BP Oil Spill Claims Another Victim, An Aspiring Entrepreneur

(Please see clarification below regarding Whole Foods role in this story)

No one ever said starting a company was easy. Entrepreneurs spend their time fundraising, building a team, organizing a supply chain, and figuring out who their market actually includes, all in the hopes of creating something valuable. But when Kyle Berner started his ethical flip-flop company Feelgoodz, he never thought that his biggest barrier to success would be an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Feelgoodz was started when then 25-year old Berner spent a year in Thailand, learning the language, teaching English, soaking up the local mood, and wearing flip flops every day. Before landing in Thailand, he had done brief stints in corporate America and even as a hot dog vendor in Texas, but ultimately wanted something different.

One day after about a year in the country, Brener was shopping for a new pair of flip flops when he came across a stall advertising "“Thailand’s most comfortable, all-natural rubber flip-flop.” He and a friend had been brainstorming about how to give back to the country, and the idea immediately dawned on him to start a company that brought the amazing flip flops and the spirit and attitude they embodied back to the US.

Fast forward to earlier this year. The company is up and running, attempting to be a model of how to use business to spur not just financial profit but social and environmental good. They've participated in and received funding through the First Light Venture's Village Capital fund.

Most importantly, they've got a 20 foot container full of 10,000 pairs of flip flops ready to be distributed to 75 Whole Foods locations around the country in early May. That's when disaster struck. As the BP oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico and began to spew toxic oil, the shipment got stuck in the Port of Freeport in the Bahamas en route for its ultimate destination in the Port of New Orleans.

Even though the Port of New Orleans never closed, the disruption and rerouting were massive. The Feelgoodz shipment didn't arrive until late June, almost two months after it was intended. That means that Whole Foods didn't end up stocking the seasonal product, as they're already looking to clearances to make way for Fall and Winter products.

Not only is Feelgoodz sitting on the 10,000 unsold flops, they are also in jeopardy of not being able to repay a $50,000 loan that was part of their Village Capital Funding. The teams of entrepreneurs who allocated that money set it up so that Feelgoodz could use the money to get the product and then pay back the loan in time to have it be reallocated to an education software startup Drop the Chalk. The deadline for that loan is August 18th, and right now, it's not looking good.

This is a bummer of a story. It reinforces how little control we actually have, no matter how well we plan. But it's not necessarily over yet.

So here is the challenge: who has good ideas for how to move 10,000 pairs of flip flops, off season, in an extraordinarily short amount of time?

UPDATE: Kyle has created a special discount code for readers of this blog who purchase a pair of flip flops. Enter CHANGE at checkout for $5 off and $5 flat rate shipping.  No limit. Visit their online store here.

UPDATE 2: We wanted to clarify the situation with Whole Foods so as not to make anyone think that they are a villain in this story. The Whole Foods Kyle had worked with understood the delay and in fact did their best to stock the product they could, but were not able to sell nearly the volume anticipated based on previous year's projections because of the two month delay, leaving the surplus volume that the company is now struggling to move. The only villain in this story is the negligence of BP in allowing the spill to happen in the first place and the cruel hand of fate that happened to put FeelGoodz at the center of it.

Photo credit: loop_oh