Medical Equipment CEO, Entrepreneur Credits Dropping Out of College for Career Success
Written By: Fat Lester (with help from Peter Egan)
PART 1 of 2: In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Tulane University president Scott Cowen saw his school underwater. Mr. Cowen knew that many on-campus dormitories were damaged beyond the point of being inhabitable for at least 6-8 weeks, coinciding with a substantial portion of the student body residing off-campus suddenly finding themselves without housing. For some, this was merely due to the fact that the city was not open.
However, for some other students like Peter Egan, the reason their residences were uninhabitable was that they were filled with anywhere from a couple of inches to eight feet of water, as was the case with Mr. Egan.
With the demand in the temporary housing market in New Orleans outpacing supply to such an extent in the immediate aftermath of Katrina that very few of those students who did manage to find an uninhabited dwelling that was on the market in hopes of attracting big-money tenants could even come close to affording the monthly rent.
In the months leading up to Katrina (beginning May 21, 2005 to be exact), Peter had been paying his rent, his living expenses, social life and then reinvesting what was leftover back into the eBay business he had started after quitting his job working for his father's Metairie, Louisiana-based home care / nursing firm, Egan Healthcare Services, Inc. The innate difficulties associated with working for family is the reason Peter left his position as an equipment technician working out of the company's then-warehouse in Kenner, LA.
Anyway, this eBay business Peter had started to replace the income he lost when he quit that job involved the sale of voodoo dolls, ceramic and feather masks, Mardi Gras beads and other New Orleans touristy "junk" for lack of a better term. As luck would have it, the all-eggs-in-one-basket approach worked quite well for Egan despite having no formal education in advanced information technology or any sort of internet technology including but in no way limited to HTML, CSS (which was brand-new at the time), JavaScript Dreamweaver, Photoshop or any other markup editor or media editing software. That is perhaps what made eBay the perfect starting point for Peter Egan: it was simple enough that he could do it without being taught, yet challenging enough that a 23 year old with no business and limited sales experience was driven to learn based solely on the opportunity that a marketplace the size of the world represented.
While he didn't know it as of the time he handed his landlord that first rent check paid using money he had earned working from home, Peter was about to see exactly how big the opportunity before him actually was (here's a hint: big enough that he didn't return to school when Tulane reopened). A close friend of Peter had recently acquired a job working for global, mega-conglomerate tanning salon franchising firm Planet Beach Franchising. The corporate headquarters is in Marrero, LA, just outside New Orleans.
PART 1 of 2: In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Tulane University president Scott Cowen saw his school underwater. Mr. Cowen knew that many on-campus dormitories were damaged beyond the point of being inhabitable for at least 6-8 weeks, coinciding with a substantial portion of the student body residing off-campus suddenly finding themselves without housing. For some, this was merely due to the fact that the city was not open.
However, for some other students like Peter Egan, the reason their residences were uninhabitable was that they were filled with anywhere from a couple of inches to eight feet of water, as was the case with Mr. Egan.
With the demand in the temporary housing market in New Orleans outpacing supply to such an extent in the immediate aftermath of Katrina that very few of those students who did manage to find an uninhabited dwelling that was on the market in hopes of attracting big-money tenants could even come close to affording the monthly rent.
In the months leading up to Katrina (beginning May 21, 2005 to be exact), Peter had been paying his rent, his living expenses, social life and then reinvesting what was leftover back into the eBay business he had started after quitting his job working for his father's Metairie, Louisiana-based home care / nursing firm, Egan Healthcare Services, Inc. The innate difficulties associated with working for family is the reason Peter left his position as an equipment technician working out of the company's then-warehouse in Kenner, LA.
Anyway, this eBay business Peter had started to replace the income he lost when he quit that job involved the sale of voodoo dolls, ceramic and feather masks, Mardi Gras beads and other New Orleans touristy "junk" for lack of a better term. As luck would have it, the all-eggs-in-one-basket approach worked quite well for Egan despite having no formal education in advanced information technology or any sort of internet technology including but in no way limited to HTML, CSS (which was brand-new at the time), JavaScript Dreamweaver, Photoshop or any other markup editor or media editing software. That is perhaps what made eBay the perfect starting point for Peter Egan: it was simple enough that he could do it without being taught, yet challenging enough that a 23 year old with no business and limited sales experience was driven to learn based solely on the opportunity that a marketplace the size of the world represented.
While he didn't know it as of the time he handed his landlord that first rent check paid using money he had earned working from home, Peter was about to see exactly how big the opportunity before him actually was (here's a hint: big enough that he didn't return to school when Tulane reopened). A close friend of Peter had recently acquired a job working for global, mega-conglomerate tanning salon franchising firm Planet Beach Franchising. The corporate headquarters is in Marrero, LA, just outside New Orleans.
EGAN Medical Equipment Store: North Shore Medical Supplies, Equipment - Located on Tyler Street in Covington near 8th Avenue across from the old Schoen Funeral Home, on the side of Tyler opposite St. Tammany Parish Hospital.
Impressed with Egan's ability to sell a $0.85 voodoo doll for $25-$30 (marketing it as a tool to enact revenge against one's nemesis), and a feather Mardi Gras mask costing him approximately $1.67 $20-$40 (marketing them to American women as wall decor and British men and women as "masquerade masks", which is apparently the term most often associated with masks used for purposes such as those depicted in the movie "Eyes Wide Shut"); he helped get Peter a meeting with the merchandising director for the parent corporation. She was interested in having him liquidate a warehouse full of the previous year's merchandise, worth an estimated $4-$6 million (wholesale cost - roughly 100%-150% markup for retail value). The deal was, we would split all net revenue right down the middle, and I'd have exclusive rights to sell the goods contained within the warehouse for a period of six months. The contract negotiated was to be signed and notarized on --- of all dates --- August 29, 2005.
The warehouse flooded, insurance made Planet Beach whole for its losses in terms of the value of the merchandise, rendering Peter and his services to be of no further use. - END PART 1
The warehouse flooded, insurance made Planet Beach whole for its losses in terms of the value of the merchandise, rendering Peter and his services to be of no further use. - END PART 1
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