Author: j.sposito

Video Link:

 

Next Steps Decision:

Moving forward, I would choose to proceed with my on-campus, customization business. Throughout the course, I was able to gather information from different sources through a myriad of research tactics. I was able to ensure that I could proceed with pitching my idea to administration at the Baruch Bookstore. In addition to this, I received good insight from indirect competitors regarding demand for customization and the most popular customization requests amongst college students. The Baruch bookstore provided me with detailed instructions for how to proceed with my idea – creating a prototype is a very important one in order for them to review the product.  The next steps I would take are to run another round of ads and then begin to develop prototypes that I could use to pitch my product and service to the Baruch bookstore. These two steps would be the most important in continuing to develop my business. I think an additional round of advertisements, with a larger budget and more targeted metrics, would be extremely informational. My goal is to take all of the information I’ve gathered thus far and continue to grow on it. My mission is to allow for individualism, creativity, and self-expression amongst college students through my customization services, and I hope that by continuing with my idea I will be able to provide this.

 

EXPLANATION: 

I wanted to create an ad that would be easy to understand and target my ideal customers. As you can see below, I began by expressing what service I plan to offer and then immediately thereafter advertised the 24-hour turnaround time since this is a primary part of our competitive advantage. I wanted to give a few examples of potential customization merch options (hoodies, t-shirts, hats) and styles (print and embroidery). In addition, I wanted to show students in customized students having fun and connecting because that is ultimately the core of my business concept – bringing students a sense of camaraderie and self-expression. Then, I directed people to what will be my landing page where potential customers, hopefully 20% of site visitors, will enter their email to be notified of our launch. I will build out my landing page on square space;  I have already started to work on this. My plan would be to advertise via social media platforms and, post-covid, on-campus locations. I hope to learn how many individuals will sign-up for our initial launch – this will be indicative of how many students are potentially interested. I also would like to better understand my target market – potentially, freshman students, clubs, fraternities / sororities.

 

The key takeaways from assignment #2 was identifying the presence of demand for the customization service I intend to offer and establishing the business model I intend to use. I decided that the direct-to-consumer business model was the most ideal model. I aim to bring self-expression and creativity to Baruch merch which I intend to be adopted early by freshman and club / fraternity members. There is demand for customization of college merch predominantly amongst these groups. The main concern I have is regarding the earnings of this business venture. I am hopeful that there will be many students who want to partake in this service but there is no guarantee. Thus, I have no idea if this will be a profitable business.

Assignment #2:

Regarding my idea of college campus merch customization at Baruch, I was able to identify the presumed value proposition and competitive advantage. To recap these components briefly, my value proposition is the unique feature of customization that will be offered to various items at the Baruch bookstore. This will allow students to express their individuality and creativity through a fun, affordable, and accessible outlet. In terms of a competitive advantage, through research I was able to confirm that there are no direct competitors which gives my business idea a tremendous advantage. While there are local stores and online resources for customization, my service will provide easy and affordable access to Baruch students for customization.

In my secondary competitor and customer research findings I identified both online and local printing and embroidery resources. Both online and in-store methods of transaction are secondary competitors to my business idea as well as printing and embroidery options. Some of the online platforms and local stores that offer merch customization include Etsy, Merchology, Custom Ink, Thread Logic, Custom Sewing Services, BCCO NYC, etc. I was able to interview an executive at Custom Ink which provided me with invaluable information that helped me to understand my competition. I was able to confirm that college merch customization services were popular especially in group orders.

One key takeaway from my primary and secondary competitor research was that many online resources do many customization orders for college students. This influenced my business idea for the better for the following reasons. This reinforced the potential success for my idea being that there is clearly a college market and demand for the service that I am trying to provide. In addition to this, online resources have a very different business model compared to my in-store Baruch bookstore idea. My idea is more centralized and also very much connected to encouraging school spirit at Baruch – a predominantly commuter school that lacks this. Another key takeaway was that the closest local shop was located at least twenty blocks away from Baruch. Assuming my pricing is competitive, my accessibility will be much greater for Baruch students.

Regarding business models, I am considering a direct-to-consumers business model being that I plan to sell my service / product to customers (students) directly at the Baruch bookstore. This business model allows me to directly reach my customers ­­and market and sell my service to college students. This business model typically relies heavily on marketing / advertising, but being that I am marketing my service to Baruch students at the bookstore I won’t need to allocate too much money to marketing efforts.

I think my early adopters will be separated into two groups consisting of: incoming freshman students and clubs / fraternities/sororities. Incoming college students are much more invested in purchasing college merch. School pride is very important and many are excited to represent their college. In addition to this, I think many clubs would utilize our customization service for group orders for matching apparel to represent their club. These two groups are who I think our early and primary adopters would consist of.

Based on all of the information I have gathered thus far this is a concise rundown on my findings. This information has allowed me to feel confident that my business idea can continue to be developed and furthered.  I think that there is both demand and availability in the marketplace for my business idea at Baruch.

Petal Diagram:

Explanation: 

To give a brief overview of my diagram, I separated it into four categories based on the services offered and method of transaction. Thus, the four categories are online printing services, local (NYC based) printing shops, online embroidery services, local (NYC based) embroidery shops. For my business idea, the two main sources of competition will come from either local shops or online methods of shopping. In addition to this, being that I aim to offer both embroidery and printing services, I viewed businesses that offer these services as well as competitors. This diagram has helped me to understand where I fit into the industry and who my direct vs. secondary competitors are. Also, through platforms such as spyfu.com I was able to gather information about customer desires for many of my competitors which allowed me to identify a trend amongst businesses in the customization business. Overall, this assignment really helped me to gain insight into my industry which will definitely help me moving forward.

BACKGROUND:

In the pursuit of furthering my customization business venture, I interviewed both the manager of the Baruch bookstore, in addition to, an associate of an indirect competitor, Custom Ink. Prior to speaking with Custom Ink, I contacted Angie, the manager of the bookstore, to discuss the policies and limitations to ensure that my business idea was a feasible one.

I was able to confirm that there are no existing licensing deals that would be prevent Baruch from allowing me to partake in customization. For example, if they license their logo out to a third party who controls everything it would’ve affected my ability to move forward with this idea. Angie forwarded me the information regarding become a vendor at the bookstore – every potential business goes through an application / screening process where they evaluate your idea, financials, quality of your product, etc.  Once I gathered this information, I reached out to Angie again to see if customization was something that the bookstore had considered in the past. To Angie’s knowledge, customization is not a service they have entertained in the past. Once I was able to confirm that my idea was feasible and they had not previously considered it, I started to become slightly more optimistic about my business idea.

Once I understood the policies and limitations, I identified that my primary competitor might be a local tailoring company or alteration specialist. However, after reaching out to nearly thirty companies, I was unable to source one that offered customization in the Baruch area. This prompted me to reach out to third-party customization vendors such as Etsy, Custom Ink, and Merchology. I was able to connect with an associate at Custom Ink, named Wariyo, who was kind enough to speak to me for twenty minutes. I told Wariyo about my idea and although he had very little understanding of Baruch he thought my idea was very interesting. Nonetheless, he gave me good insight into the companies general operations and demand for customization in college campuses.

QUESTIONS: 

A few of the questions I asked Wariyo were:

• Does your company receive many orders from students?
  • Wariyo confirmed that they do business with many students who request customization. He said it’s very popular for them to print school logos as well.
• Are individual or group orders more prevalent?
  • This gave me insight that many of their customers are students – both High School and College – and they often do request customization both in group orders and individually. Wariyo also said that group customization orders were more popular since schools sometimes place bulk orders with them and then allow the students to choose their size, color, etc.
• What kind of customization do you see students gravitate more towards?
  • Hoodies are the most popular requested items. They print school logos so you can also fully develop a piece of merch from scratch with them.

I asked about ten more questions but these were three that I thought were very important to my business.

REFLECTION:

Overall, the information that I was able to collect helped me to realize that my idea is definitely feasible and something I would like to continue to develop and potentially pursue. I appreciated Angie being so responsive and willing to forward information to me that allowed me to decide if I could move forward with my idea. I think merch is an important part of school pride, but I also it’s important to give students an opportunity to express their individuality through customization. In addition, I think sites like Custom Ink have differences in both their business model and target audience which would allow my business to thrive in its own way.

NEXT STEPS:

After this interview process, I feel better about my idea and moving forward with developing my customization service at Baruch. I would like to do more research; in particular, continue to explore the process of being accepted as a vendor in the Baruch bookstore. There is a vetting process so I would begin to gather all of the information necessary to ensure my idea would be well-received.

I aim to interview a local tailoring / embroidery shop near Baruch (still confirming who will partake). In the meantime, I have reached out to the Baruch bookstore manager, Angie, in hopes of ensuring that my idea is feasible and there are no licensing deals that would prevent Baruch from allowing me to partake in customization. Assuming my idea will be approved, a few questions that I would like to ask the local tailoring shop and what I what I hope to accomplish in doing so are:

1. Have any students from Baruch approached you in the past regarding merch customization?

• With this question, I hope to gain insight into the demand for customization and if students who desire it would go as far as to approach a local embroidery shop.

2. What kinds of customization options do you offer (print, embroidery, etc.)? And is there a particular style that is more popular?

• I hope to gain insight as to which customization style is most popular among Baruch College students.

3. Have you encounter big groups (such as student club groups) have a desire for customization?

• This will help me to understand if my customization would be desire by large clubs at Baruch. This would be helpful with projecting potential demand since larger orders might come from different clubs.

 

In addition to these questions, I would need to also speak with Angie, the bookstore manager, in depth regarding how or why they would allow this to happen. I have currently exchanged two emails with Angie,  but I am waiting to hear back regarding my last one. A few things that I would like to know are:

1. Is customization something they’ve thought about or considered in the past?

• If their answer is yes then I would need to understand why they considered it but not implement it.

2. Have customization services in any capacity been offered at Baruch in the past? I.e. clubs, events, etc.

3. Does a licensing deal prevent Baruch from being able to implement this idea?

• Baruch might license out their logo to a third-party that controls everything and in that case they wouldn’t be able to allow my company to provide this service.

 

Attached, please find my leave canvas in addition to, explanations / justifications for each section of the canvas:

Problem:

In this section, I thought a lot about my experience at Baruch paired with my experience as a music manager and came to the conclusion that the two were always very separate for me. I met two fellow music managers at Baruch and they both felt similarly – that it was hard to connect with fellow managers, singers, etc. at Baruch. I also recalled asking if they had ever scouted talent at Baruch and both had said no. College has many talented creatives and I believe in finding a way to connect these individuals.

Solution:

Our world is continuing to head in the direction of technological improvements. I think apps should be available at every college campus for differing reasons based on your interests. For me, my interest was always music in college and I found it hard to connect with like-minded individuals. I believe this solution is something I would’ve highly enjoyed to use during my time at Baruch.

Unique Value Proposition:

A large part of going to college is to form connections that will help you in your career field once you have graduated. The entertainment industry might be, arguably, one of the hardest industries to form relationships in. It is extremely competitive. I would love to create a way to make it easier for students to form these connections. It will not only make their collegiate experience more enjoyable but it will also allow them to form friendships based on common interests.

Unfair Advantage: 

In this section, I stated the obvious unfair advantage of someone else replicating our app. This is no surprise as every idea is able to be replicated. Having said that, I think many universities are lacking technologically speaking. They have a long way to go or they risk falling behind. However, when they do begin to develop solutions and move with these trends I don’t think this will be their first area of development.

Customer Segments:

This segment was straight forward being that this app was created with the intent of targeting college / university students. In addition to this, I expressed a few ways in which we could expand upon this target market as we expand our app. It is important to note that we would like our app to be accessible on all campuses – both commuter and non-commuter.

Existing Alternatives: 

There are always a myriad of reasons as to why not to do something or why an idea won’t work. One argument that I noted was the stereotypical “just go talk to people and ask about their interests” or “go to the performing arts center within Baruch and meet kids there”. Yes, you can do both of these things but A. you’d still be missing out on many other potential connections and B. For more introverted people, approaching people is a hard thing to do.

Key Metrics:

For me, it’s really  important that we create an app that’s user friendly accessible to all. I would like to measure these two variables as well as, how easy or hard it makes connecting with students on other campuses. In addition to this, I would like to measure how many music managers, A&R’s, and musicians opt to use an app like this and if it is more favored in one direction or another.

High Level Concept:

Technology is the way of the future. If colleges don’t get on board, they will get left behind. I know the performing arts programs are often overlooked and underfunded, but schools like NYU allocate a lot of resources to their programs. An app like this could be a much more cost effective way for schools to provide resources to this group of targeted students.

Channels: 

Initially, we would want our primary method of connection to be via app. An app is an easy way to connect a large amount of students on different campuses. In addition to this, university / college professionals can help to refer their students to our app to ensure  that they understand it exists and is available.

Early Adopters: 

We expect our early adopters to be, performing arts students, music clubs (if offered), first-year college students, and management students. This is simply based on who we would expect to be within our target audience at universities. Of course, we’d hope that other students that are passionate about creative fields would also choose to use our app, even just to make friends, however, they will most likely catch on later than these individuals.

 

Two pieces of information that need justification in order to ensure success of this app are: 

1: Schools would be willing to front the subscription / membership costs for the app. It can be viewed as an after-school activity or club and therefore a budget, regardless of size, should be justified.

2. Validation that creative students would find an app like this useful and have a desire to use it.