Venture Concept No. 2

The opportunity that I am pursuing is to satisfy the needs of those who forget their headphones when going to the gym or library.  Many students today like to go to the gym on a regular basis in order to stay fit and relieve themselves of the stresses of school.  Many students also visit the library on a regular basis to do homework and watch on line lectures, which many classes here at UF provide. What these two places have in common is that students using headphones commonly inhabit them both.  The majority of people use headphones at the gym to listen to music when they work out, as it makes the tedious task of exercising slightly less mundane. Students in the library commonly use headphones to watch lessons, tutoring videos, or listen to music when they do homework.  Often, students will make plans to go to one of these sights, and upon arrival realize that they have forgotten their headphones.  The forces of the environment that create this opportunity is the natural forgetfulness of human beings, as well as the fast paced schedule of a college student which may lead to forgetting minor details such as picking up your ear buds. This market’s demographic is college students, and more specifically for the gym college students who are into fitness.  Geographically, this market pertains to anywhere on a college campus there is a gym or classroom.  This is a need that really has not been satisfied yet, as it is an opportunity that no one has realized or pursued.  This opportunity has potential to be big, but also has a chance for failure if it doesn’t catch on.  A major factor is the tendencies of those at the university and how often regular attendees of the primary locations forget their belongings.  This window of opportunity will be open as long as humans remain forgetful, or until headphones become obsolete, which is a long way from happening. 

The type of Innovation is would be incremental innovation.  I am bettering the service offered by gym’s and libraries, by providing vending machines filled with reasonably priced temporary use ear buds.   The vending machine would provide customers with the ability to still have access to headphones if they forgot them or decided not to use their personal pair.  The prices of the headphones range from $3-5 dollars and would be based on the quality of the headphone.  There will be multiple options within the machines to choose from, so that the customer gets to pick a product within their budget and standard of living. I will make money off this service because this a very convenient price to pay for the use of headphones. The headphones would be intended to be disposable, meaning they are not meant to last for that many uses.  There has currently never been a product of this nature, as most headphones are marketed as long lasting. 

My innovation will solve the opportunity I identified by providing a back up plan for when you forget your headphones at these locations.  Currently, there Is no product of this nature, so there is will really not much “switching” going on in this scenario.  I also do not have any competitors, as the service I have provided is unique and has yet to be done by anyone.  The only competition I would have is that of potential future competitors trying to create a better version of my product. The two main defining roles of my business concept would be the price points and location.  The main focus of my concept is that the price is cheap, making it a very practical alternative solution that people are willing to spend money on.  The location is another key component because my product and service would be limited to only two types of locations, at least to start out.  If I were to organize a business to support the on going production of this product and service, I would organize it to where there would be main offices and manufacturing factories in specific locations by nearby universities where the service would be in use.  There would be a team of sales representatives, as well as factory workers that manufacture the product.  The amount of employees would determine very much on how large the business were to get.  The sales representatives would be responsible for universities in certain regions.  For example, one region would be the area from Tampa all the way to Tallahassee.

            What would make it hard for competitors to copy my success is that I am already making this product as cheap as possible.  In order for someone else to better this plan, they would have to make higher quality headphones for the same price, or make the same quality ones for a very cheaper price. However, the minimum price of $3 would be very hard to beat. 

            My next plan for this venture would be to implement a similar system of higher quality headphones in commercial gyms such as LA Fitness or Anytime fitness.  These gyms usually have customers that are older and make a higher income than that of college kids.  This can be used to assume that the standard of quality of headphones to be desired in these types of facilities would be higher than those in the college gyms.

            In the next 5 years I would like to see this product and service take off at the University of Florida, and possibly one or two nearby schools.  Within the next decade, I would like to have a minimum of 3 separate product or service ideas already taken off and in motion. I also would like to continue coming up with more ideas to further broaden my streams of income and variety of products.

The feedback I got back from my first venture concept was very positive, and the majority of the suggestions were helpful.  For example, I received the same feedback multiple times saying that my price of $1 per headphone is probably unrealistic and I would need to bump it up to $3-$5. I implemented this in my new venture concept to better portray an accurate estimated price. Another thing I changed based on my feedback was my concept for a future business idea.  The feedback on this idea I received was that this idea was already being utilized on college campuses, so I decided to broaden my headphone idea to commercial gyms instead as my future business plan.