You only need to look around Grounds to bear witness to the recent phenomenon known as the iPod -- watch the increasing number of students sporting the easily identifiable white headphones, walking in a trance-like stupor to class. Since Apple gave birth to the iPod, the company's popularity has skyrocketed as prices and variations of the MP3 player have increased. Of the ten million iPods sold to date, nearly half were sold this past winter season alone, according to CNet.com.
Enter Ignite Media.
The company, based in Charlottesville, is the child-project of four University alumni who have teamed up to run the business: Greg Herrington '01, Chip Ransler '01, Brandon Lloyd '02 and Cade Lemcke '02.All four men are already experienced entrepreneurs who run independent small businesses outside of Ignite.
After the holidays, the men had come back to work in the building where they enjoy adjoining offices and noticed they all had the same MP3 player. They also realized they all had the same problem: Each wanted to convert his CDs into MP3 format.
They agreed they had neither the time nor patience required to convert a large number of CDs into MP3s. From this collective thought, Ignite Media was born.
"When you recognize something like that, that's when you start exploring, and you can take advantage of it," Herrington said. "There is a lively market for our services and products."
Ignite Media, which has been in existence for just over one month, is a service that converts CDs into MP3s at one dollar per CD.
How does the process work exactly? It's fairly simple: Customers register through the website or over the telephone. Then, they receive a box from Ignite and fill the spindles up with the CDs they wish to convert into MP3s. After receiving the box, Ignite converts the CDs into MP3 using CD-ripping software that Herrington designed himself.
The final product is the DVD on which all MP3s are stored -- making it literally just a click away from copying and dragging your entire music collection onto your iPod. Overall, the process takes approximately four days.
According to Herrington and Lloyd, response to the service has been substantial. Despite its recent launching, the men say that the volume of requests have been high, the most extreme of which was an order for 1000 CDs to be converted into MP3 format. Converting that many CDs took Ignite only 12 hours, something that would have taken the average person 350 hours.
"Since we launched the site out, the volume [of requests] has impressed us," Lloyd said. "I think we went into this thinking we were not sure how quickly this would go into the market, but we have been hiring people pretty consistently to burn these CDs."
Fourth-year Commerce student Francis Gotianun, also an iPod owner, liked the idea of the service but not the idea of paying for it.
"Why would I pay for something that I could just make my brothers do for me?" he said with a laugh.
Fourth-year College student Greg Hurst is the owner of an iPod and has a collection of over 400 CDs. Although Ignite is directed toward consumers such as him, Hurst said that the price would deter him from using the service.
"Importing a CD isn't really an interactive process -- you just put in the CD, hit import, and then read an article on ESPN," Hurst said.
Addressing that issue, Lloyd said Ignite would soon be offering discount prices for CDs that came in large quantities.
With the recent wave of illegal downloading cases, converting CDs into MP3s can be a tricky legal matter. Ignite Media's website states its support for independent artists and emphasizes that the company does not illegally copy music. In compliance with copyright laws, Ignite does not copy burned CDs unless customers verify that their songs were purchased.
"The proliferation of legitimately used MP3s is increasing -- it is a legitimate service," Herrington said. "It's our business to fulfill their need and get their CD collection ripped, and I think we make our stance clear on burned CDs."
Ignite Media is the third project that these University alumni have started together. They share a love for innovation and entrepreneurship, something which Herrington said had been encouraged by two of his professors at the University.
"I'd taken a graduate engineering class with Jerry Larmount -- he actually owns a business in town as well -- and then he had us think of businesses we would start as a class project," he said. "I continued with this."
Lloyd also said the "entrepreneurial" bug had bitten him hard. Besides business being addictive in the sense that these men can control and maintain their own companies as free agents, Lloyd said the rewards are too great to give up.
"There's nothing more rewarding in running your company," he said. "Your learning curve is so fast, you might go through the tutorial phase that could last ten, fifteen, twenty months, whereas in the entrepreneurial [world] you can learn it within weeks."
According to Herrington, part of being a successful entrepreneur is choosing the right time and place to sell your product.
"A lot of the idea is the timing, the idea of putting your entire CD collection onto iPods," Herrington said. "If we had done that several years ago, we wouldn't be successful because there would have been no market."
And for those fourth-year students who are not yet employed or wish to start businesses of their own, these entrepreneurs offered a few gems of advice. Leadership and a fleshed-out formal business plan, Lloyd and Herrington pointed out, are the cornerstone of any good business.
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