Venture Concept No. 2

For this assignment, I have used the same outline and basic structure for my venture concept, but I have modified the context based on the feedback I have received. 

Opportunity 

     I see an opportunity to help students with a convenient way to service their cars on and around the campus at the University of Florida. As a whole, this class has provided me with an opportunity to think outside of the box and escape my comfort zone. This is important because all good ideas are not necessarily right in front of you, sometimes you have to dig a little deeper and find an opportunity. When I was thinking about an unmet need in the Gainesville area, I thought back to problems I had in the past. I remembered that my car battery had died one day and most of my friends were busy and I was kind of out of luck for a couple of hours. I saw an opportunity for a mobile car service company in the Gainesville area to help out in situations like the one I was faced with on this day when my battery died. The other good thing about this opportunity is that cars are always going to be around, and they are always going to need to be serviced on a daily basis. Cars have been around for over 100 years and it is safe to say that they are not going anywhere. I believe the opportunity in the Gainesville area is huge because there is no service like the kind I am promoting and I really think there is a whole in the market for it. There is an opportunity for this service to be very successful and used by a lot of the more than 50,000 students and faculty in the area. I need to make good, smart business decisions to make sure I am able to take advantage of this opportunity. With this opportunity, I cannot be afraid of failure because I know that there will be some surprises along the way. This is a different service than AAA because it will be a local, student-run group that provides the services and not a corporate chain. Because of this, I will be able to make better connections with my customers and provide a better customer service. I will also not go out into traffic and what not to help people, my service will be for parked cars that need work either at home or work etc. 

Innovation

(This section has mostly stayed the same because my innovation idea has not changed throughout the process)

   The innovation I am bringing to the market is a mobile car service for the students and faculty at the University of Florida. I will have an app and online process where customers can put in a request to have their car fixed at their home by one of my certified car technicians. The jobs I will be able to do include: battery changes, light replacement, oil changes, wiper blade changes, gas fill-ups, minor dent repairs, car washes and some more minor car service jobs. Once the customer puts in the request, the technician will come to them and fix whatever the problem is for the price of the labor and then a small fee for the service I am providing. For example, if a customer's car battery died, I will come to their house with a new battery and replace the existing one for them. The customer will then pay me for the battery and then will pay a fee for the service. The fees will vary on how long the job takes, and the skill that is necessary to complete the request. I am hoping to keep the fee relatively small though because I want to target the college crowd and most students need to stay inside their budgets. Because this is more of a convenience for most people, I want the service to be quick and efficient so people can continue on with their everyday lives. Convenience and affordability are the two keys for my business to be successful.

Venture Concept

    My innovation will solve a hole in the market for a student-run mobile car service in Gainesville. This "hole" presents itself as an opportunity for success. People will be interested in my innovation because it is the first of its kind in the area and it will make a lot of people lives a lot easier if they do not have to go through the hassle of car dealerships or body shops. I cannot communicate how important convenience is for my business idea. I really do not think it will be hard for people to switch to my service because nobody really enjoys going out of their ways to get their cars fixed, so I will bring the service to them. Another good thing about my idea is that there are no other businesses in the area that cater to the needs of students like I am planning on doing. As far as my business concept goes, I want the customer experience to be the best in the area and the customer service to be great every single time. If one customer has a positive experience, they are more likely to go tell their friends and this is how I can expand my clientele through word of mouth. No matter what happens with the business, I plan to continue to make customer service my first priority to help expand my business. As far as employees go, I plan on handling the business and logical aspect of things, and then I will have a couple of certified service technicians on hand to do the actual work on the cars. Luckily, I have a good friend who is a technician and my sister can help me out from the marketing aspect of things. 

Feedback : I only received one comment on my first venture concept, and the person was not exactly sure what my business provided. Because of this feedback, I tried to make my business plan more clear and how I plan to run my business. The comments on my "what's next?" post were a lot more positive and told me that I was on the right page as far as going further. Both people agreed that Gainesville for a great market for this and really any college market for that matter. The only thing I really needed to change was describing my business idea better to make it easier to understand for people reading my blog. 

Changes I made: I tried to make the opportunity I was expressing easier to understand. I want the service I am providing to be clear and out front. I also had a comment asking if my service was similar to AAA services. Because of this, I added a difference in the opportunity paragraph to tell how my services would differ from this corporate chain. 

I chose this picture because it is one of the keys to my business idea. I believe that if my customers are satisfied with the services I provide, they will spread the word about my business and almost do all of the marketing for me. I am a strong believer that word of mouth is one of the most reliable forms of advertisement and future business opportunities.