Greg Eisen knew he”™d be in business for himself when he was 8 years old “and I gave up thinking I”™d become an NBA basketball player.” He had plenty of role models. Both his grandfathers were entrepreneurs, and his father, Mel, was a serial entrepreneur. “He”™s been in many businesses over the years,” Eisen said of his dad. “He”™s my mentor.”
The idea of exactly what business he”™d be in began to gel when he took a job at a mom-and-pop sports photography business while he was in high school in Danbury, where he grew up. “It was a very small, little business that provided team and individual photographs for youth organizations,” he said. “It was purely local in the Greater Danbury area.”
Still, the business ”“ called Sportography ”“ wasn”™t bad. “Maybe 10,000 kids were photographed each year,” Eisen estimated. That included photos of local baseball, soccer, basketball and football teams like Little League and Pop Warner, and of each of the players that wanted a photo of themselves in uniform. Lumped in there were high school teams and teams from Western Connecticut State University as well. All in all, it was a tidy little business that grossed about $200,000 a year ”“ all out of the basement of the owner”™s home.
Eisen worked at Sportography through high school and summers through college, learning the business and doing “anything from photography to office work.” When he graduated from the Binghamton University in 1996, “I bought into the business,” he said. Well, sort of. He approached owner Jonathon Chase and said he would work for him for free for six months ”“ Eisen was still living at home ”“ help him improve and build his business, “and then start my own business in Westchester and grow from there.”
Chase agreed and “in six months I doubled his business and transformed it entirely,” Eisen said. “I professionalized his business. He had a mom-and-pop shop; he ran everything. He was very organized but worked by the seat of his pants. I created systems, processes, documented all the processes, and I pounded the pavement for sales.”
When Eisen told Chase he was ready to strike out on his own, Chase protested. “He said, ”˜I can”™t let you leave because I don”™t know what you”™ve done to my business; I don”™t understand anything,”™” Eisen said. What Eisen had done was double the annual sales to $400,000, expanded the company”™s reach beyond metro Danbury and “took a mom-and-pop business and approached it like a Fortune 500 company.”
In early 1997 Eisen and Chase became legal 50-50 partners. Two years later, Eisen”™s younger brother, Eric, joined as a third partner, and a few years after that, Chase retired. “He was much older than us,” Eisen said. “Eric and I had youthful energy and spirit, and we preferred to go on alone.”
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A national brand
The Eisen brothers began building the business big time. “I saw a really unique opportunity in a niche industry to build the business into a regional or national brand in an industry where there virtually were none and still are none,” he said. “We made sales plans and marketing plans. Everything we did from job titles and descriptions (he is president and chief executive officer; Eric is chief operating officer) to literature and marketing paraphernalia we did in a very professional manner to distinguish ourselves as a company.
“My goal is to build a national brand,” Eisen said. “I”™ve always been a dreamer, a visionary. I think big.” Within the next five years, he said, “we”™ll have a nationally recognized brand. Our vision statement is to be the pre-eminent sports photography company nationwide. Anytime you think of youth sports photography, you”™ll think of Sportography.”
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Eisen is well on his way to achieving that vision. Since he joined Sportography full time in 1996, the business has grown from $200,000 to more than $4 million in annual sales, from 10,000 team and individual photos to more than 200,000 a year now taken by more than 300 photographers in 11 states, and from a single location in the previous owner”™s basement to corporate offices in Brookfield and offices in Massachusetts, Long Island, Pennsylvania and Michigan. And Eisen has moved from Danbury to the Trump Towers in White Plains, N.Y., his brother to a luxury apartment across the street.
Next year Eisen plans on opening offices in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and “we”™re looking at acquisition partners, contacting smaller businesses and discussing the possibility of taking them over.”
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Wild weekends
Sportography is one of those businesses with mind-numbing logistics that would scare off someone with less enthusiasm than the Eisen brothers have ”“ even in a technologically savvy business like this one. “Most of our work is on weekends and is very seasonal,” Eisen said. “We have weekends where we photograph 25,000 children. We have hundreds of staff members out in hundreds of locations. A busy spring weekend at the end of April is pretty wild.”
Photographers don”™t just show up one breezy Saturday morning for a photo shoot. “A photo event is structured and scheduled,” he said. “We have a whole process, and we do it better than anybody else out there.”
Parents can even order photos of their Little Leaguer online, where they can view but not download low-resolution, water-marked images. “We”™re turning pictures around in seven to 10 days,” he said. “That”™s incredible for the industry, where companies can have a six-week turnaround. But we have economies of scale, the ability to dictate to our vendors how we do business.”
What makes Sportography unique, he said, “is our ability to create a hassle-free turnkey photo solution for each organization, which can use a much larger organization than their local photographer. We”™ve got technological resources and creative resources, a whole staff of people serving the organization opposed to one person juggling everything.”
So far, the brothers have “fully funded our business and its growth on our own,” Eisen said. “We have no debt and no investors, but I realize there”™ll come a point where ”“ if we really want to scale this thing the way I think we can ”“ we”™ll have to seek capital. We”™re entertaining numerous options now. Several people want to give us money, but they want majority ownership, and we”™re not prepared to give that up.”
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