First hand interview. Jill Testa, Wedding Ring Coffins: "If you believe in your product, just hang in there!"

jill testa Every aspiring entrepreneur needs an inspiration, a positive inspiring example to finally say "Yes!" to a dream of starting own business. Jill Testa from Wedding Ring Coffins is the co-owner of a unique business and today she'll tell us a bit more about how her company started and what did it take. 1. How did the idea of wedding ring coffins appear? The idea for the Wedding Ring Coffin came to me after attending a relative's funeral. By that time, I was already separated for several months and I had been thinking about doing something "special" with my wedding ring. Being at the funeral made me think about the death of my marriage, so the idea of a little coffin for my wedding ring seemed very fitting. 2. Did you have to leave a full-time work to devote yourself to business? No, I had been a full-time stay at home mother for several years prior to starting the business. 3. What difficulties did you encounter starting your business? Neither my partner nor I had any experience in manufacturing, so figuring out how to get the prototype made and finding a manufacturer was probably the hardest and most time consuming aspect. 4. What was the amount of initial investments? I can't give you an exact dollar amount, but we did try to keep our initial costs to a minimum by doing as much work on our own as we could, rather than hiring professionals. My partner has a background in technology and I have a background in accounting, both of which came in handy for starting things up. We also got very lucky because the media picked up on our business and that saved us a lot of money in advertising expenses. 5. What would you advise to aspiring entrepreneurs? It's very hard to start a new business, especially in these tough economic times. But if you believe in your product, just hang in there! And try to take advantage of all the social media opportunities---facebook, youtube, blogs, etc. They're free and they give you the ability to reach millions of potential customers.

Source - Business Ideas