3/24/2023 0 Comments Klipped kipppahOn the web side, I’ve always had trouble with having programmers design the vision I have for my site. It was hard in the beginning to be able to pay for the expenses needed to operate or hire any employees. I literally started Klipped Kippahs with $1,000 and credit cards. I was a student in college with a family when I started out, so I didn’t have the capital to start operating a business. It’s a really underrated difference, and a lot of times without a lot of money it can be hard to be able to give a business the fuel it needs to try new things and grow. Jon Kaweblum: The first lesson I learned is that there is a big difference between a good idea and a successful business. Jerome Knyszewski: Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard? I even bought a “How to Apply for Your First Patent” book, it was definitely an aha time for me. And just like that, I was in the yarmulke business. Once the state approved the concept, we took 25 of those samples and sent them to Jewish schools all over the country. The boys liked it, so I decided to send samples to the Florida High School Athletic Association in Tallahassee. I ended up creating a sample and gave it to the boys to use during practice. I had seen wig clips before, and I thought of this idea to sew wig clips into yarmulkes. One year, our application letter got rejected and their reasoning was that the yarmulke clips could be dangerous during the sport. Eventually I also became the athletic director of the school, and every year we had to apply for a certain letter from the state that allowed to boys to wear their yarmulkes during the games. When I was in architectural school, I was coaching a boys varsity basketball team in for a Jewish Orthodox school in Boca Raton and they would play with their yarmulkes on. Jon Kaweblum: I’m an architect by training and also a big basketball junkie in my free time. Jerome Knyszewski: What was the “Aha Moment” that led to the idea for your current company? Can you share that story with us? Now it is somewhat expected in the custom e-commerce realm for consumers to be able to come onto your website and be able to create their designs. Our customers were able to go online and satisfy 85% of their needs straight from the website which was pretty cool to see that work. At the time, there was nothing else like it in our industry. A lot of our products are custom, so seven years ago before third-party platforms for customization were easily accessible, we built a system from the ground up where users could design yarmulkes and see what their creations would look like directly on the site. My business model wasn’t designed to be on the web at first, but it became part of the strategy after the fact. Jon Kaweblum: I didn’t initially start out as an e-commerce business per say, I came up with a product and then I started to sell it online. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started? Jerome Knyszewski: Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. The first lesson I learned is that there is a big difference between a good idea and a successful business. Jon Kaweblum also started up an online Klipped Kippahs store to make it easier for the public to buy their products.Ĭheck out more interviews with ingenious founders here. They devised ways to enable people to design and make the sort of yarmulke they want, which covered changing the material and pattern of the kippah. After receiving a US patent, the company shot to the races right away.Ĭurrently, Jon Kaweblum and Klipped Kippahs are now offering diverse options to people who want to wear their yarmulkes. With his invention, his players could now give their all on the court without breaking any rules and “making it convenient for everyone else. So, Jon Kaweblum came up with Klipped Kippahs out of necessity.
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