Venture Concept No. 2

Opportunity:

There are many unmet needs that people have around the world. In fact, I would be willing to say that everyone has at least one unmet need in there day to day life. One unmet need that I have recognized is a need to save money on clothes while still getting clothes that you like. Most people have experienced the feeling of finding a clothing item that they really like but then looking at the price tag and realizing that you can not afford it. This is where I see an unmet need. I think that the need is a fast, easy way to find clothes that you like for a lot cheaper. I think the people that would benefit the most from this would be college students, but realistically this is a need that a lot of other people need fulfilled. I think that this need is much easier to solve in todays world because of all of the technology that we have. With all of the phone applications out today, I think that it would be easiest to fill this opportunity that way. Geographically speaking, people have this need not only throughout our country, but also throughout the world. I think that there are tons of people that have this need. If there was a way to fill this need, I think that the business could be very profitable solely based on how many people could use it. Right now, customers are satisfying this need by doing countless hours of Google searching. There has to be a better way to do it. I think that the window of opportunity will be open until someone comes up with a product that fills this need.

Innovation:

The innovation that I have come up with is a smartphone application that allows you to take pictures of clothing items and then see other clothing that looks similar and is cheaper. These results will show as pictures of the clothing on the screen. With the pictures there will also be a price and a link of where to purchase the clothing. Another option that the app will have is the ability to specify a price range. When specified, you will only see the clothes that are in the selected price range. This will make it even easier for people to find clothes within their budget. This app, however, has other uses than just to find cheaper clothing. It can also be used to replace clothes that no longer get the job done. Say you got a stain or a rip in your favorite shirt. You could simply take a picture of that shirt and find another one instantly. It can also be used to just find clothing items that are similar to ones you like. The app will show all clothes, not just cheap ones. This will broaden the demographic quite a bit.

You may be asking how will this business make money with it just being a middleman between consumers and suppliers. The first way that we will make money is by charging a small fee to purchase the application. It will be about one or two dollars. However, the main source of income will be advertisements within the app. Advertisements are how most apps make money, so why would this one be any different. If the app gets popular enough, I think that it could generate some real revenue from the ads.

Venture Concept:

I think that customers will buy this phone app because it is something that a lot of people could really use. I do not think that it will be hard at all to get customers to switch to my phone app simply because there is nothing like it on the market. My main competitor would probably be Amazon. Amazon does not have an app that lets you take pictures, but they do have a section of “things you may like” which is pretty similar to what we are offering, but I believe that ours will be much more in depth and easier to operate. Since we are not really selling an actual object, our packaging does not really matter, but the look of our app matters immensely. The better it looks, the more serious people will take it, which in turn will grow its popularity faster. Our price point is amazing. With how much money people can save using this app, spending a dollar or two to get it will be an excellent deal. The customer experience is also very important which is why our app must work quickly and seamlessly. The better it operates, the happier our customers will be. I think that another benefit of this business is that it does not take a massive amount of employees to run. Obviously, it would take a lot of people during the start up because you would need to take pictures of all of the clothes and create the database. Once the app is up and running, however, it would not take a ton of people to operate. There would be people to keep the app running well and then there would be people to continually update our database.

Minor Elements:

I think that the most important resource will be the database that has all of the clothing items on it. Without this, our business cannot operate. Second on the list would be the app itself. It will be good looking and very user friendly.

I think the next venture with this business would be to create a sister application that lets you take pictures of more things and see things like them. This could be used for home decorations or for cars or for anything you can think of. This will be a lot harder because it will require a much greater amount of information in order for it to work properly.

This first venture is not something that I would really want to be doing my whole life. I honestly feel like running a phone app would get a little boring after a while. Down the road I see myself finding and taking hold of another opportunity. This venture, however, is the most important because it will be the one that sets the tone for the rest of my career.

Feedback:

There was one piece of feedback that really made me think. That feedback was that it would take more people than I thought to run the company. I previously thought that it would only take a couple of people to run the app, but I didn’t think about how many people it would take to create the startup database. Once I thought about this, I realized that it would take a lot more people during the startup, but that it would take many less once the app is up and running. Another piece of information that I got is that I should think bigger. This included possibly talking to bigger clothing stores that might want to sell through the app. This is a great idea that didn’t quite work its way into my venture concept but will definitely be a part of the actual business.

Final Reflection

1. I think for me the most formative experience this semester was the exercises early on that had us look for and identify opportunity. Since doing those I find that during the day I find myself looking for different opportunities. I think the experience that I’ll remember years from now is the formation of my venture concept. The most joyous experience that I had was finishing the first Reading Reflection. I am not great at reading so it was a big deal for me to finish the book and right an article about it in such a short period of time. This would also be the experience that I am most proud of myself for accomplishing. 
2. I don’t quite see myself as a full on entrepreneur yet. Although I have come up with a Venture Concept, I have not taken any steps to make it a reality. I think once those steps are taken, then I will consider myself an entrepreneur. I do, however, think that I have developed and entrepreneurial mindset. Like I stated earlier, I often find myself looking for opportunities throughout the day.
3. One recommendation I would make to future students would be to keep up with the work and push through and do the assignments that you don’t feel like doing. Early on in this class, I took some zeros because I knew there was a lot of points and I was sure that I could get the grade I wanted. When it got later in the semester I realized that I could not get the grade I wanted and from then on out I was stressed about not missing an assignment. I would recommend that they work hard early in the semester so that they can relax and maybe skip some assignments later in the semester.