User:Samkali13

Research experience

What were you doing when you were 15 years old? Trying not to drown in schoolwork? Trying to get that one special someone to acknowledge your existence? Well, Sam Hendren, Fonder & CEO of Tech Gone Wild is doing just that and running a successful business! Sam was nine years old when his parents let him make an eBay account to buy a few things, the first things he bought on eBay at nine years old was a PDA.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sam_Hendren.jpg Born 	April 10th, 1997 Nationality 	US

Professional experience

He changed his eBay user ID to Tech Gone Wild, and it was born. "That was the easy part, and then I had to find things to sell," says Sam. "I had $250.00 that I had in my bank account, my parents let me spend it all," He tells us. He bought just a few things hither and thither and sold them on eBay. "It is extremely tough to partner with companies and resell their products with no background and no funds to meet their MOQ (Minimal Order Quantity,)" he tells us. That was until he came across a YouTube video of a young man going to China to invent a case for the new and upcoming Apple iPad. Sam contacted him immediately, and surprisingly, got a response. After some writing back and forth, Sam had placed an order for 10 iPad cases at $25.00 apiece. "My parents were nervous, but I knew it would work out." He tells us. Sam then sold every case and made a profit! He repeated this process several times until he got a pricing agreement with FedEx. "My agreement with FedEx was great, and gave us some credibility,” says Sam. He then had adequate funds to buy more products and expand his business.

Business

After partnering with all the leading electronic accessories manufactures, he moved on to talking with factories in China to manufacture some of his own products. As he was able to manufacture his own iPad cases at such low costs, he was able to sell them extremely low priced. This grew his sales tremendously, so much, so eBay kept pounding him to change his account level from "Personal to Business". “I put them off as long as I could, but it had to be done.” he says. July of 2011, Sam Hendren incorporated his business and Tech Gone Wild, LLC was born. Legally, Sam owns 99% of the company, and his mom owns 1%, just because somebody over the age of 18 must hold a stake in the company. "The past few years have shown tremendous growth" says Sam. So much so, eBay contacted him in early 2012 wanting to schedule an interview and learn how he has grown so quickly in such a short amount of time. Let us fast forward to the current time. Sam Hendren, now 15 years old and a sophomore in high school. He is hesitant to tell us exactly how they are doing now, but he did say "All I can tell you is, sense 2011 we have had over half a million dollars in sales". He also says, "For the past two years we have grown over 200% a year, and were not slowing down." We wanted to know more. How well is he really doing? Well, we did a bit of digging ourselves and here is what we know. Tech Gone Wild ships orders using FedEx SmartPost, a service FedEx reserves for there "High Volume" shippers, generally doing truckloads of shipments a day. They also have a 24 hour call center working for them and MadWire Media, an elite web marketing and design firm handling there website and marketing.

Profile

Sam Hendren was born on April 10th, 1997