Spouse(s) Not Married Name Keith Belling | Partner(s) Pat Turnip Organizations founded popchips | |
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Born October 16, 1958 (age 65) ( 1958-10-16 ) Piedmont, California, United States Occupation Previous Lawyer, Previous Real Estate Developer, Previous Website Business Owner of AllBusiness.com, Previous Restaurant Chain owner of Oh La La! Cafe and Paragon Bar and Cafe, and Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Pop Chips, Business Man. Years active He has been doing business since he was ten years old with his father. (45 Years) Education University of California, Hastings College of the Law | ||
Keith Belling (born in 1958) was raised in Piedmont, CA with his brother and sister. He attended the University of California Davis, University of California, and Hastings College of the Law. He currently resides in Cow Hollow, CA. He is known for being the founder and CEO of Pop Chips. Before Pop Chips, Keith Belling was the founding CEO of allbusiness.com in 1999. He also was a founder of Paragon restaurants. Belling originally went to college to study Real Estate Law. From there he attended the University of California Davis and majored in Economics. Belling created Pop Chips because he wanted a healthy alternative to potato chips. He referred to potato chips as his "guilty pleasure." Belling said he would hide the potato chips underneath his sandwich in the line at the deli. This guilt is what lead to what is now a huge and very successful company with partners such as Katy Perry and Ashton Kutcher.
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Business career
He started his career as a corporate lawyer with a firm called Morrison & Foerster. At the age of 27 he quit his job because he had a business opportunity with one of his clients who owned a little chain of coffee bars. The next 15 years he spent running a series of businesses, including a website called AllBusiness.com. After years of going to the local deli and getting a bag of fried chips he found himself hiding them underneath his sandwich. In 2005, he was eager to create a new snack that was healthy but still had flavor. Teaming up with Pat Turpin they looked into start-up options in the healthy food market. For less than $10 million in October 2005, they bought a rice cake manufacturing plant outside of Los Angeles. The high-pressure cooking technique popped the rice cake like popcorn and he realized that popping was the way to create a healthy chip with flavor.
The company called Popchips hit store shelves in May 2007. Mr. Belling focused on word-of-mouth and grass route marketing. The target audience for this product is people that are anxious for a healthier lifestyle but not necessarily obsessed with it. The goal for the company is to make Popchips a real alternative to fried or baked chips. Starting in New York and later in 15 other cities, he sent Popchip bags to thousands of influential individuals. He also sent a bag of Popchips to every employee at J. Crew Group, Inc. and Amazon.com. Funding wasn't a problem through the process. Mr. belling put some money in and other investors invested in the company. Ashton Kutcher is one of the big name investors for Popchips. Over time he became more involved with the company and is now the company's president of pop culture. Other celebrity investors include fashion model Heidi Klum, fitness trainer Jillian Michaels, and Boston Red Sox baseball player David Ortiz. Pop singer Katy Perry was signed as a spokeswoman and joined as a minority investor in August 2012. She even got her own flavor of Popchips called Katy's Kettle Corn. By 2008 Popchips sales reach $6.5 million. After drawing many calls from private investors only one drew his eye. TSG Consumer Partners invested $25 million for 30%. TSG introduced him to Rohan Oza who was viataminwater's CMO. Oza loved Popchips and signed on as an investor and adviser. Belling, who grew up in the Bay Area, had the West Coast covered. Oza's mission was to bring Popchips to the East Coast. Within a year Popchips was in Target, Whole Foods, and Virgin Airlines flights. In 2010, sales reached $40.9 million. After Kutcher approached the company in 2011 the sales jumped to $73 million at the end of the year. Finally in 2012, the sales jumped slightly to $93 million.
Investors of Keith Belling's Business
Triple-A firm. Alex Panos said that Pop Chips reminded him of Vitamin Water. They invested twenty five million dollars for 30 percent of the profit.
Investors involved in the company Pop Chips includes the celebrities :
He was the first celebrity to ask to Invest into Keith Belling's Pop Chip company. He appeared in commercials made for Pop Chips that got bad reviews from the public. The commercial was taken off the television by the next day and Pop Chip's had to publicly apologize for an misinterpretation.
She owns her own line of Pop Chips called Katy's Kettle Corn
Accomplishments
Keith Belling is a successful Business Man who had many accomplishments.
Keith Belling was surprised he moved into the snack business. He got tired of eating unhealthy chips and began a new business with healthier chips. He realized that if you pop rice like popcorn that you can make a healthier version of chips. Keith Belling and one of his business partners bought a rice cake plant for around ten million dollars so they can start the production of the Pop Chips. The revenue from this business has amounted to ninety million dollars. His Pop Chips now appear in 25,000 different store locations.
This business website provided advice for smaller companies of around five hundred employees or less. It also measured the direction that the small business would be headed and how well the business has been doing. Eventually this business broke up and the company sold itself to many different buyers and investors. Keith Belling sold this business advice website to NBC for 225 million dollars.
Keith Belling was the Vice President of the restaurant chain Oh La La! Cafe. Keith Belling also was a partner in the restaurant chain Paragon Bar and Cafe
During one of Keith Belling's interviews he gives some advice to people looking to start their own business. He says to follow your passions because nothing is going to be a smooth roller coaster ride. There will be terrific days, but there will also be extremely challenging days and the passion you have will get you through the challenging times and get you to enjoy the terrific times. He always tells people that being an entrepreneur is going to be twice as fun and twice as hard then you will ever expect.