Small Business, Big Dreams: Dartmouth couple starts sports achievement memento venture!

By ROBERT BARBOZA
Editor
December 26, 2007 5:20 PM

DARTMOUTH — Remember back in junior high school, when your basketball team won the league championship, capping off a great season playing hoops with the kids who later became friends for life? Or the Sunday morning when you scored your first touchdown in pads and a helmet?

If those childhood memories are a little hazy a few decades later, don't you wish you had a personalized memento of that special sports achievement sitting on a desktop or a bookshelf to help you relive those youthful glory days?

Steve and Monica Moyer of Dartmouth are hoping that their new business, Game Ball Images, can help your family preserve such treasured memories by imprinting a photo of your player or team and their accomplishments on one of the many sports products their fledgling company offers.

The home-based business can print a photo of your future All Star on everything from a regulation-sized souvenir football to a hockey puck, from a softball or rubber miniature of home plate.

"There's 28 different items we can print photos on," mostly sports balls of all sizes, said Steve, a food service manager at St. George's School in Newport who readily admits to being a fanatic about sports. When not working or helping to coach his son Nathan's Dartmouth Youth Football League team, he keeps busy pursuing marketing leads and turning out the mementos.
Monica, a graphic designer who is now home tending twin four year olds, takes care of most of the design work involved in creating the personalized souvenirs for customers spanning the globe. With her expertise in Photoshop and other graphics software, it's a small business partnership made in heaven.

It was the arrival of twins Emma and Aidan that prompted the young couple to look around for a part-time business that could be operated out of their home, Monica said.

Finding an advertisement for a company called Ball Stars, they decided to investigate further, and ended up becoming a local licensee for the firm, which supplies the mementos, production machinery and related accessories such as display cases for their products.

The photo transfer process is relatively quick and easy, with a client's printed photo or digital image being heat-transferred onto the sports souvenir object chosen. Creating an expanded web site featuring all their products, and easy templates for customers to design their own mementos, has helped draw business from all over the country, and even overseas.

One internet order was for 13 personalized soccer balls for a youth team at an American military base in Germany, Steve noted, and other orders have come in from as far away as India. The enhanced web site (www.gameballimages.com) has made the Dartmouth couple one of Ball Stars' most successful new licensees, the couple indicated.

Indeed, much of the internet business in the first year has come from distant places such as California, Michigan and Texas, while local orders are generally coming from setting up displays at youth sports tournaments around the region.

The family plans their weekend tournament visits as family outings, using a digital camera to capture "a player right out on the field" in an action shot to be used to make a memento, Steve said. "We can take a bunch of action shots and have customers pick the picture they want right off our computer" set up on the sidelines, he noted.

"It's the type of product that really needs to be seen" to be appreciated, Monica added. "That's why we like to go out and set up on site."

Unlike a trophy or team plaque, "You can always look back at it and say, this is what I looked like back then," Steve suggested. That personalized touch is what seems to draw customers, he indicated, noting, "The only limit to the creative possibilities is your imagination."

It was that entrepreneurial imagination that prompted the couple to launch their little business, which they would eventually like to see turn into a full-time operation with a storefront complete with a showroom.

"For us, it's a marathon, not a sprint. We know we have to start slow, and we're not going to make money right away," Steve said.

Like many other small business owners, he and his wife have learned that success takes time and hard work. "We can dream," he suggested, sounding a little like one of those Little Leaguers thinking about playing in Fenway Park some day.

To find out more about Game Ball Images, visit their web site, or call Steve or Monica at (508) 542-4080.

Reprinted from The Chronicle.SouthCoastToday.com Website.
Serving the Dartmouth & Westport communities

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071226/PUB02/712260414

Getting Customers

After launching his BallStars business, Bawl Hogs, just a few short months ago, Marshall B. Lewis is finding it surprisingly easy to find customers. He contacted about five area high schools, sending some of them an introductory e-mail and giving others a more personal touch.

“I visited them and left some samples, and everybody loved them,” says Lewis, who lives in Riverview, Fla. “I’m happy about the way things are going.”

Lewis’ sample kit included his business card, a list of prices, and, in some cases, a ball. “I can’t give everybody balls, so I put together a PowerPoint slide showing the package and e-mailed that to the schools,” he explains.

He keeps the e-mail’s file size small enough (well under six megabytes) so that recipients have no difficulty receiving the information. “I’ve already sold eight balls,” says Lewis, who expects to receive many more orders after the schools receive funding to purchase the balls. “I’m also pursuing football leagues and a city recreational league. One team wants to give balls to all 30 of its kids. They’re just waiting until the season ends to see how the team places.”

Lewis, however, isn’t simply waiting around for business. “I’ll be sending out fliers to the basketball coaches next,” he says.

Balls And Ornaments Are A Natural For The Holidays

With the holidays fast approaching, Marshall B. Lewis expects good things for his fledgling BallStars business, Bawl Hogs, including healthy sales of Christmas ornaments and balls as Christmas gifts.

“There’s an organization on base that originally wanted T-shirts for their 5K Christmas run, but I showed them the balls and ornaments, and they may use those instead,” says Lewis, who serves in the Air Force. “They’re looking for awards, as well as items for the goodie bags they give away after the run. They would put the name of the race on the item.”

Custom photo products boost spending of retail and online print customers!

PMA Data Watch: Custom photo products boost spending of retail and online print customers!

If you are still thinking about whether to expand your photo services beyond traditional printing services, consider this: According to the 2007 PMA U.S. Consumer Photo Buying Report, only about 40 percent of digital camera owners ordered standard photo prints at retail or online in 2006. About 40 percent of those retail and online print customers, however, also ordered custom photo products in 2006, on top of their prints, and their average spending on those products was $51. This figure includes photo CDs and DVDs ordered at stores or online, as well as, photo greeting cards, posters, calendars, and other custom items ordered by print customers. It does not, however, include blank CDs and DVDs, printers, and printer consumables purchased by the same customers for custom photo creations at home. According to PMA Marketing Research data, custom photo products in 2006 comprised the equivalent of a $20 ($51 x 40 percent) premium on every retail/online print customer's spending.

• 67 percent of digital camera owners that made prints in 2006.


• 40 percent of digital camera owners that made prints at retail/online.


• 40 percent of retail/online print customers that ordered custom products.


• $51 is the average retail/online print-customer's spending on custom products.


• $20 is the premium in print customer's spending from custom photo products.

Published December 10th, 2007
View Article: http://www.pmai.org/index.cfm/ci_id/1198/la_id/1.htm

source PMA Marketing Research

Retiring with Ballstars

Marshall B. Lewis knows exactly what he’ll be doing when he retires from the Air Force in two years: He’ll have a successful BallStars franchise. Lewis, who designed everything from Web sites to coins during his armed forces career, purchased a BallStars Pro 5500 system in August after discovering the system’s profit-making potential.

“I was trying to find something in graphics, and I love sports too, and BallStars puts the two together,” he says. “I polled friends and family members about putting their child’s photo on a ball. Everybody I spoke with thought it was a great idea.”

Lewis, who lives in Riverview, Fla., (www.bawlhogs.com) says it’s the kind of item he would’ve loved as a kid. “We had trophies, and those are fine, but th is is more personal,” he says. “Plus, being down here in Florida, the weather is always good, so they play sports year-round. There are so many different areas to sell the product.”

Those plentiful business opportunities have given Lewis high hopes for Bawl Hogs, his fledgling BallStars initiative. “If things start to blossom, I will do BallStars full time,” Lewis says. “Then I’ll have the freedom to do whatever I want. That’s my goal.”