Week 12 Reading Reflection

As discussed in the reading last week, business strategies are often overlooked, and this is sometimes detrimental to business's, who have to keep up with an extremely competitive and innovative market.  These days consumers have extremely high expectations for new technologies and new products, and expect companies to be consistently updating and improving their products to suit the customer's needs.  This chapter was interesting because it explored how most entrepreneurs start out with very informal planning, and some ventures can easily succeed by doing this.  But when companies grow and become more complicated, they need to have some structured formal strategic planning.  This depends on the amount of competitors, the experience of the entrepreneur, and other reasons.  This chapter also explored how a business grows and develops, and how the business will always end with either innovation or failure.  This proves how important it is for businesses to innovate and have a strategic plan.  An aspect I thought was a little confusing was the section on evaluating strategic plans.  I found it a little confusing, but interesting, when a plan fails but the business actually finds a bit of success in that plan.  The failed strategy or method, could lead to a different success or resolution that the business had never explored.  If I were to ask the author a question, I would ask how many businesses, if any, have lasted for a significant amount of time and are extremely successful, without implementing any innovation or strategic plan.  There was nothing I thought was incorrect or wrong in this chapter.

Venture Concept No. 1

Opportunity

With the growing theft rates, and with stress levels on the rise and our days getting busier and busier, it is easy to lose personal items or worry about misplacing your belongings.  Traveling is also becoming more and more popular, where it is extremely easy to have your items stolen or misplaced. Almost everyone in every demographic uses a wallet, luggage, purse, or jacket.  Sense my product can be used on almost every item or device, the customer base is endless. Currently, my customers do not have a solution to finding a lost or stolen item.  They may have insurance on their products to protect them if their phone or wallet is stolen, but sometimes these insurance policies are expensive and unaffordable. I think customers would easily switch from an insurance policy to using my disguised tracker if they trusted the device, because it would be much more affordable.  The window of opportunity has been open for a few years, since tracking technologies such as bluetooth, and the ways to access location, through apps and the internet, have been available. 

Innovation

SafeCard is a tracker that is sold in many different forms to disguise itself from thieves.  For your wallet, buy a tracker that looks like any old credit card.  For your luggage, buy one that looks like a luggage tag.  SafeCard uses an app and a website, where customers can log on and view the location of any of the devices they have registered.  You can also use the app to make whichever SafeCard you would like make a sound, either a vibration, loud ring, or soft ring.  This way, even if you know the location of your object, but it is lost in a crowded or cluttered area, you kind find it using sound.  This card is disguised as many different items so that if stolen, the thief will not know to discard of it. I am also selling holders for the SafeCard to be secure on the item that you are tracking.  A holder and keychain that can easily attach and detach from any item you would like.  The trackers would be sold for $25.00 to $30.00 each, depending on the item that the tracker is imitating, and the holders for $5.00 to $10.00, depending on the type of holder.  This is around the same price or less from any other tracker that is on the market, and it is very affordable. 

Venture Concept

Consumers will use SafeCard to find their items such as jackets, purses, wallets, luggages, and more, when these items are either lost or stolen. Customers will buy this for a piece of mind, and to save money on buying insurance for their items, and instead of re-buying their items when misplaced or stolen. Customers will switch to the SafeCard because the technology will be trustworthy and reliable.  Also apps are becoming increasingly popular, and are used in every day life by most Americans these days.  Customers will be very comfortable with using the app to find their items, and feel more at ease while traveling or working.  The competitors are other tracking device products, such as Cube, the tracking device that I mentioned in my last post.  The advantage that SafeCard has over cube is that SafeCard looks like other items, such as credit cards and luggage tags.  If a thief see's Cube on a wallet or luggage, the thief would recognize the tracker and quickly discard of it. For this product, I would not have a physical store, or location for people to go to, I would sell the product on the website, and from the app.  If people were interested in the product, they could simply download the app and order as many SafeCards as they would like to their house.  I would want a customer support team over the phone, and I would also like fast delivery and shipping to the customers house or business.  The packaging could be a very basic, inexpensive job, as we are trying to cut product and shipping costs down as much as possible, and the product would not easily break. 

Three Final Elements

1.  Unfair Advantages:

• Hundreds of apps are downloaded everyday.  They are such an available, easy, and fast way to buy and obtain a product.  Most people have many many apps on their phones, and would prefer a product that they could use from the convenience of their phones.

• We have such a dependence on technology, and because we are on our phones often, we can get distracted from the rest of our belongings, meaning that they are more available to be stolen. As theft in the US and abroad becomes more common, demand for my product will go up.

•  The demand for insurance is going up, as people would rather pay to feel protected.  This card is a form of insurance because people are paying to be able to find their items if lost or stolen.  People in the United States are spending more and more on insurance than ever before.  Because this card is a form of insurance, the demand high, and rising.

• Most people who order the product will order 2, or 3, so that they can put them in different places to keep track different items. This will drive up sales.  Even if the customer only buys one product to start, if he or she is happy with it, they will probably want another to put in a backpack or suitcase, and feel more secure.

• Hundreds of apps are downloaded everyday.  They are such an available, easy, and fast way to buy and obtain a product.  Most people have many many apps on their phones, and would prefer a product that they could use from the convenience of their phones.

2.  Next Venture:

• The next opportunity or aspect of my venture that I would like to accomplish would be promoting the tracker to be sold for everything.  I want to make it a common, "cant live without" item, like a cell phone.  
• I would expand it to go on children, pets, cars, bikes, skateboards, ect.  I would want to decrease the price as much as possible so that people could afford to buy them in bulk and put it on everything.  

3.  Future:

• Five years from now, I would like SafeCard to be a common and necessary household item.  In the future I would like people to look back and wonder how they got by without a tracker on their important belongings, just as people look back and wonder how they survived so many years without a cell phone, or the internet.  
• People spend so much waisted time looking for lost or misplaced belongings, which could be simply avoided with this device.  People also worry so much about items being stolen, but the police could easily use the tracker to track down any item using this product.