What happened was a long journey through the semester in making sales with our product. There was some tough times as we set up to sell on campus with a couple of sales here and there, but always running into the problem of college students either not smoking or not having cash on them. We also were constantly coming up with new ideas and seeing new opportunities for another venture to take off and were very close once. Our team was literally going to the car to buy supplies only to get a phone call telling us that our idea couldn't be done without a permit. We had two main ideas approved for on campus selling: a printer ink refill service and late night baked goods sales. The printer ink refill was an idea attached with the Replaceable Lighter Keychain in case we wanted to partake in that later, which we are glad we didn't. The refill device we were thinking of doing was only for inject printers and many required making a hole in the cartridge and patching them up, many times resulting in the patch wearing and coming off in the printer. That is something we didn't want to deal with. The late night baked goods sales almost occurred off-campus, before being called by the HDPT after we were given permission to sell and saying this was only for charities. The late night baked goods sales almost came to be on campus, but we pretty much ran out of time and had a lot of prescheduled events between the members that we couldn't get out of. All in all, we stuck with the Replaceable Lighter Keychain sales the entire time and met the goal while create an exciting new product.
We think that the differences in what we had in mind and what actually happened were neither really for better or worse, because we successfully went through and achieved the goals of this project. We definitely liked our original idea, but as we went on we wanted to have two successful ventures. This never occurred but we learned some valuable lessons from it and had some great ideas. Also, if we went through with one of those ventures without fully analyzing it like we did, we could have misjudged items and really negatively impact our profit standing.
As a group, we would have done a few things differently a second time around. We may have explored other avenues to sell our product such as setting up a deal with the bookstore or Mr. Chips. Having our product hanging up next to the cigarette packs in Mr. Chips would have been a great moment for consumers to be like, "hey I really need one of these." Having said that we knew it would have been difficult and probably cut into our profits a lot, so we did not pursue it. Another thing we wish we could have done was improve the product itself with some sort of plastic molding or something to make the outside shell look a little nicer. But to be able to do something like that we would have had to put in a lot more money and probably ordered a large quantity from the manufacturer to achieve any sort of profit margin. Having more avenues to sell the product and money to improve in it were the two main areas that we would try to do differently next time.
Some advice for future entrepreneurial teams would be to start early, keep brainstorming, and to sell sell sell! We believe that starting early and getting a jump on the project was definitely a smart move on our part as there were a couple of teams who didn't have much more than an idea a month into the project and we were already out making money. Although we didn't use some of our extra ideas we were always brainstorming on other ventures and ways to improve our venture. We think that was a key item of success as it kept us on our feet constantly and recommend this to groups in the future. Getting out there and selling your item sounds very simple, but is probably the most important key to success. You NEED to make sales in order to achieve the class goals and succeed. Make sales and improve on your selling techniques throughout the semester.
Our figures for the project were as follows:
- Profit: $203.79
- Expense: $89.21
- Income: $293
- Total sales: 78 lighters (large and small)
Thank you for following us through this journey and safe travels.
Cheerio,
Team Kylotos
