Profile of Success: Leapfrogging His Way Straight to the Top

This month we profile Jason Blake, the 31-year-old founder/president of the The Pond Guy, a catalog/multichannel retailer of pond, lake and water garden supplies.

Catalog Success: How did you get started in the business?

Jason Blake: I started the company while I was in high school. I was cleaning and servicing ponds in the neighborhood. I went away to college at Michigan State and thought that I could mail out catalogs to continue the business. So I put a catalog together my first year and sent it out to my existing customers — about 3,000 people, my initial mailing list. I printed about 20,000 catalogs my first run. I didn’t really understand the catalog business at all. I just figured I’d hand them out, and people would buy stuff.