Started in 2001 by Dov Charney, this business grew from modest nothings (selling basic tees on street corners) to 300 retail stores worldwide today. The characteristics of the founder are evident in the values of the factory and the brand today. Edgy, chaotic, bold and ever-changing, American Apparel is one of those businesses that have evolved into a living entity – one that is organically growing (out of control?).

Even though the numbers may show that American Apparel isn’t doing very well for itself (the company’s stock prices are rock bottom since early 2010), their employees definitely do not think so. Our tour guide – Alex spoke of the company with a glint in her eye – a sense of loyalty that comes only with happy employees. Their incentive based factory wages give their workers purpose in their efforts – allowing them to earn anywhere from $8 per hour to $30 per hour based on performance. A creative environment to work in, it seems as though their CEO Dov is one of those extremely hands on (pun intended, with all his sexual harassment cases) people who live the brand.

Lean manufacturing methods are employed on their factory floor, preventing overstock. Turnaround times for new designs are very short as well, sometimes even as short as 3 hours – from selection of fabric, design, cuts, sewing to a sample in Dov’s hands.

They take the “MFG in USA” tag very seriously! The factory is completely self sustained, everything from construction to graphics to IT services is done by employees in house. They do not rely on any external vendor for any of their business functions. This may turn out to be their achilles heel. The company is growing so fast and so quick that they are not able to maintain value for their shareholders. Their sales figures are falling, and so is the stock price. Where is the tipping point? And when will this giant living organism implode? Interesting questions that will only be answered by time.

The bootstrapped approach:

Whatever idea you have, if you plan to implement it yourself, you need time. Not to say that you cannot moonlight for a couple of months before you dive into the deep end. It’s just that things will be easier and take less time if you’re giving it your full attention. This is obviously assuming that your idea does not require a large sum of money to get things off the ground (read: capital investment).

Here’s how to bootstrap

• Quit your day job, get a small garage or a room as office space, get an internet connection and start implementing (my thoughts here are heavily biased towards internet startups and related products).
• No matter how convinced you are about your idea, write a business plan and think about all possible revenue models. Remember, if your idea isn’t making money then it simply won’t work. There has to be a sustainable revenue model for any idea to be successful.
• Keep your core idea close to your chest, yet talk to as many people as you can to gauge how your product/service shall be received in the market.
• Reserve namespace. If you have already thought of a name for your idea, then reserve the hell out of that name. Reserve domains, reserve twitter handles, facebook pages. They will come in use later when you are promoting.
• Find a mentor – everyone usually has a relative who has his/her own business and have been running it for a while. Advice from experienced people is unmeasurable.
• Recruit known people if you have to, ask friends to help out. Find a good designer or coder who is relatively new to the field and will freelance for a lot less money than people who are experienced. You will need to guide them at every step, but eventually it will be a worthy investment.
• Very importantly, implement as quickly as you possibly can, and release a prototype in 3 months. I remember reading about the Urbanspoon story and it said the very same thing – if you don’t ship quickly, you will not make it.
• Find partners. If there are people you know who are working in a similar field, partner with them. The value of finding the right partners is again unmeasurable. It will save you a lot of time, and help you get your idea implemented quicker.
• Borrow money if required, but only from close relatives and friends as opposed to banks (who may harass you later if you screw up).
• Once you’re implementation is complete, sell sell sell! Wear your brand. Be your brand. Promote the hell out of it! Tell your friends about it, tell your friends to tell theirs. Tell your parents to tell their friends about it. Keep pestering people to spread the word. Remember, word of mouth marketing still requires the right mouth! If you know journos, call them and tell them your story.
• Don’t waste money attending startup conferences and traveling unnecessarily initially. Save all that for later.

Once you do all these things (and do them well) then you may be assured that your product/service is doing well (assuming the idea was solid in the first place!). If you start making money within the first year – awesome! If you don’t – no worries, keep persisting. In the mean time, make sure you have completed all the formalities pertaining to legal activities. Register your company, apply for a patent, copyright your name, register your logo, make sure your financials are in place, repay loans.

There are pros and cons to this method as you may imagine. The biggest pro is that this is a very hands on approach and you will thoroughly enjoy it every step of the way. You will love what you are doing and you will never regret anything (again, assuming the idea is solid in the first place!). On the other hand, the cons are the risk involved. If your idea isn’t as solid as you initially thought it was then you’re in a big mess and you’ve lost 2 years of your life. Hence the importance to write your business plan to iron out all wrinkles relating to revenue at the very outset.

The formal approach:

Onto the second approach. I call this the formal approach because it is not as informal and loose as the first approach. They are differentiated purely at what stage you would approach investors. If you’re bootstrapping, you would convince investors by showing them a prototype in action and in the formal approach, you will try to make an investor look at your idea how you see it. Here’s how:

• Get a mentor to guide you on all the following steps.
• Write a business plan.
• Write an executive summary in one page. Say what pain points your idea solves and how.
• Document your ideas about revenue sources and support it with relevant research.
• Make revenue projections and expenditure forecasts. Calculate how much money you will be making in 3 years or even 5 years if you can think that far ahead. Take everything into consideration when you’re making expenditure forecasts. Keep a 50% margin even if you think you have it all measured out.
• Do some market research. Identify your target audience. Talk to as many family and friends about the idea as you possibly can. Prepare a questionnaire and get random people to fill them. Make online surveys, put out polls, email all your friends. Get as much data as you possibly can.
• Identify your competition. Think about competition in unconventional ways (a newspaper can be a competitor to an online local search engine).
• Analyze your competition. Talk to your competitors if possible, send out emails to their CEOs. Find out how they go about things.
• Compile, document and format. Make a presentation or write a whitepaper.
• Prepare an elevator pitch. If your pitch cannot grab an investor’s attention in the first 10 seconds then there’s no way he’ll pay attention to the rest. Pitch your pitch to as many people as you can before approaching an investor. Constantly keep improving and practising your pitch. Find catchlines and tag phrases that will help push your idea in a more catchy way. Record yourself on your webcam and observe where you can improve yourself. Upload it to youtube to send it to friends who are not nearby.
• And finally, when you’re going in for an investor meeting dress confidently and comfortably. Don’t unnecessarily wear a suit or a tie if you’re not comfortable in it. It’s not going to help you convince the investor any better than your words, actions and documents can.

That’s about it. The second approach requires you to have done your homework.

In this post I will not talk about how to find investors because that is simply out of the scope of this article. Maybe I will write about it when I do discover their secret hiding places. In this day and age there are a lot more people willing to take a detour from the beaten path and do something different. I hope this information will help people who are just entering the pool by themselves and give them a float so that they may learn to swim. Do add your own experiences in the comments. I am @sidv on twitter in case you want to start a conversation with me there.

NOTE: The thoughts above are purely my learnings over the last few years with regard to entrepreneurship. These learnings are put down here merely to help people starting out on their own.