The Ursa Major squad, as of today

After months of being holed up in relative isolation in Stowe (mostly, in planning mode), we're starting to form some important relationships around the idea of Ursa Major and it feels fantastic to feel things start wiggling to life.

Working with committed, values-aligned folks to sharpen a vision and help bring it to life is one of the most satisfying - and important - things entrepreneurs get to do so we're taking our time to try and do it right.

With that in mind, here's a crack at mapping our current stakeholders (r'ships we've put in place over the past nine months) and others we expect to add in 2010 (in green), including some paying customers!

Amazingly, when you look at the map, there are already 20 people collaborating in some manner (product development, logo design, accounting, trademarks, seed investors, etc) to help bring Ursa Major to life! This mobilization of talent and experience is a wonderful thing to be a part of.

Thank you to all our stakeholders! We would nowhere, stuck in our home office planning, without you! We're incredibly excited to be working with you to bring Ursa Major to life in 2010. Onwards and upwards!

Resource tip: entrepreneurs interested in using 'mindmaps' like the one above might like to check out Mindmeister.

FAQ: Why "URSA MAJOR"? What does it mean?

We get this question a lot. 'Ursa Major' means 'great bear' in Latin and refers to the northern hemisphere constellation which contains the Big Dipper and points to the North Star. While that's a leap for some ("what's the connection to men's grooming?"), we like it because it feels strong, masculine, stellar, reliable and natural! It's also more intriguing than, let's say, Oliver's Naturals. And we like a bit of intrigue in our brands...

And for culture and history buffs, there are some fun tie-ins: various tribes around the world over the millennia have noticed a bear up there in the skies and have used it to navigate. The slaves apparently used the Big Dipper to find their way north. Great writers (Homer, Shakespeare, Tennyson...) refer to Ursa Major in their master works. Van Gogh painted it... For more, see what Wikipedia has to say.

Product development update

We're working closely right now with our main supplier to develop a simple, natural skin/face care regimen for men, consisting of a face wash, toner, shave cream and balm. So far, we've received prototypes for the wash, toner and balm lotion. We're aiming to go through several more iterations to improve these products and have finals in place by early Jan.

On the fragrance side, we're working with friend-collaborator-perfumer YOSH to refine our fragrance marketing brief and develop 'sketches' of the essential oil blends we'll be using for our products. Then we'll use this enhanced brief and the sketches to kick-start development work with one of a handful of natural fragrance suppliers we're vetting at the moment.

Here's a photo of YOSH taking us through fragrance/essential oil 101 in a little cafe in NYC's West Village last week:

Photo: Oliver

It's time to start our blog

OK, so we've decided to start this blog up for a number of reasons:

• Express our point of view (a brand should do that)
• Offer a window into what we’re doing & why
  
• Engage our stakeholders
• Reach out to potential collaborators
• Track our development, note key lessons learned, etc.
• Provide an outlet for company news
• Optimize for search engines

Let's see what happens...