Their Own Beat How do you run a business and a band? All it takes is a fresh approach.
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Eric Royal Lybeck, a former smoker, once told his friend and 13-year band mate, Henry Rich, 27, that he was going on a smoke break to feed his "oral fixation." Rich thought it was an excellent name for a mint company--and Oral Fixation was born in 2003. While still playing in their band, Rich and Royal, the pair researched mint production and decided to sell high-end mints in fashionable tins to upscale outlets like The Ritz Carlton, W Hotels, specialty food stores and coffeehouses, as well as online at oralfix.com.
Merging their band's touring schedule with their $5 million business's growing needs, Rich and Lybeck, 26, schedule tour dates in the same cities as major trade shows. "We do business in 15 to 20 countries at any given time, so it's really important for me to come and meet with distributors and just communicate the brand message to them," says Rich. Still, it helps to know that when Rich is hobnobbing with distributors overseas, his superb staff of five in Oral Fixation's Hopewell, New Jersey, office is at the helm.
