SHARK TANK APPLICATION: HOW WE CONCEIVED AND DEVELOPED OUR BUSINESS, PART III.

Describe the circumstances surrounding how you conceived and developed your business.

Since we have started selling our Atlas Kits, we have been often asked how this little project of ours came to be.  Well, the truth is that the origin of the Atlas Project has several different roots with each feature having its own story.

ATLAS

For the Atlas (to hold the world), the first time I saw how meaningful a few grains of sand or a single pebble could be was when I was about 10 years old in the prime of the little league career, and my mom convinced a tour guide at the original Yankee Stadium to let her steal some sand from the pitcher’s mound. After which, she proceeded to sprinkle those grains of sand into bat bag, and I swear that whole summer I thought was a New York Yankee. It was that experience that allowed me to understand how powerful something as simple as a little sand or dirt could be when given a story. This started my own obsession of collecting little pieces of the world from around the world as I traveled, but the first time that concept really started taking shape as a potential product was when I met my girlfriend Gretchen in college and had to get her a Valentines’ gift. I had little to no money in college, so I fell back to one of my favorite mantras: “Scarcity Breeds Creativity”.

With the little money I had, I got her a small glass vial from Michaels and told her to put the world in it, and she has done just that. She’s lived in four different countries, traveled to more than 30 more, and has picked up a little piece from everywhere she has gone. So, I’ve taken her own passion for collecting her travels and the crazy fact that she hasn’t gotten rid of me yet as proof of concept that our Atlas Project just might have some potential. So, here we are, making an honest go at it by giving others the opportunity to share that gift to capture all of one’s travels and adventures in one place as one story!