User:Heydon58/sandbox

Business Career
He started his career as a corporate lawyer with a firm called Morrison & Foerster. At the age of 27 he quit his job because he had a business opportunity with one of his clients who owned a little chain of coffee bars. The next 15 years he spent running a serious of businesses, including a website called AllBusiness.com. After years of going to the local deli and getting a bag of fried chips he found himself hiding them underneath his sandwich. In 2005, he was eager to create a new snack that was healthy but still had flavor. Teaming up with Pat Turpin they looked into start-up options in the healthy food market. For less than $10 million in October 2005, they bought a rice cake manufacturing plant outside of Los Angeles. The high-pressure cooking technique pooped the rice cake like popcorn and he realized that popping was the way to create a healthy chip with flavor.

The company called Popchips hit store shelves in May 2007. Mr. Belling focused on word-of-mouth and grass route marketing. The target audience for this product is people that are anxious for a healthier lifestyle but not necessarily obsessed with it. The goal for the company is to make Popchips a real alternative to fried or baked chips. Starting in New York and later in 15 other cities, he sent Popchip bags to thousands of influential individuals. He also sent a bag of Popchips to every employee at J. Crew Group, Inc. and Amazon. Funding wasn't a problem through the process. Mr. belling put some money in and other investors invested in the company. Ashton Kutcher is one of the big name investors for Popchips. Over time he became more involved with the company and is now the company's president of pop culture. Other celebrity investors include fashion model Heidi Klum, fitness trainer Jillian Michaels, and Boston Red Sox baseball player David Ortiz. Pop singer Katy Perry was signed as a spokeswoman and joined as a minority investor in August of 2012. She even got her own flavor of Popchips called Katy's Kettle Corn. By 2008 Popchips sales reach $6.5 million. After drawing many calls from private investors only one drew his eye. TSG Consumer Partners invested $25 million for 30%. TSG introduced him to Rohan Oza who was viataminwater's CMO. Oza loved Popchips and signed on as an investor and adviser. Belling, who grew up in the Bay Area, had the West Coast covered. Oza's mission was to bring Popchips to the East Coast. Within a year Popchips were in Target, Whole Foods, and Virgin Airlines flights. In 2010, sales reached $40.9 million. After Kutcher approached the company in 2011 the sales jumped to $73 million at the end of the year. Finally in 2012, the sales jumped slightly to $93 million.