Assignment 11A- Idea Napkin No.1

~Pretend this is a Napkin~

1) You. Who you are. What your talents are. What your skills and experiences are. Also: what are your aspirations? Specifically, regarding your business concept, how do you see this business (if you were to start it) playing a role in your life?

·       My name is Madylin McConnell and I am a first-year student and I am a Business Administration General Studies major with an intended major in Urban Planning. I intend to get a minor in Real Estate and apply for the Masters of International Business Program. I am in the UF Honors Program and am also a first-generation student. I have experience in leadership and planning events with teams. I have held different leadership positions such as being the Class of 2019 Class Representative for the International Baccalaureate Program Student Union in high school. I had the opportunity to plan a cultural festival that entailed four months of planning and improving my team working skills. I aspire to continue to learn and grow as a person. I want to live out a career that I am good at, but also one that I get satisfaction from doing. If I were to start this business, I would not want it to be my main career. I would want to develop and launch the product, with ambitions of selling it for profit after a few years. 

2) What are you offering to customers? Describe the product or service (in other words, how you'll solve customers' unmet needs). 

·       I am offering both scooter owners and scooter dealers a way to protect merchandise and property from being stolen. For individuals, I am solving their problem because the locks currently on the market are obviously not effective and do not include a method for property recovery. Scooter dealers can increase their sales by having a very effective method of ensuring customers that their investment will not get stolen after a few days or months. From my interviews, I learned that some college students haven’t invested in scooters because they have heard of so many people getting stolen. Companies that sell these locks can use it as a way to promote the sale of their scooters. 

3) Who are you offering it to? Describe, in as much detail as possible, the demographic and psychographic characteristics of your customers. Think especially of this question: what do your customers all have in common?

·       My market is narrowly defined as scooter owners and scooters. Individuals include scooter, moped, and potentially motorcycle owners. Individuals who own scooters in concentrated places like college towns where scooter usage is high and ranges only for a few miles of transportation are especially in the market. Individuals who live in European cities, such as London are very likely to need better anti-theft locks due to high theft rates. I could make lower and higher-priced ranges for different income levels. I don’t think the difference would have to be that large, because most individuals would be willing to protect there over a thousand dollar property. 

·       For businesses, the main companies I would offer the product to would-be scooter and auto sales companies. The first dealers that would be contacted would be ones in college towns and cities that use mopeds as one of their primary means of transportation.

4) Why do they care? Your solution is only valuable insofar as customers believe it’s valuable to them. Here, explain why customers will actually pay you money to use your product or service. 

·       I believe that scooter owners and scooter dealers will buy my product because it is beneficial for both of them. From the consumers perspective, it is much cheaper to buy a 50 to 100 dollar anti-theft lock, rather than investing in another thousand dollars plus scooter. From the businesses perspective, they could use the fact that customers will be more assured that their property will not get stolen in order to sell more scooters. In both cases, both parties save money or make more money from the purchase of antitheft locks.

5) What are your core competencies? What sets you apart from everyone else? Also: what do you have that nobody else has? 

·       As far as my knowledge goes, no other antitheft locks have attempted to combine three different types of locks. I have also not been able to find systems that come with tracking systems, in order to recover your property, just in case it does get stolen. I am not saying that this product would 100% prevent theft, however, it would greatly decrease any odds and help reclaim the property if it does get stolen. The first step is prevention, but recovery also needs to be considered. 

In addition to these five elements, please spend a paragraph evaluating whether you believe these elements fit together or whether there are aspects of your business concept that are weaker / out-of-joint with the others. 

I think that my elements work well together, however, I have two areas of concern. First, I think that the market of businesses may be smaller than the market for individuals. Businesses could think in the opposite way, “Why would I want to prevent scooters from being stolen when it means they might buy another one?” I would have to research into the perspective that scooter sellers would take before preceding. Finally, I do not have any current connections that would help me launch this product or5 have money for research in development. This would be a hurdle that I would have to overcome before proceeding.