Week 16

ITS FINALLY OVER!

While the semester has been interesting to go along with we have finally finished up our time with HONB 200 (well except for the final and our Shark Plans). Our semester long smart projects have finally come to a close, and while we didn't win first place (it was rigged!) we definitely had a great time at the expo. But before I get into that I'll recap the beginning of the week.

Tuesday

Tuesday during class was supposed to be dedicated to the 4Ps assessment along with turning in our final mind maps and asking any questions we still had left. We thankfully got some clarification on our Shark Plan and were set to move onto the assessment.

So the basis of the 4Ps is the 4 marketing segments, product, place, promotions and price. We were able to talk together in our table groups before the assessment to be able to go over what is going on in each segment and explain in more in detail to each of our classmates. While this was greatly helpful it did not do much to help the fact that we only had 13 minutes left to be able to finish our assessment. 

The assessment was to apply our learning of the 4Ps to evaluate a made up company called McMillin Auto Shop. We had to read a small passage about them and then tell what they are currently using as their 4Ps and then say what they could enhance about their current situation. So hopefully, I was able to accurately express what I was thinking in my mind within those 13 minutes.

EXPO DAY

Thursday was finally the day we were to show off what we had worked on all semester! Wednesday night we had met as an entire group to be able to go over everything and put the final touches on our product. 

Then the day had finally come. It was crazy, with so many amazing inventions and people all around. I wasn't sure exactly what it would be like but once we got into everything I didn't want to leave and hoped that our project would be in some of the top products of the day. I was even excited about our whole set up of our expo table. Here's a little picture of what it all looked like.

We hoped to make it a bit more like a dorm room with our floor set up, having a back pillow, some textbooks and a WNE stuffed animal. We also had our poster which I posted about in the past weeks, along with our product and the computer that it runs off of that also includes a diagram of the wiring and programming of the actual product. Plus we had fact sheets about the market and product, personalized business cards and we actually even made a video in which one of our teammates reiterated some key points about our product in rapping format.

Many people came buy to ask about the product and genuinely thought it would be a helpful product for themselves. One of the judges even said that we'd be able to expand the market more to include senior living because they also are culprits of forgetting their keys a lot. Another person brought up the fact that this technology could also be integrated into car doors to be able to make sure you don't lock ur keys in your car. 

These were all great points that we thought definitely could be options if we continued to develop the product more. Some people even told us they'd buy it from us right then and there. This gave us tons of hope that our product was going to be in the top 3 of the inventions at the Engineering Expo that day. Yet our dreams were cut short when we received no awards, but surprisingly our classmates did which just comes to show that the Honor kids know what they're doing. We did though have one our Engineers get interviewed about our project so while we didn't win we'll still probably become famous so that's ok. 

All in all i'll miss this group cause they were great to work with. Even the Engineers weren't crazy or excessively obsessed with just the product. They were definitely great to work with and I liked learning about the engineering side and how the product actually works. But now that the semester is over I'm very glad to get all this stress off my shoulders and move onto bigger and better things.

Week 15

Meeting with Spotts

Seeing as how the dead animal was still in the Library we had to continue improvising the classes and how we proceeded to learn about our Smart Project. So on Tuesday we were able to meet with Dr. Spotts to take a look at all the work we've been doing for our smart project.

Most recently we worked on our Brand Strategy Memo that overviewed how we want to portray ourselves as a company. We were able to construct our Brand Essence (Reliable, Independent, Attentive) and elaborate more on it through the Brand Voice and Promise. One of our most important promises that relates to our Brand Essence is that we believe customers should be in control. 

Along with the Brand Essence we also had to delve more into our product more. We had to stretch our target market and write a whole paragraph about who they are. Added to this was a list of the features, benefits, and value of our product. The Value Proposition was also finally written out in this part of the memo coupled with the positioning statement that described our company and product along with our tag line: 

"Never forget your keys again!"

The final part of this memo included a Buyer Persona where we had to create our potential buyer and describe basically who they are. We decided on a customer named Olivia, here is who she is:

Olivia is a college student just trying to get her degree. She keeps herself organized but often finds herself rushing around her room before class. Whether it’s because she didn’t give herself enough time, or can’t find her keys that she swears she put down in a specific spot, Olivia is often left locked out of her room. Loves socializing with her friends but will prioritize her class work.

We were also given the task to create a fact sheet that would be put on our table during the Expo for people to take and explore our product even more. Also we were given business cards that we get to design and hand out as well during the expo.

Combined Class

Thursday we were able to get with the Engineers again to go over some more of our final things. We were able to see our final poster which had to be changed last minute because the printer for some reason didn't like the colors and designs we used. 

Then throughout the class we were to update the Engineers on the business aspect of the product while they updated us on the engineering side of it all. We learned about the wiring, programming and manufacturing of the product while the Engineers learned about the value proposition, target market and brand voice.

We then moved onto our elevator pitch that we had had ready for a good bit now. We weren't quite sure how everyone would react to it seeing how it wasn't quite the most orthodox but it gained a pretty large applause after the fact so I take that as a good thing. I'll definitely have to work on memorizing it though for the Expo because it's definitely not something that I'm used to doing.

Week 14

This week I sadly was only able to make it to one class due to my alarm not going off. So this post will be slightly shorter than usual.

Smart Project
Thursday was a new experience. We were kicked out of our usual room due to a dead animal inhabiting our classroom and the smell being unbearable. Due to this we were able to have another combined class though with our Engineers, going to Sleith even to collaborate.

We were to continue working on things needed to get done within the week. So this week we were focused on the poster for the Expo where we will show off our product. The engineers also were continuing to work on the wiring of the actual product.

But back to the poster, we had some struggles with the poster. Its hard to find strong colors and designs that related to our product. We thought of locks, which are usually just black, white, or grey, doors which are usually a brown, wooden type of color and we thought of keys which are usually silver or a copperish color. From that we came to put together this poster:

While it doesn't have the brightest, most exciting colors it definitely fits our product and shows what the product is and does along with some market information on it as well. After this we talked about Elevator pitches, where we'll have to incorporate our value proposition statement. One thought we had for this that my group mate Griffin was the most excited about was to potentially make the pitch into a song, so that we stand out from the rest of the groups. We'll have to confer with Dr. Spotts though before we continue on with it just incase its not the professional way to go.

Week 13

Smart Project

This week was centered directly around our smart project. It was all about the progress that has been made with the product and the customer discovery surveys.

On Tuesday we were able to meet with Dr. Spotts to talk about what we've had so far in relation to the customer discovery memos. We all had gone out to get interviews of our target market, college age students. Along with this we had also gotten an expert survey done by Public Safety to help see if the product would be useful on campuses.

In talking about our discoveries through the survey's we found out that many of the people that would like to buy this product were actually organized people rather than messy as we assumed. We also found that locking yourself out of your room wasn't as prominent as we thought with the surveys we did.

However, when we did our expert survey with Public Safety that had told us otherwise. Public Safety had told us that they get around 5 calls a day for students that have locked themselves out. That is a very prominent number that shows tons of people could benefit from our product. Also from the expert survey we gained the support of the campus police after we described to them our product. They thought it would be a good idea and very helpful to them.

We were also able to refine our target market to the following:

• young, college aged students between the ages of 18 and 25, who consider themselves organized and want to maintain their organized atmosphere.

Thursday during class we were in our smart project groups once again, combined with the engineers this time. We were able to fill them in on what we had finalized for the customer discovery memo and then continued to talk about more and more throughout the class. 

We were able to focus on different maps, like the customer journey map which takes you through the steps the customer will go through that will cause the pain point. Then we would evaluate it and see where our product would go in to help stop the pain point from occurring.

Along with this we were able to do an empathy map that looked more into the customers feelings, thoughts, insights, etc. We used this template to go through the process with our product the Key Keeper.

On top of all this we also started to delve into what our Value Proposition Statement for our product should be. While we didn't get too far with it we will have to work on it in the next week so that we are able to memorize it for our next joint class with the engineers.

Week 12

Fresh Patches

Back again this week we continued our talk about Fresh Patches. We started off with going into the distribution side of what is going on in the business. We worked out in small groups how Fresh Patches supply chain would look like. The general consensus was that it would look something like this:

Supplier (Ventura, CA)

|

Distributor

(Most likely UPS, Fedex, etc.)

|

/       \

East Coast                West Coast

($15 shipping)           ($7 shipping)

|                                 |

Customer                   Customer

In this supply chain the supplier in Ventura does majority of the work when it comes to packaging and getting it all ready for the distributor to have. But with Andrew's plan for Fresh Patches to have an East coast Distribution Center it would help cut costs of shipping along with potentially cutting cost from the supplier for having to package everything.

Also with Barbara's plan to sell in retail stores, it would also change the supply chain around as well because different retails may control the distribution itself, maybe having their own delivery system of getting it to different store locations. This would also cut costs because then Andrew would have to pay less in shipping costs to get it to the stores and would be making a good profit from them now selling his product. 

Distribution of Products

Thursday was a day of classifying different products into various groups and explaining their distribution intensities. Here are all of the products that were given to us.

These products were then separated into their respective product classifications: 

Unsought: Septic Service

Shopping: Smart TV, Suit

Specialty: Jaguar, Rolex

Convenience: Hostess Products

After specifying this we continued on to talk about that different places that would carry these products, such as a department store for the suits or a jewelry store for the rolex. By figuring out where we could find these products/services it helped us to then select which distribution intensity the products fit into. 

The 3 classifications included Exclusive, few dealers in an area will sell the product, Selective, product is sold in a decent amount of stores, and Intensive, the product is sold practically everywhere. Some products were easy to classify such as the Hostess products being Intensive, while others like the Suits could sometimes be Selective or Exclusive, however in this case since they are an "everyday suit" we would put them with Selective. By doing this it gave us more knowledge on what else goes into the marketing strategies when putting a product out there.

Week 11

Fresh Patches

This week was dedicated to the Shark Tank invention of Fresh Patches. This product is an alternative to pee pads; it give dogs another place to do their business while also feeling nice for them.

The product is a patch of grass that could be used for a variety of reasons. It would be ideal for dog owners that live in the city that don't have much time to walk their dogs so the dog would be able to get on some grass. The grass is absorbent and does not leave an odd smell after the dog uses the bathroom.

It is distributed from California, yet the creator is from Florida. The shipping costs is a large margin crusher when it comes to the income of the business. Yet the product itself is doing well selling 1 million dollars worth of product in the last year. That is going off of 550 returning customers that will buy the product for $25 every two weeks after the grass is no longer good.

On Tuesday we were able to watch the episode of what Fresh Patches was all about. In the end Fresh Patches was able to make a deal with Cuban and Barbara to be able to open up a distribution center on the east coast and also revamp their website and online work, so that the creator is able to focus more on the company as a whole.

After watching the episode we were told to make a income statement for the product itself. We were only given a small bit of information on what was actually in the income statement so at first it was a bit challenging. Talking with our groups for a bit, we then talked as a class to create a true income statement where we saw that the variable expenses of the shipping was a large expense that would need to be focused on for Fresh Patches to achieve success in the end.

Thursday was more analysis on Fresh Patches. We looked more into their market strategy and into some of the secondary data that they would be going after. In a study conducted before we were able to see some numbers that relate to how many dog owners their are in certain demographic areas.

We tried to narrow down the specific Target Market of the Fresh Patches. We decided that it would be a dog lover that is usually busy that lives in an urban area with a higher than average income. With this in mind we used the secondary data to narrow down exactly how big the market would be that we would be dealing with. Yet, looking at the data we had lots of the numbers were said to be unreliable because there wasn't a large amount of these types of people in the study conducted.

Having this knowledge in mind, if we were working for Fresh Patches we would realize that we might need to expand our market in some way or find another source of secondary data that would help us be more accurate on the information we need to know. Fresh Patches seem to be striving at the moment so I feel they have figured out what they need to be doing, especially from the help of Barbara and Cuban.

Week 9/10

We're already on week 10, wow! Last week, week 9, was actually spring break so nothing eventful pertaining to class really happened. Week 8 seemed to have gotten away from me as I forgot to write a post for it. So, here we are at week 10 getting so close to finishing the semester already.

Smart Project

Week 10 was high focus on our smart projects. Tuesday was a particular emphasis because we were to meet with our professor to talk about how the team is working and where we will be heading in the future with the product. Specifically we got to talk about the survey questions we had made ahead of time and got to refine them before putting them out there.

Our target market for our smart project product, the Key Keeper, is college students. We decided to go with college students because they would benefit the most from a product that would allow them to stop forgetting their keys in the dorm rooms.

While some would prefer to do as Zoey Brooks did and remember their key by wearing it as a neckless, our product would make it easier for students to keep their keys how they already are. They would just have to hang their keys on our device and the device would help to alert them whether they forgotten their key their or not.

Our survey that we put together would help us to see if others believe our product would benefit them and would also help us to work out some kinks with the product as well. Seen below are the final questions that we've decided upon:

1.           Describe what you do when you enter your dorm room.

2.           Describe what you do when you leave your dorm room.

3.           Do you consider yourself an organized person?

4.           Do you have a special place for your keys?

5.           Do you lose your keys? How often?

6.           How do you get yourself to remember your keys?

7.           What do you usually do when you get locked out of your room?

8.           Would a product that alerts you if you forgot your keys be of interest to you?

9.           Listen as we briefly describe our product to you. 

10.        How much would you be willing to pay for this type of product?

By asking these questions to various college students it will help us to refine our product more to target our consumers better and make the product the best it can be. We also have created a few more questions to be able to ask public safety officers to find out about protocol when students lock themselves out. Also we would be speaking to the head of facilities as well to find out his input about our product.

Pricing 

Thursday's class was all about pricing. We were required to read chapter 19 before the start of class to be ready for what we would be talking about that day.

During the class we were divided into our smart project groups and paired with another group so that we could compare answers to the questions we were about to be asked. We were to pull a piece of paper from a hat and on it would be a question in which we had 3 minutes to think of an answer that pertained specifically to our smart project.

One of my personal favorite questions asked about various discounts, allowances, and rebates that could be given with our product. As we talked we realized a rebate would not bode well with our product and that a discount of some sort would be better off.

Specifically we believed a seasonal discount would be the best where in the winter we could sell for less because students will already be at school and school supplies will not be on high demand. Then when the summer comes in and back to school shopping is very prominent we would keep the product at regular price so as to profit more.

Many other questions were asked as well including things like the best way to price the product, factors that would effect pricing, and which cost determinate applies most to our product. All these questions got us thinking more and more about what the cost should be for our Key Keeper product and that we will have to somehow figure it out in the next few weeks before we present our final ideas.