Chris Ayers emerged from his orange and black rough-terrain automobile with an ear-to-ear grin.
“That’s Chiktopia,” he said, sweeping his arm big to level the once more half of a 3,600-square-foot warehouse on his family’s farm in Ball Flooring, Georgia. “That’s the place I manufacture and assemble the hen coops. Each little factor is accomplished completely from over proper right here.”
Ayers, a 25-year-old poultry science alumnus of the Faculty of Georgia’s School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, is primary a value inside the poultry enterprise, one of many important excellent industries on this planet. His agency, Chiktopia, which he owns and operates alongside his father, Mat Ayers, affords progressive, automated hen coops significantly created to seamlessly introduce sustainable, pasture-raised poultry to any farm.
FABricate-ing success
The solar-powered, self-propelling coop system is an idea Chris Ayers spent years perfecting. Alongside the best way through which, he gained quite a lot of entrepreneurship competitions to build up property and funding, along with CAES’ 2022 FABricate Entrepreneurial Initiative.
“From a enterprise perspective, it gave us loads of good promoting and advertising and marketing provides and gave us pre-seed funding to develop relationships with early prospects. With out FABricate, we might not have had that,” Ayers said.
Chris Rhodes, CAES director of enterprise partnerships and FABricate program coordinator, calls Ayers a success story for UGA’s entrepreneurship ecosystem.
“When he first acquired right here to me a couple of years up to now alongside together with his idea, he didn’t have a clear sense of price for the enterprise, or who his prospects had been, and even the vocabulary to talk about startups,” said Rhodes, together with that Ayers shortly took full advantage of property at CAES and the UGA Innovation District, entrepreneurship competitions and funding at Studio 225, UGA’s pupil entrepreneurship center.
Ayers’ success in entrepreneurial contests sparked a relationship with Keith Kelly, CAES alumnus and CEO of Kelly Merchandise.
“We had been able to set a prototype unit out on Mr. Kelly’s farm for correctly over a 12 months and verify it with spherical 200 chickens, which gave us loads of terribly valuable data,” said Ayers. “We had been able to uncover quite so much and accrue revenue whereas doing it.”
Testing and turbulence
Chiktopia’s worthwhile trial interval on the Kelly farm led to further refinement and testing of Ayers’ merchandise, and it was not prolonged sooner than Ayers and Chiktopia had been ready for enterprise product sales.
The company’s first purchaser was a farmer in Texas who ordered two broiler fashions for provide to his farm.
Then disaster struck.
“In the midst of July, there have been two tornadoes. One hit my farm and we had correctly over 100 timber get taken down over 4 acres worth of forest,” said Ayers, together with that certainly one of many two fashions set for provide to Texas was inside the pasture, uncovered to the storm. Whatever the violence of the storm, the unit wasn’t affected the least bit.
“That gave me loads of confidence in our product and the facility to have them positioned out in pastures year-round. Not one of many digital packages went down and, additional importantly, the unit didn’t even switch,” Ayers said.
Valley of entrepreneurship
Months after effectively delivering the fashions to Texas, new prospects began inserting orders. Chiktopia was lastly up and dealing as a enterprise enterprise.
However, quite a lot of details arose, which led to Ayers to battle alongside together with his confidence to proceed enterprise operations. After dropping his preliminary enterprise affiliate, one different UGA pupil, he was principally on his private to satisfy quite a lot of purchase orders.
On the purpose of dropping the traction he labored arduous to realize, Ayers took a step once more and remembered the early ranges of his agency that had been filled with mentorship and motivation.
“Giving up simply is not even an chance at this degree,” Ayers said.
Signing an necessary contract
In August 2022, the U.S. Division of Agriculture (USDA) listed a contract in search of companions to conduct evaluation on the implications and productiveness of pasture-raised poultry, significantly with broilers. The USDA contract was a lifeline when Ayers wished funding, an elevated pool of property and additional time to strengthen the company’s evaluation and reputation.
“I get to keep up the instruments, retain the meat from the evaluation and I get a big improve in credibility because of now I’ve acquired the USDA using my enhancements for evaluation,” he said. “Having that credibility is very important.”
Boosting the roost
The evaluation, which began on June 1, is being carried out on a plot of land decrease than a mile down the freeway from Ayers’ family farm — a five-year land lease on a farm he plans to private ultimately. USDA researchers will examine soil have an effect on, poultry effectivity and completely different weather-related variables, amongst completely different points.
Since graduating from UGA in Would possibly, Ayers is focused on rising enterprise relationships for his agency. He wants his entrepreneurship journey to encourage completely different school college students to take the similar leap of faith.
“I hope that I open additional eyes to the horizon the place school college students can bridge the opening and develop to be entrepreneurs whereas they’re nonetheless actively enrolled as school college students,” said Ayers. “To exit and try and contribute to society if you’re making an attempt to get your diploma, comparatively than inserting one on preserve until the alternative one is accomplished, I would wish to see additional school college students do that.”
Provide: Faculty of Georgia