David Aquino grew frustrated by a barrage of news stories that health care workers and people on the front lines couldn’t get PPE. He thought, how can I create a solution by providing this product? That motivation, in combination with his background of leading apparel companies and global supply chain management, was a natural fit. David Aquino set out and founded Certain Supply, the ethical PPE company.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
David’s Step Father
When business started difficulties overcame:
“there is a couple of areas that were the focus. One is just believing that you could actually accomplish something given that everybody was trying to solve and availability issue on PPE… in protective equipment. So, one was kind of having the audacity to say yes, we can stick our nose into this and provide meaningful values… Part two in terms of launching the business… The US in particular is so much negative media around fraudulent product or around people not getting their product that they paid for, that kind of thing, and we wanted to be the anti-profiteers and the anti-brokers. We wanted to build a real business from the right foundation”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement Book by Eliyahu M GoldrattFavourite Quote:
“there is a helping hand at the end of your arm”
Recommended Online Resources:
Statista – The Statistics Portal for Market Data, Market Research and Market Studies. Find statistics, consumer survey results and industry studies from over 22,500 sources on over 60,000 topics on the internet s leading statistics database
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“if you are not passionate and not willing to kind of, go all in don’t do it. And that focal point is if you have the choice to do something else but you feel that there is no other way but to do the work that you are excited about then you are going to be successful”…[Listen for More]
More About David Aquino:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse.” Florence Nightingale
Other Quotes From the Chat with David Aquino:
- “the funding issue is obvious and as silly as that sounds I think that was one which is either putting your chips in early and being more clearly aggressive rather than some sequential I think would have helped us given the timeline. I think that’s one big one meaning that we ultimately got there as you scale but, in some ways, it would have been easier to not resist the you only need to put in X when it’s really 10X. You might well just accept its 10X and be pleasantly surprised. Especially the reason I bring this up is more because it’s a speed and validation issue more than anything”
- “potentially continuing to narrow focus where you can because in an entrepreneurial setting in some of these spaces is very easy to get oh, we can do everything and we can be everything to everybody. I think it’s easy to fall in to that trap you wind up getting distracted. So, forcing ourselves to potentially limit product mix given financing or given the customer base might have eliminated some distraction and some dispersion of energy and funding”
- “having great partners… And challenging every aspect of it with passion has been helpful… For us in particular having people that we really trust with our lives both professionally and personally to step in and partner in the right way in their expertise has been incredibly valuable . It’s almost heart-breaking to have the type of friendship and relationships and commitment that people have focused on with us. It’s been amazing ”
- “so much of this is a supply chain issue. It’s listening to customers and prospects about their problems and truly been able to authentically explain why you are going to help solve it has been an easy for us in a weird way because people get it and they know that we know what we are talking about, that we are going to prove it and we try to minimise the leap of faith that they have to make”
- “focusing on quality improvement, reduction in lead time, improved efficiency but done in a way that’s accessible I think from a business standpoint that’s been my raison d’être in some ways so I think that kind of follows me a bit”
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