of ourselves; bored intelligent underachievers cynically resigned to act out the absurd roles in which we had allowed ourselves to be cast.

We made each other laugh. At first just in passing but eventually over extended lunches at The Beanery, a fly speckled diner tucked behind an industrial park near the office. Our usual fare was black beans with white rice, chopped onion and Texas Pete hot sauce. The dish was noteworthy for its value, cheap and piled high.

We joked, traded stories from the office and shared about the fears and joys, dreams and frustrations that filled our lives. It was good to have a friend with whom I could be real in the middle of the workday.

At some point we began to hatch schemes. The first was to sell pieces of the Berlin Wall. The dismantling had just begun and we figured we could market hunks of concrete, boxed with a Letter of Authenticity, for less than ten dollars. The more we talked about it the more we believed it was a sure thing. We fine tuned the plan over weeks, learning where the rubble had been transported around Berlin, pricing the cost of Trans-Atlantic shipping containers, talking with printers and box fabricators, determining the most cost-effective method of cutting the rubble into symmetrical blocks, sorting, stuffing. We identified and tackled a seemingly endless stream of details.

I don’t know which of us first noticed the television commercial, "Buy a Piece of History!" "Letter of Authenticity!" "$9.95!" We were crushed! But, at the same time, validated. Our failure had been one of speed; we had taken too long. Next time we would be ready.

A Berlin Wall doesn’t come along every day. We waited for the next opportunity, certain that we would know it when we saw it. But, if one came along it must have passed while our backs were turned.

We turned our attention to individual projects. Benny's plan was to market school locker accessories to students by mail order through teen magazines. It sounded like a great idea but it required up-front money for product and advertising and shipping. A great idea, but too ambitious in my opinion.

My own idea was a model of simplicity, a sure winner. Our city recently had passed a "Pooper Scooper" ordinance. Owners were required to clean up after their pets. I reasoned that a product which pet owners could obtain easily, at low cost and dispose of after one use, was bound to succeed. The product itself could be assembled from readily available materials; brown lunch bags, disposable plastic gloves, and rectangles of thin cardboard. Assembly could be accomplished inexpensively at a local Disability Employment Center where workers would slip a single glove into each bag, include a rectangle of cardboard to serve as a scoop, band the bags into bundles of 20 and stamp the band with the logo "The Original Doggie Bag."

I pictured every convenience store, grocery and pet shop as a potential outlet. The profit potential seemed staggering; multiply the number of dogs in the city by 2 or 3 daily uses, assume a price of 15 cents per bag and it didn’t take long to imagine myself spending my days on the golf course and my nights in the clubs.

Well, Benny’s plan came together admirably. He obtained inexpensive plastic items originally designed for other uses and turned them into locker accessories. He sold them by mail order and marketed through magazines. He didn’t get rich but he made a handsome profit. Benny followed through on his plan and realized a dream. He developed a proven formula for success.

And I, well I made some phone calls. The labor cost of occupationally challenged workers turned out to be higher than I had imagined. And, outside of the Beanery, I didn’t find a lot of interest in my product. I suppose my enthusiasm really began to wane as I began noticing the people out walking their pets early in the morning as I drove to work. Each was a potential customer. Each one carried an old plastic grocery bag.

Benny came away from our entrepreneurial experiment as a moderately successful mail order businessman with real world experience. He should feel confident in his ability to repeat the process in the future with a different product, a different target market and a reasonable expectation of turning a profit.

And I came away with a title, the King of Dog Shit.