“The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.” Vince Lombardi
It takes perseverance to build up a customer base from scratch. To set a goal and not let up until it’s achieved. And that’s just what Shawn did. Armed with the lofty goal to make at least one sale a day, he began to put Trail Blazer on the map.
“I went regional first, based on my university education,” says Shawn. “That’s what we were taught. So, I planned to start local and expand out. It didn’t work out well for me.” Local retailers just flat-out refused to believe that Trail Blazer would actually succeed while manufacturing the product in Atlantic Canada. So, Curtis and Shawn had to make the hard decision to move on. “I struggled in Atlantic Canada for a while, picked up a couple stores. Then I went to Ontario and in my first year I picked up 196 accounts.”
Of course, it wasn’t quite that simple. This was 1995. There was no such thing as just looking it up online. Shawn had to thumb through the yellow pages for hundreds of towns and cities, province to province.