Venture Concept No. 2

1.) Revised venture concept:

Opportunity:

The new venture I'm discussing is a matching service for people and their ideal cleaning products. I'm using the information I found from interviews from previous assignments. 

-Who has the need? The need for this service extends to pretty much everyone who lives on their own or is responsible for some of the cleaning duties of their household. This service is mostly needed by busy, middle-class individuals who are conscious of the price spent on cleaning products and restricted by a busy schedule.

-Nature of the need? This is a consumer need. It will be a program that has reviews, different price points, and matching systems to match the ideal cleaning product with each consumer, all in the reach of the customer at the touch of a button and as quickly as possible. 

Forces in the environment creating this opportunity is the constant invention and updating of cleaning products, leading to a larger and larger market of things to choose from. An example of this would be vacuums. Just from a simple Google search of "Dyson vacuums," there are at least ten different models that come up and even though there are some immediately noticeable differences, many are variations of the same model. This market is slightly different geographically due to the type of environment outside. For example, If someone lives in Oklahoma, they will need cleaning products able to deal with the red clay or the region while if you're living in New York City, this would't be a problem. Customers are currently satisfying their need by online searching for product reviews and by word of mouth. Sometimes, specialized stores give demonstrations of the product, but there is nowhere currently that offers all of these services in one place. I feel as if this opportunity is relatively large, strictly because as long as people have their own living spaces, there will always be a need to clean them up. Also, the window of opportunity here isn't really something to worry about either because of the previous reason. I do feel like this is something to be capitalized on soon though, just because there may be more markets to break into than I initially thought. 

Innovation:

The product here is a matching service for consumers and cleaning supplies/ tools. Ideally, this would be some sort of app or online website. There would be a questionnaire when a new member signs up, which would have questions about their location, lifestyle, amount of pets and children, type of flooring and appliances in their house, etc. Then, based on these answers, there would be different categories the customer could choose from to look through. Some of the categories would be Vacuums, Kitchen, Outdoor Maintenance, etc. Under each of the tabs would be a list of ranked supplies or products that we believe the consumer would benefit from, with the highest match listed first and then lower matches listed in descending order. Under each individual product, there would be customer reviews, other linked products maybe used with the product, and videos of the tool in use. There would also be a set up in the app for online ordering for anything listed. This is part of where revenue comes in, I would arrange a commission from the actual companies selling the product off of everything sold, as well as getting a cut from product advertisements. I want this process to be as fast as possible for the members, and I want to be able to make the different categories extremely easily available in store and on the app. This idea is focused on saving time and effort by having someone else compile information about products a customer may need before they even really need them. So I want that to be reflected and if there are ways for the questionnaire process to be more streamlined, perhaps with different prompts based on answers to previous questions, that’s the direction I want to move in. 

Venture Concept:

I feel as if customers would want to buy this innovation because it's a time-saver, and it's personalized so as to eliminate the need for having to return defective products or buyer dissatisfaction. I think customers would switch to this service because it would be approved by the seller companies rather that being a new brand altogether, and it brings all aspects of household shopping to one place. Because of this, I think there would be a relatively low level of difficulty in getting customers to switch. And after listening to feedback, I have almost no doubt at all that the shortened process of not only shopping but finding something to fit a particular need of an individual, would cause people to switch to my app very easily. As far as competitors go, by having ads from the seller companies on my app I would hope to eliminate competition from that front. The only other competition I feel would be any in-person appliance stores. My layout of my app would play a big role in the overall success of the product. The design would have to be very bright and clean, as well as overall being user friendly and not hard to operate or to get help with (tutorials, help buttons, etc.). I want the app to maybe have predictor setting as well, to help guide the users towards products like what they’ve been searching for, and I’d also like to have various autofill features to save time. In order to support the "business," I would need to have product researchers and testers, as well as demographic/geographic surveyors working pretty regularly in order to keep up with customer needs and with the release of new products from the seller companies. Ideally, I feel as if a team of maybe ten employees were to work together, all of this and more could easily be accomplished. They would each get a cut from the overall app profits.

Three minor elements:

1- The most important aspect of this product is its personalization to the customers and the ability to save so much time in shopping and advertising.

2- The next thing for this venture would be the actual launching of an app. A possible next app revolving around the same general idea as this one would maybe be with healthcare products. The difficulty in this idea would come with working with healthcare providers, and some of the materials would not be able to be sold by a third-party seller, so there might be more planning hangups with that idea.

3- What's next for me after this venture is possibly more work into research. All of the research and interviews that have gone into this idea was really fun and eye opening for me. While I may not be a huge entrepreneur in the future on my own, I would maybe choose to opt for being a part of the research department for other budding ideas that I decide to be a part of.

Three minor elements:

1- The most important aspect of this product is its personalization to the customers and the ability to save so much time in shopping and advertising.

2- The next thing for this venture would be the actual launching of an app. A possible next app revolving around the same general idea as this one would maybe be with healthcare products. The difficulty in this idea would come with working with healthcare providers, and some of the materials would not be able to be sold by a third-party seller, so there might be more planning hangups with that idea.

3- What's next for me after this venture is possibly more work into research. All of the research and interviews that have gone into this idea was really fun and eye opening for me. While I may not be a huge entrepreneur in the future on my own, I would maybe choose to opt for being a part of the research department for other budding ideas that I decide to be a part of.

Three minor elements:

1- The most important aspect of this product is its personalization to the customers and the ability to save so much time in shopping and advertising.

2- The next thing for this venture would be the actual launching of an app. A possible next app revolving around the same general idea as this one would maybe be with healthcare products. The difficulty in this idea would come with working with healthcare providers, and some of the materials would not be able to be sold by a third-party seller, so there might be more planning hangups with that idea.

3- What's next for me after this venture is possibly more work into research. All of the research and interviews that have gone into this idea was really fun and eye opening for me. While I may not be a huge entrepreneur in the future on my own, I would maybe choose to opt for being a part of the research department for other budding ideas that I decide to be a part of.

Three minor elements:

1- The most important aspect of this product is still in its personalization to the customers and the ability to save so much time in shopping and advertising.

2- The next thing for this venture would be the actual launching of an app. A possible next app revolving around the same general idea as this one would maybe be with healthcare products. The difficulty in this idea would come with working with healthcare providers, and some of the materials would not be able to be sold by a third-party seller, so there might be more planning hangups with that idea. With this app however, I would want to just branch out into other sectors of cleaning, for example maybe pool cleaning equipment. 

3- What's next for me after this venture is  research. All of the research and interviews that have gone into this idea was really fun and eye opening for me. While I may not be a huge entrepreneur in the future on my own, I would maybe choose to opt for being a part of the research department for other budding ideas that I decide to be a part of.

2.) Feedback:

So for this assignment the first time around, my feedback was pretty positive and didn’t include many suggestions about what to possibly improve upon or where to move in a different direction. However, I believe there is absolutely always room for improvement. My comment I did get was about this idea would save a lot of time, so when I got to thinking about it I decided to go in that route when changing my first venture concept post. 

3.) How you changed the concept:

I didn’t change the concept too much, because a lot of it was explaining about my product in general. My changes are mostly additions. I chose to focus more on streamlining the experience a user has on my app. I want to try and find the fastest and most accurate way to get from Point A to Point B, so to speak. 

4.) Picture:

An oldie but a goodie...as far as illustrating a streamlined process and design.