Tiffanie and Daren Gisseman loved boxers probably more than people should love dogs. When showing her dogs in shows, there were no sanitary boundaries between Tiffanie and her boxers. I won’t go into detail, but let’s just say that whatever was in the dog’s mouth was welcome in hers, should the need arise. But boxers weren’t just a passion for the couple, they were a micro-business that was booming. Would the Gissemans find themselves love-blind when it came to making tough business decisions?
Not this time, doggone it. Despite their total devotion to the squashed-face, clipped-tail pouches, when the Gisseman’s saw the national boxer market start to flood with puppies, they pulled their emotions up short and switched to another breed of dogs.
Many of their cohorts and competitors in the boxer breeding business weren’t quite so good at reading the tea leaves. Many of the kooky and oddly-intense boxer breeders kept their eggs in the boxer basket and they’ve taken a beating.
It’s hard to switch from one market to another – you walk away from contacts, background knowledge, investment money and reputation. It’s tough for a dog breeder to make a quick about-face especially after they’ve invested thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars in a particular breed.
Lucky for the Gisseman’s it came easy. They sensed where the boxer breed was going and they started looking at alternatives early on. Mini Bull Terriers piqued their interest especially after they discovered how difficult it was to get one for themselves. That could mean only one thing: Mini Bulls were in very short supply and they’d go for big dollars. They ponied up the cash and got their first mini bull and their second breeding program got underway, just in the nick of time.
The Gisseman’s are serial entrepreneurs with a couple of failures already under their belt. They’d done well with Tiffanie’s home hair styling salon until the economy began to dry up. They’d also built up a small dog tending business that had languished for years. Daren had always maintained a day job, but he relished the idea of going back to school to become an educator. They’d need at least one of their family businesses to stand firm for him to pursue his dream.
Their boxer breeding business would’ve melted away, just like the hair salon and the dog tending, except the couple caught wind of the change that was coming and they “evolved” from boxers to mini bulls. Lucky for them. The mini bull business has been the one thing going right for them in a bad economy.
Marketing mini bulls has also come easy. Jumping on the back of their already-functioning boxer breeding website, the Gisseman’s reached out to a national and even an international market with their online reach. Perhaps it’d be easier to sell mini bulls only to the local, Intermountain West market, but the Gisseman’s continue to place mini bulls around the country and they continue to expand their reach and reputation as mini bull experts.
After paying the price in micro-business failure, Daren and Tiffanie made a couple of smart decisions and now they’re sitting at the top of a small but lucrative mini bull empire.{jcomments on}
