The Squirrel Defense Initiative

1200 Words3 Pages

Originated in 1996, due to the frustrations of squirrels destroying Richard Walsh’s bird feeder on his new deck, Ed Walsh, Richard’s brother came up with the concept of building a solar bird feeder to help Richard out. The concept of a bird feeder that allowed birds to continue to eat the bird seed, while preventing the squirrels from reaching the food and destroying the feeders, soon became an obsession for Ed. What once originated with a car battery developed over the years to a solar cell, and was successful until the squirrels discovered that they could eat early in the morning or late evenings before the battery charged. Bo Haeberle became involved in the bird feeder project after he overheard how much trouble Ed was having coming up with a feeder that worked and also didn’t harm the squirrels, while under his employment at Visual Design, Inc.

After developing the first prototype, Ed took his solar bird feeder to a Habitat for Humanity auction and received the highest bid of all the items there, and continued on to win three Best New Product Awards at various birding tradeshows. Ed applied for and was granted a patent on his first submission. After a next couple years, the Squirrel Defense Initiative (SDI, Inc.) was co-founded by Ed and Bo in October of 1998.

Developing the bird feeders (which actually look more like bird houses) into two designs, the company, now including their third partner Scott Wilson, estimated that the average cost of building one bird house was $100 to produce. All the work was done by hand and production cost was high due to the difficulty of the red cedar that was part of the design on the Country style house. The Town style house offered more of a contemporary style with a white ...

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...ncome per Month $ 5,054

1999 Retail cost of birdfeeders $300.00

2014 Retail cost of birdfeeders $159.95

Markdown Percentage 0.533

Profit margin of feeders in 1999 38

Total Equity $28,123

Production needed to break even 740

Works Cited

Feeder, S.-o. T. (2014). The Squirrel Defense Initiative (SDI). Retrieved from http://www.squirrel-off.com/warranty.html

Journal, T. B. (2013, July 12). Abundance of resources for entrepreneurs may be overwhelming . Retrieved from http://www.bizjournals.com/triad/print-edition/2013/07/12/abundance-of-resources-for.html?page=all

University, J. K. (2013). Case 2 The Solar Feeder. In Business Policies and Strategies (pp. 331-341). McGraw Hill .

Yelp. (2004-2014). Squirrel-Off / SDI, Inc. Retrieved from Greensboro Business Listings : http://www.yelp.com/biz/squirrel-off-sdi-inc-greensboro

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