29A – Venture Concept No. 2

1)

Opportunity  
     

     What are the forces or changes in the environment creating this opportunity? 

---  The forces in the environment that are creating this opportunity is human behavior. Humans have been littering irresponsibly and this has caused pollution to increase and it has been damaging the environment and the organisms/animals that live in it. The majority of this pollution is made up of plastic.

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     How is this market defined geographically and demographically? 
  --  This is an issue that affects the whole world so its something that everyone can help out with and get involved with.

·      How are customers currently satisfying this need?  And how loyal are they to whatever they use now?  
---  One of the ways that they satisfying their need is by using reusable cups. The customers purchase a reusable cup and they bring their cups everywhere they go and ask for their drinks to be served in their cups instead of the plastic ones that fast food restaurants provide.

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·      How big is this opportunity?
--- This is a very big opportunity because there are many people, especially students that are trying to get more involved with the environment and are trying to make a change.

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·      How long will the “window of opportunity” be open?
--- I believe that this window of opportunity will be open for a long time because as we can see, pollution is only getting worse throughout time. And, even if people start making a change and (hopefully), pollution starts decreasing, the window will still be open because people will still e purchasing the cups so they can prevent pollution from going back up again.

Innovation
I think that my product's innovation is not about creating something new, it's about innovating something that already exists. There are a lot of plastic products that have been replaced from plastic to other non-harmful materials but something that is used very often like cups, has not been changed. They have been selling alternatives for it but they still sell the harmful ones. That's why I believe that in order to make a real change, they should completely replace these harmful cups once and for all with the compostable ones. 

Venture Concept

·      What are the reasons to think customers would switch to this new product?  How hard will it be to get them to switch?  

I think that customers would change to this product because they geniuly want to take some action in order to help the environment. They just need someone to  provide them with an option and a way to do it and I believe that my product gives you that option.

·      Who are the competitors?  What are their possible weaknesses or vulnerabilities? 

My competition would be the producers and distributors for the reusable cups but I think that I would be able to work with them in order to sell both options in restaurants. The vulnerability would be that reusable cups would be more expensive than the compostable ones so people would potentially prefer to just buy compostable cups every time they go out instead of spending the money on a reusable cup so that would probably not make "my ally" very happy and would turn them into my competitor. 

·      What role does packaging, your price points, distribution, customer support, the customer experience or the business location play (if any) in defining your business concept? 

I think that the thing that would atter the most would be customer support Packaging would honestly not matter that much because at the end of the day they are cups and a lot of people need cups so they dont pay attention to the packaging; they would just purchase them out of need. And the price point would not be significantly different from the ones that are being solf right now. But if there is a noticeable  amount of customer support, more and more restaurants will want to get on board with the idea  and start replacing their cups for reusable ones.

·      How would you organize a “business” to support the ongoing production of your new product, service, or process? How many employees? What roles are in the venture?  

My product is meant to be purchased by a bigger company that already has their own employees so the amount of producers, distributors and employees in general would completely be up to the company that purchases my product and takes it as one of their own. 

 

First, describe what you think your most important resource will be.

- My most important source will definitely be my connections. Having people that are experiences in every single field that I need to create this product will help me gain more knowledge about the business and make well informed decisions on what to do next in order to succeed.  

Second, what’s next for the venture? 

- My next step would be to finally start designing the cup and doing some research on what would be the best composition for a compostable cup. That way, I can make sure that I am not inserting any harmful ingredients to the compostable cup and ruin the whole purpose of the product. I would also start reaching out to my connections so they can help me getting the word out about the product.  

Third, what’s next for you? 

- By this point, I would've hopefully sold my product by now to a big company that has many resources that helped my product spread all around the world. I would've probably started thinking about my next product depending on the feedback that I got from my first product.  

2) Feedback

- I did not receive any feedback for those two assignments mentioned but when I evaluated myself, I noticed I was being to vague when describing my ideas and future plans. This time, I tried to be more specific about what I wanted to do and tried to give more detail so readers could understand my plans and business idea even if they didn't know what my product was.