Chris Carmichael started Buildmylanyard.com in the summer of 2009 out of his dorm room at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario to make some extra cash and help pay for his University tuition. He started the company providing organizations and companies lanyards for their conferences and events but quickly grew frustrated with the many middle men he would have to deal with when placing a simple order. Not only was this a complicated and confusing process, but Chris thought that these companies must be taking a large margin for themselves. Later Chris found out that in some instances, buying promotional material goes through not just one middle man, but two or three! Being the business savy student that he was, Chris started cold calling lanyard manufacturers in China to source from them directly. He was able to convince the manufacturers into believing he was the owner of a large product sourcing firm and told them he would like to meet them. Within that week he had written off his classes for the remaining term and was on a flight to China. Upon arrival at the manufacturing facility Chris shocked management as to his young age and using his personality and business acumen was able to negotiate preferential prices for BuildMyLanyard.com orders.

After several months of supplying lanyards to various conferences Chris identified an opportunity in the name badge market. He saw that conference organizers were spending way too much time printing name badges, ID-ing attendees, and distributing badges that it was slowing down the sign-in process and costing the conferences money. Knowing he would need money to fund this expansion he put together a business plan for a name badge customization feature to be added to the current lanyard business model and entered The Queen’s Entrepreneurs’ Competition (QEC), rated as Canada’s foremost undergraduate business plan competition, with his eyes set on the top prize of $15,000.