25A - What's Next?


1) The first customer I identified and interviewed was my old neighbor who has two boats and goes fishing about every weekend. I called him and explained my product along with some diagrams explaining my product and he was interested, especially if it was only $10 because that's not much money to help take care of the place where he fishes literally every weekend. I told him about my business plan and he had some ideas that would help my future such as offering me different ideas for products that I could build off of and ideas of innovation for my current product that may increase price but will increase efficiency and longevity. He also proposed a new idea to put it on mobile vehicles or come up with something for cars or lawnmowers that pick up trash instead of shredding them. Same idea as the boats but for land vehicles to take care of pollution there.

2) My second customer was my high school stats teacher who was interested because his family comes in town once a month and they go out on the boat and go to a little island where they park and have a little nice day on the beach. He says that it's crazy the amount of trash that gets washed up and all tangled in the mangroves. He worked as a commercial fisherman before becoming a teacher so he said it would be a good idea to reach out to businesses and deal with them because they have such a large amount of boats that could help in the process. He said I would just have to modify or have a lot of my product so that it could fit on the large fishing boats.

3) My last customer was my dad who still lives on the water. He gave me a whole bunch of ideas on how to turn it into a business and make a lot of money but not a lot of it has to do with the start up. He mentioned that it was good to do business with other businesses but appeal to customers like most of my business is with them because it feels more personal and will make the business much more likable. 

I interviewed a manager and an employee I know from a fishing port in Clearwater and they said that it would probably be best to do business with them and other ports because an idea like this could make a big difference and they have over 100 ships in their pier that could use this product. 

I learned that many people think I should be doing more B2B rather than B2C because the market is much bigger in terms of the amount they would buy and the relations with the other companies can lead you to deals that could be worth a lot. I was surprised by this the most because I planned on appealing to the community more but I guess businesses are a part of the community too. My expectations of my target were not correct but I assumed I could reach a lot more people than just my community. This new market appears to be more attractive than this current market I have because these businesses would buy in bulk instead of selling each product one by one and with this bulk buying becomes partnerships and word of mouth along with a bigger force that helps clean the ocean. 

Comments

  1. Nala MckieNovember 18, 2019 at 8:41 AM

    Hi Nathan,
    I think you got great feedback from your prospective customers. I think it's great that, even though you know the people that you intend on selling to, that doesnt stop them from giving you honest feedback.
    I also liked that you admitted that you expectations of you target market were not correct. It just means that you learned something new!

    ReplyDelete

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