Features : Mixing business with pleasure

While studying Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bath and DJing at the student union, Ian Chamings had an idea that would land him in the BBC’s Dragons' Den and on to be a successful entrepreneur with Mixalbum.com, a website where people mix their own tracks and download them online.

Some people say, well how did you come up with that when millions of people are listening to dance music? I think it was just this combination of DJing plus the mechanical, technical side of my degree that made me think; yeah it would be easy to make a computer do most of the work mixing tracks.

 

From there I didn’t really have a clue where to start. When I graduated in 2000, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, so I trained as a patent attorney where I got to know the inside story and managed to get a patent granted which I needed to develop my idea.

I left my job in 2003 because I knew that I had to spend all my time doing this if it was going to succeed. It took ages to get the funding together to develop a prototype of my idea until The Princes Trust and Business Link stepped in with grants.

I still remember when we had just got the prototype through, I was just putting in all the data that it needed, pushed go, and the first mix I had, it was like ‘wow, it actually works!’ and I knew I had to get this going.

I began to get the business plans together but had never studied business, so it was starting from scratch. The next year was largely getting more funding together, then eventually to the Dragon’s Den to ask more investment.

Enter the dragon

Pitching my idea in the Dragons' Den was just brilliant, it was nerve-wracking but after the three-minute pitch, I was enjoying it, because of all the stuff that I had learned and was really enthusiastic about, I had a captive audience. It definitely gets the adrenalin going.

Deborah Meaden and Theo Paphitis invested £150,000 in the business and their expertise has also been brilliant. I didn’t know what to expect running my own business and have now learnt a lot.

Our main expenditure is marketing and PR, despite the fact we probably got the equivalent of millions of pounds worth of publicity on the television, we still need to target our audience, so getting ourselves in DJ Magazine and things like that is essential. I have learned that it is absolutely vital, no matter how good your product is if nobody knows about it then what’s the point?

The one thing that has surprised me is how the business plans change all the time. Initially we thought we would have this system running in an office, people would have to choose their tracks burn the mixed tracks on a CD and post it to them. But since then, technology has changed and people are downloading the tracks online.

If you do your research thoroughly and you think there is a good market for it, then absolutely go for it, but do your research first because you don’t want to waste your time or anyone else’s.

If I could pick any job (apart from Formula 1 driver!) then this would be it because I get all the new dance music through to listen to, I’m meeting loads of people, getting invited to big events from Sony, and it is just really great fun. You really have got to devote your life to it and sometimes it can be taxing but, when you enjoy it as well, it is all worth it.

Further information

• www.mixalbum.com