Steve Foget. (Darren Brown, OBJ)

How many hockey moms and dads have cringed at the thought of their son or daughter wearing the same mouthguard week after week with only a cursory rinse under the tap in between games?

Once he was told about the levels of bacteria found on some of his young players' mouthguards, coach Steve Foget saw an obvious need for his product, Fresh One. Although he had been in sales for 20 years and could "talk a cat out of a tree," Mr. Foget knew he couldn't market his product alone, so he asked for help from one of the best sports marketers in the city. In just a few months, he has sold close to 25,000 units.

Mr. Foget told OBJ how he came up with the idea for a mouthguard cleaning system, how he convinced the Ontario Hockey League to use his product, and what's next for his company.

OBJ: Tell me about your product.

FOGET: Fresh One is a product that cleans mouthguards used in sports. It has a dual compartment, with a cleaning chamber and a drying chamber, and it's made out of anti-bacterial plastic. It's convenient, portable, easy to use: you take your mouth guard out, drop it into the cleaning chamber, cover it with water, drop in a tablet, close the lid. Then you walk away. You can soak it as long as you like.

The MSRP on the cleaning case is $16.99 and you get two tablets. The box of 32 tablets is $5.99. You're looking at roughly $23 and your kid has a clean mouthguard all year.

The idea came about through talking with my partner, Don Cogan, in regards to the fact that he was tired of his daughter putting a filthy mouthguard back in her mouth. I coached his daughter for three summers and that's how it started. My response was, "What are you talking about, no one cleans their mouthguard."

From there I went home and Google searched for other products out there like this. He came up with a sketch, we came up with a name – Fresh One – hired ourselves a lawyer, had the name trademarked, patented the product.

OBJ: So you had the idea and the product, how did you market it?

FOGET: We set up a meeting with Jeff Hunt of the Ottawa 67s. I have been in sales for 20 years, but Jeff Hunt is the king of marketing. Just look at what he's done with the hockey team. He took them from 2,000 fans per game to 8,000 to 9,000 fans per game. His advice to me was to inundate the local market. His next comment to me was, "How would you like to be the official mouthguard cleaner for the Ottawa 67s?" That was huge. Next was a meeting he set up with his head athletic trainer, Brian Patafie. There was an OHL trainers symposium coming up and Brian Patafie was very influential, along with Jeff Hunt, in getting me into that symposium ... From that meeting, I became the official mouthguard cleaner of the OHL. The whole league is on board.

Brian then mentioned that there was a trade show coming up in Scottsdale, Ariz. for professional trainers and equipment managers. So I went down there as well, had a booth and Brian sent the trainers to my booth and I now have 15 NHL teams interested in my product. I'm also now in Source For Sports stores right across the country.

OBJ: What makes your product different from say, dental cleaners?

FOGET: We went to a manufacturer in the eastern Ontario area and we told him we needed a mouthguard cleanser tablet. I haven't tested the PolyDent, but dentures are not made out of the same material as mouth guards. Ours has been manufactured for us to clean mouthguards.

Plus, is a kid going to walk into a locker room with a PolyDent tablet or is he going to walk in with a Fresh One tablet? What was key to getting our products out there was educating the moms and (dads) about the bacterial counts that were out there on the mouthguards. Hockey Wash and SaniSport have done a great job in regards to washing equipment. But we forgot about the mouthguards. When we did lab tests, we found eight times the bacteria allowed in drinking water on one mouthguard and another had 20 times. These were for nine-year-old boys. They take off their mouthguards and throw it in their hockey bag. In our testing, Fresh One took all those bacterial levels to zero.

OBJ: So what's next for our company?

FOGET: We're looking to get into the dental side of business with a Fresh One denture dental appliance cleaning system. We have approached the drug store chains about that.

We're coming out with a travel bag with a compartment for the mouthguards and beside it a place for your tablets. We are also coming out with a kit for the trainers, because we are dealing with a lot of pro and junior teams, so a trainer can wash 20 mouthguards at the same time.

We've been speaking to the (Business Development Bank of Canada) and (Export Development Canada) in regards to making sure we are in line for export, and we have been dealing with the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and I have a customs broker to get it into the U.S. The active ingredients are citric acid and baking soda so it's considered a food item in Canada.

OBJ: What would be your advice to other people who think they have a great idea but just don't know where to go next?

FOGET: You have to have the get-up-and-go first of all. And you have to take risks, there is a lot of money involved here. We have $300,000 involved in our product. It's a lot of time and a lot of money. You have to have a plan. Sounds simple, but I have been at this non-stop: Toronto, Detroit, Scottsdale, Philadelphia, we've been everywhere.

THE EXPERTS SAY

Too many failed entrepreneurs think it is about a great idea or great product. They suffer from the Van Gogh Syndrome. Van Gogh was a very competent painter, he was a genius, and his paintings have sold for millions of dollars. However, when he lived he only sold one painting and the reason is he thought the art should sell itself. He refused to debase himself through marketing and selling.

Here's the mistake entrepreneurs make: if they're a painter, for instance, they assume their number one job is to paint. It's not. Their number one job is to sell. The number two job is to market and your number three job is to paint. You need to sell, because if you don't sell, you don't eat. You need to market because you need to generate more business down the road. Selling is about today, marketing is about tomorrow. Marketing is how you sustain and grow your business.

If you're a small business, you have to do it yourself because no one knows about or believes in your business at first. Yes, some might seem like natural geniuses at selling and marketing, but the good news is it's just a skill. Because it's a skill you can learn it and you need to start with the basics. You also need to make sure you are always getting feedback on your skills. This can either by measuring your selling activity or getting feedback from an expert.

George Torok, professional business coach, co-author of Secrets of Power Marketing

There are questions that every business owner needs to ask themselves, and the more precisely they can answer them the more affective marketers they become. The first question is, what exactly is it that people want to buy from you? The second is exactly who do you want to sell to?

If I were to open a restaurant, the first thing I would ask myself is, where are there hungry people? Most people start in the middle of the process and if you start in the middle of the process, you're going to screw up. Most people come out and say, "I have this wonderful product, I'm going to go out and sell it," but they don't know if any people want to buy it. I would rather find the hungry crowd and find out what they want rather than put a product out there and try to find a hungry crowd for it after the fact.

Once you have found what people want to buy, it becomes very easy to do business because you just have to tell people about what it is you're selling, they will already want to buy it.

Also, most marketing is lost in the crowd because it doesn't appeal to a particular audience. It's not memorable and it's self-serving. The problem is if you sell to everybody, you sell to nobody. The more narrowly you focus, the better.

Michael Hepworth, author of The StreetSmart Marketer