My First Million-Dollar Account

Four entrepreneurs recall the big sale that changed it all.

Mackenzie Stroh

BRACE YOURSELF: Sam Braunstein made sure she had production in place before seeking chains like Wal-Mart. Good thing she did.

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Bryce Boyer

SHOE BUSINESS: Ron Snyder needed to take Crocs global––and had less than a month to do it.

Jason Grow

THE BIG BANG: Girish Kumar Navani made a big bet on a major health care contract. It Paid off.

Of all the milestones of success in business, few are more exhilarating than that first million-dollar sale. Of course, the road to that seven-figure moment varies from company to company. Sometimes it happens suddenly, almost by accident. Other times, it follows months, or even years, of painstaking preparations. But the impact is almost always the same: It's the sale that catapults the company into the big time, paving the way for larger deals. Here's how four entrepreneurs pulled it off.

Breaking into Wal-Mart

"We didn't get a lot of sleep over that summer, but we delivered."

Businesses plot for years about getting into Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT). Sam Braunstein was signing a million-dollar deal with the retailing behemoth just six months after starting her company. Braunstein is the founder of Wellgate Products, a New York -- based manufacturer of orthopedic braces and supports for women. When she approached Wal-Mart, Wellgate's knee and ankle supports were selling briskly in a number of small retail chains nationwide; Wal-Mart's mass audience, Braunstein sensed, would be perfect.

The retailer is constantly on the lookout for new products, so getting a meeting took only a few phone calls. "As long as you are willing to work with their timing, they want to meet with you," Braunstein says. She flew to Bentonville, Arkansas, and found herself sitting nervously in a waiting room with other would-be vendors. Finally, she was called to a cubicle to make her pitch. Braunstein had brought a detailed analysis of the market for women's orthopedic supports. Nothing on the market, she explained, had been designed with women in mind. She told the buyer about her own experience as a runner with joint problems, describing how she could never find braces that fit correctly or looked good. The Wal-Mart buyer, a woman, appeared interested. Three months later, Braunstein got the news by e-mail: Wal-Mart wanted to launch four of the company's nine products -- two wrist supports and two knee supports -- in its stores nationwide beginning in September 2006, just a few months away. The deal was worth more than $1 million. And there would be no trials or limited editions or test runs.

Fortunately, Braunstein had already lined up financing and manufacturing capacity in Asia for the inventory. She knew she needed to be completely prepared for a national launch before even beginning those discussions. Indeed, when Wal-Mart came through, Braunstein ordered extra inventory so she would have stockpiles on hand, just in case. When sales were stronger than expected, she says, she was glad she had. "We didn't get a lot of sleep over that summer, but we delivered," she says.

Once the products were in Wal-Mart, things moved very quickly. She snared other national chains she had been pitching -- including Target (NYSE:TGT) and Kmart -- and, today, Wellgate's distribution spans 8,500 stores.

In February, just 18 months after the Wal-Mart deal, Braunstein sold Wellgate to Lil' Drug Store Products, a marketer of women's health products, for an undisclosed sum. (Braunstein left the company after the sale and has yet to decide her next move.) Looking back, she is amazed how everything came together in the wake of that first sale to Wal-Mart. "A million-dollar sale is never a one-time deal, like buying an airplane or a house," she says. "You are no longer selling to mom-and-pops around the corner."

Anything Is Possible

"Saying no never occurred to us. We took it as a challenge."

Ron Snyder, chief executive of Crocs, the Niwot, Colorado -- based maker of rubbery shoes, runs a company that's approaching $1 billion in sales. But back in mid-2004, he was a consultant to Crocs, as an in-between gig after leaving a high-pressure job as head of global operations for Flextronics (NASDAQ:FLEX). Before he even got the CEO title, things took off. "We had a groundswell of interest, and Dillard's heard about us," Snyder recalls. A quick meeting with the department-store chain's buyers led to an order for more than $1 million worth of shoes in the fall of 2004, with indications of orders to come.

It didn't take long for excitement to give way to reality. With only one factory, in Canada, Crocs lacked the capacity to ramp up its production from 30,000 to 300,000 pairs of shoes a month. "There was no chance we could fulfill the order," Snyder says. Fortunately, he had a few contacts in Asia and was able to find a contractor in about a month. Soon, Crocs was shipping thousands of pairs of shoes. "Saying no never occurred to us," Snyder says. "We took it as a challenge. And I think it propelled us into formulating a strategy so that we could manufacture in the United States, in Canada, in Mexico, and in Asia."

Today, Crocs has 13 manufacturing facilities and 15 distribution centers around the world and can get seven million pairs of shoes a month into stores worldwide. And Snyder's global focus has helped push Crocs sales overseas, from Japan to Brazil, with international revenue now accounting for nearly half of the company's total. In many ways, that first big deal made it all possible. "Every decision we made back then," Snyder says, "we'd stop and think about whether it was the right thing for 2008 or 2009."

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