Olive Oil Entrepreneurs
Names: Crystal and Chip Reibel
Hometown: Romeo (Crystal) and Milford (Chip), Mich.
Education: Pepperdine University, Graziadio School of Business and Management, MBA, Class of 2009
Plan A: Corporate positions
Plan B: Opening an olive oil shop
When Crystal lost her sales job at Sandy Corp., we decided to go to business school. For both of us, the original plan was to further our careers within the corporate world.
It had been a long-term dream of ours to become independent of the corporate world, but we never had the means or know-how to see that come to fruition. It's something we didn't think we'd ever follow through on. As a result of going to business school we applied what we learned at Pepperdine's entrepreneurial program to create a business: Beyond the Olive.
The more research we did about olive oil, the more we were intrigued. There's a real supply chain problem in olive oil right now. The stuff you get in the store isn't quality. It's processed, leftover olive oil from Greece and Italy—whatever they can't sell in their countries. The U.S. is just beginning to adopt the same standards for quality, but can't enforce it yet. Our business model is to educate people about the difference between what you can get in the grocery store and what you can get locally produced.
Crystal will be operating the business, while I'll remain fully employed as a program manager in the technology sector. This is absolutely something we'd love to turn into a long-term business and hand it down to the children someday.
