AboutEric Hofer Expertise Over 27 years experience, with 17 in international FMCG in back office operations and in field sales and data collection, including design, development and deployment of Handhelds, Marketing Equipment (Service, Tracking and Return on Investment), reporting and Vending management. Have participated on the launch of operations in new markets, and re-engineered the back office in several countries.
Experience Designed and led the development and deployment internal ERP system for Pepsi used in On-Premise/Vending in 13 markets.
Designed 2 handheld systems, the latest is now deployed in 4 markets internationally.
Re-engineered the back office functions (settlements, despatch, invoicing, credit control, etc) for over 20 snack, confectionary and beverage operators.
Developing software: Progress, VB, Access, C, Sybase, SA
Organizations Innovative-Selling Solutions
Publications BudapestSun
Education/Credentials State University of New York - BA Economics
NYU - Courant - Graduate work - Computing
Past/Present clients PepsiAmericas
PepsiCola International
PepsiCola Company
British Steel
British Telecom
Britvic (Pepsi's bottler in the UK)
AT&T
BellSouth
Mars Overseas Bottling
Pepsi France
Matutano (Frito-Lay Spain)
Frito-Lay
Pepsi Foods International
Chase Manhattan Bank
Kidder Peabody
National Power
SmithKline Beecham
Mars Overseas Bottling (Pepsi Azerbaijan)
A&P Bottling (Pepsi Serbia & Montenegro)
Iberia Bottlers (Pepsi Georgia)
Question Dear Eric,
I'm currently considering an energy drink start up and have seen reference to
having enough capital. How much is enough? Can you give an approximate
dollar figure?
Answer This is a "length of string" question: eg. there's no "right" answer.
You need to do a business plan, establish resources available, competition, marketing, niche of market, route to market, how you plan to grow the business, local resource costs, etc.
I'm sure there are people more versed than me that can give you a plan, but will still hedge their bets as to "how much" you need...
You could do it on a shoe-string - say for 250K but then you'll need to get "injections", more than likely you'll need access to at least 2M in capital going in. And you'd be safer with 4M.
