Chris Ayers emerged from his orange and black rough-terrain car with an ear-to-ear grin.
“That’s Chiktopia,” he talked about, sweeping his arm broad 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 rooster coops. The whole thing is accomplished solely from over proper right here.”
Ayers, a 25-year-old poultry science alumnus of the School of Georgia’s Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, is major a price inside the poultry enterprise, one of many important distinguished industries on the planet. His agency, Chiktopia, which he owns and operates alongside his father, Mat Ayers, presents trendy, automated rooster 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 way in which during which, he obtained quite a few entrepreneurship competitions to build up belongings and funding, along with CAES’ 2022 FABricate Entrepreneurial Initiative.
“From a enterprise perspective, it gave us a great deal of good promoting provides and gave us pre-seed funding to develop relationships with early prospects. With out FABricate, we would not have had that,” Ayers talked about.
Chris Rhodes, CAES director of enterprise partnerships and FABricate program coordinator, calls Ayers successful story for UGA’s entrepreneurship ecosystem.
“When he first obtained right here to me a number of years previously collectively together with his idea, he didn’t have a clear sense of value for the enterprise, or who his prospects had been, and even the vocabulary to discuss startups,” talked about Rhodes, together with that Ayers shortly took full good thing about belongings at CAES and the UGA Innovation District, entrepreneurship competitions and funding at Studio 225, UGA’s scholar entrepreneurship coronary heart.
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 successfully over a 12 months and check out it with spherical 200 chickens, which gave us a great deal of terribly helpful information,” talked about Ayers. “We had been able to uncover hundreds 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 gadgets for provide to his farm.
Then disaster struck.
“Within the midst of July, there have been two tornadoes. One hit my farm and we had successfully over 100 bushes get taken down over 4 acres value of forest,” talked about Ayers, together with that one in every of many two gadgets 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 a great deal of confidence in our product and the pliability to have them positioned out in pastures year-round. Not one of many digital applications went down and, additional importantly, the unit didn’t even switch,” Ayers talked about.
Valley of entrepreneurship
Months after effectively delivering the gadgets to Texas, new prospects began inserting orders. Chiktopia was lastly up and working as a enterprise enterprise.
Nonetheless, quite a few details arose, which introduced on Ayers to wrestle collectively together with his confidence to proceed enterprise operations. After dropping his preliminary enterprise companion, one different UGA scholar, he was mainly on his private to fulfill quite a few purchase orders.
On the point of dropping the traction he labored exhausting to realize, Ayers took a step once more and remembered the early ranges of his agency that had been full of mentorship and motivation.
“Giving up simply is not even an selection at this stage,” Ayers talked about.
Signing an important contract
In August 2022, the U.S. Division of Agriculture (USDA) listed a contract searching for companions to conduct evaluation on the results and productiveness of pasture-raised poultry, significantly with broilers. The USDA contract was a lifeline when Ayers wished funding, an elevated pool of belongings and additional time to strengthen the company’s evaluation and standing.
“I get to keep up the instruments, retain the meat from the evaluation and I get an infinite improve in credibility on account of now I’ve purchased the USDA using my enhancements for evaluation,” he talked about. “Having that credibility is awfully crucial.”
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 non-public sooner or later. USDA researchers will research soil have an effect on, poultry effectivity and totally different weather-related variables, amongst totally different points.
Since graduating from UGA in May, Ayers is focused on creating enterprise relationships for his agency. He wants his entrepreneurship journey to encourage totally different school college students to take the equivalent 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,” talked about Ayers. “To exit and try and contribute to society while you’re attempting to get your diploma, considerably than putting one on preserve until the other one is accomplished, I’d wish to see additional school college students do that.”
Provide: School of Georgia