LCC student who sells coral became a business wiz selling lemonade.
It’s late on a Sunday night but his motions are swift and resolute, like a surgeon’s. His hands move quickly as he walks back and forth between the tanks.
The graffiti-tagged walls of the basement are painted different colors. Baby blue. Yellow. Red. Green. They read: “Business is a combination of war and sport,” and “A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, strong enough 2 correct them and smart enough 2 profit from them!”
Beer bottles are scattered throughout the room. Hip-hop by Grouch and Eli illuminates the silence as it plays uninterrupted on the stereo. He walks from tank to tank, taking measurements and adding various powdered mixtures.
Hoses and different-sized tubes stretch across the floor and hang from the ceiling like veins, keeping the contents of the tanks alive.
Wearing a blue Billabong hoodie, camouflage shorts, and black DC skating shoes, wide-eyed and curly haired Ian McMenamin, 24, wouldn’t be out of place at a skate park or hip-hop show. At the same time, the dress of his mentality would fit in perfectly if he were wearing scrubs and tending to patients in the E.R. His comments are casual, but his gaze is level and unbroken, like staring into the end of a steel beam.
When life gives you lemons …
Ian is the son of first-generation immigrants Danna and Jim McMenamin. Danna is Filipino and Jim, English. The McMenamins raised Ian and his brother Andrew in California’s Marin County, on the north side of the Bay Area.
Ian has always been business-minded. As a boy, he ran a lemonade stand in his hometown of Larkspur, a suburb of San Francisco. His father recalls Ian’s entrepreneurial savvy when he ran out of lemons for the organic outfit.
“Ian was fascinated by the business end of selling lemonade. He went down to Safeway and bought the frozen lemonade and made it,” Jim said. “I don’t know if he changed the sign from organic lemonade.”
Andrew says his brother has always known how to work the system.
“If we saw a Porsche come up or a Range Rover come up, he would charge three or four times as much because it’s a very nice car,” Andrew said. “It’s quite funny.”
Ian credits the lemonade stand as his first official training in business. He charged most customers $1 for a glass. The Range Rovers and Porsches, however, may have paid up to $5. After all, they could afford it.
“We’d gouge you,” Ian said. “I remember the first time we tipped that bucket over and made $50. I’ll never forget. Fifty dollars in one-day.”
Until then, seven-year old Ian was netting 50 cents a day doing chores for his parents. That didn’t last much longer.
“I never did chores again,” Ian said. “I was in the lemonade business.”
The contents of the tanks
It’s 9 p.m. on a Thursday and this time he’s at his research lab. Like the other facility, this one is in a basement and has a concrete floor. There are probably 20 different tanks, all of various sizes and shapes. Some are round and have reflective insulation wrapped around them.
Instead of hustling lemonade, Ian sells coral now. He runs
anythingcoral.com, a platform he uses to distribute large quantities of coral to store owners and serious collectors.
About a dozen of the tanks in his research lab are terrarium-like. He’s got a few 120-gallon tanks, too. Ian and his assistant talk in low voices while Beethoven plays in the background. A few fluorescent lights hang low from the ceiling. The basement is lit mostly form the aquatic glow of many aquarium lights.
In one corner of the room, there’s a workbench with half a dozen jars and containers of various sizes. Some are a murky yellow and some are a dirty green. All the containers have different-sized tubes going in and out of them.
To the left and facing the workbench there’s a panel of algae with lights pointed toward it.
Various computer chairs are absent-mindedly spread among the basement. The sparse ceiling lighting likens it to an old war room.
“When he was around nine I bought him a little aquarium with two little fish in it,” Danna said. “Then we bought little plants to go with the fish and then he got started working at the fish store.”
That’s where Ian’s fascination with coral began, she says.
Leaning over the edge of the tank, Ian’s wide eyes stare into the underwater jungle of moving colors. A constant parade of multi-colored lights sways leisurely on the water.
Between his two facilities – the storage area and the research lab – Ian has more than 37 tanks and 8,000 gallons of water.
Not every tank has coral.
Some are used only temporarily when international shipments come in, soon to be sent out again. But most tanks hold coral and the few that don’t are in Ian’s research facility where he’s testing the economic viability of other aquatic creatures.
Ian grew up with a love of coral, and wants to protect it while creating a lucrative business for himself. His idea is to propagate as much coral as possible in captivity, so that less and less and eventually none at all, would have to be pulled from reefs in the wild.
After getting the business started officially only a year ago, Ian has expanded rapidly. He generally sends out 5-10 shipments of coral valued at a minimum of $500 each week.
Ian has clients all over the United States and has set up two locations – one in Florida and another in Texas – that sell his coral exclusively.
Cole Stabben owns an array of fish tanks and is one of Ian’s regular customers. After checking out Ian’s website, he ordered a few products. Once Stabben discovered Ian does wholesale, he began ordering more.
“He’s very personable,” Stabben said. “Eventually I started ordering a few products at a time. I’ve continually bought more and more.”
Across the country in Florida, Ian Mazzola share similar sentiments toward Ian’s business.
“His quality and prices are amazing,” Mazzola said. “Nobody can touch them.”
The nature of enterprise
Aside from being a full-time business student between LCC and the University of Oregon, Ian has bought and sold an organic mushroom business, expanded his coral business’ website to more than 3,000 members, spent a summer traveling and working on a major tour with Snoop Dogg and is preparing to launch a new business involving fabric pots. And he did it all in the last year.
“Whenever he does get discouraged, I’ve reminded him, that because his ambitions are so high, he’s obviously going to face many more obstacles than someone who’s doing a quarter of what he’s accomplishing,” Niko Volonakis, longtime friend of Ian, said.
Up the stairs in his apartment it’s 2 or 3 a.m. and Ian is sitting on his couch with a cold beverage in hand. He’s tired and worn down after a long day of school and work. In the corner of his apartment by the refrigerator is a complete, handmade R2-D2 costume. For one moment at the end of the day, Ian is not a businessman, a manager or a salesman.
He looks at the Star Wars droid costume and laughs.
“Sometimes I like to just put it on when I go to the store,” Ian said. “It’s great to see everyone’s reactions.”
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Produced by Lisa Ball | Senior Reporter for The Torch
