Lemonade Inc. Encourages Entrepreneurship Online
By Chris Bosak, The Hour, Norwalk, Conn.
Sep. 14–NORWALK — It’s called Lemonade Inc., its Web site is www.lemonade.com, and it encourages individuals to set up lemonade stands. Its association with lemons ends there.
Its association with the entrepreneurial spirit of the neighborhood lemonade stand, however, is what the new Norwalk-based Internet company is all about.
At lemonade.com, users set up their own digital “Lemonade Stand,” whereby they recommend and sell products from major retailers such as Wal-Mart, Apple and Macy’s, and receive a commission from all sales. The stand always remains at www.lemonade.com, but may also be displayed on personal web pages and blogs.
According to co-founder and CEO Tom Zawacki and chief strategy officer Tim Smith, setting up a Lemonade Stand is so easy the company adopted the phrase “e-commerce for everyone” as its official slogan. Officially launched on Monday, lemonade.com users have already created more than 800 stands.
“It harkens back to the original Lemonade Stand,” Zawacki said. “You’d work with your parents to customize a stand at the end or your driveway. It taught values of entrepreneurship, self-reliance and hard work.
“With lemonade.com, you customize your design and put the products and brands you love into your stand for sale,” he added. “You can choose from iPods to jeans to fishing gear. Whatever it is.”
Lemonade Stands are free to set up. Users get paid a predetermined commission from the retailer if they sell products. Lemonade.com takes 20 percent of the commission paid to the user. All sales are made on the retailer’s Web site, but the transaction is tracked back to the original Lemonade Stand. Product prices on Lemonade Stands are the same at the retailers’ sites.
Although it was launched less than a week ago, Lemonade Inc. has already scored a major victory in the world of Internet business. Facebook, a popular social networking Web site with 35 million users, has approved the use of Lemonade Stands on its site.
“It was a strenuous approval process. We’re the first application to allow Facebook users to make money,” Zawacki said. “It’s a combination of social networking and commerce that comes together at lemonade.com.”
Users may also put their Lemonade Stands on sites such as MySpace, AOL People Connect, and Blogger.
Zawacki and his business partners came up with the idea for Lemonade Inc.
while sitting around and talking at a coffee shop. Although they are young entrepreneurs, they were already armed with technology business know-hoe.
Zawacki, Smith and the company’s technical development leader Patrick Moore had a combined 37 years of experience at Modem Media, a Norwalk interactive marketing company. Zawacki started at Modem Media in 1992 when he was one of only four employees at the company. Modem Media, which is still based in Norwalk, now has more than 1,000 employees in offices throughout the world.
“We built Modem Media by coming up with innovative ideas. Lemonade was born from the experience my team and I had at Modem Media,” Zawacki said. “We all left Modem Media about three years ago. We got the band back together to start this. It’s been fun.”
Zawacki was also encouraged that several users are setting up Lemonade Stands to raise money for nonprofit or community organizations.
“Kids are raising money for marching bands or baseball teams,” Zawacki said.
“Save the Children can feed a child for $28 a month. Whatever small part we can do to help the world become a better place … we hope we can become a part of it.”
Zawacki said Lemonade Inc. will donate a percentage of next year’s proceeds to various charities.
Lemonade Stand creators may also choose products from the following retailers: Land’s End, EBGames, Liz Claiborne, eLuxury, The Sharper Image, Hotwire Travel, Nordstrom, MovieLink, TigerDirect Electronics and others.
“We’ve worked very hard to make sure we offer broad retail category coverage for Lemonade Stand owners,” Smith said. ” We’ve already seen a variety of stands promoting video games, downloadable music collections, urban fashion, and baby products recommended by new mothers.”
ON THE WEB: www.lemonade.com
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Hour, Norwalk, Conn.
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