29A Venture Concept No. 2

Opportunity

The opportunity or unmet need that I have identified in this course is the difficulty of finding shoes that fit well and fit the individual style of men whose shoe size is 13 or above. At the moment my customers would be men who struggle with finding the right size shoe. This is a global market that is not restricted to any one geographical location. Demographically, these customers do not fit in to any one race, nationality, or religion, but they are typically taller individuals who care about the shoes they use whether it is solely for style purposes or for an athletic need. A large proportion of athletes, specifically in sports like football and basketball where the players are large and their shoes are critical to the sport they play, have this same unmet need. Currently, customers satisfy this need with hours of online search. It's mostly online because in-person stores typically only carry up to a 13 and that's only in a few of the most common shoes they sell. Another way customers deal with this need is they find one or two pairs of shoes that they like and continuously buy the same ones every time they need new shoes because they don't want to spend the hours it takes to find a new pair that is their size and preferred style. I believe that these customers aren't loyal to the current method at all and would be more than willing to switch to something that makes this process easier. Unfortunately a better method has not been introduced yet, which is where the opportunity lies within this industry. Currently about 18% of men in the United States wear a shoe size that is 13 or above. This is about 63 million men just in the U.S. alone. Across the world this number would be multitudes higher than 63 million. From these numbers I would say that this is quite a large opportunity to gain a customer base that needs an easier way to shop for shoes. In terms of how long this opportunity will be open I believe that there is no time like the present. I can't say how long it will be open because as technology becomes more ingrained into every facet of our lives, it will be used to solve every problem under the sun, and it's only a matter of time before it's used to solve the opportunity I've presented here.

Innovation

How I would meet this need is to create a website to serve as a one stop shop for these customers. The plan is to compile all the shoes that are offered in sizes 13 and above from the most popular shoe brands across the internet into one place that customers can use to cut down on search time and find the shoes they want. On top of just offering them all in one place I would like to implement a system that allows customers to try the shoes on before buying them. Trying on the shoe is a critical part in the purchase decision in terms of making sure the profile of the shoe matches your style or look. The way I see this working is customers find a shoe they would like to try and select it. They would put down a payment method that is checked to be valid and will receive a hold for the full amount of the shoe to make sure they can afford them. The shoes are then shipped to them for a 3 day trial period from the day they receive them which will start from the time they are delivered, which we will know from the tracking information on the package. If they decide to keep the shoes the payment method they provided will be charged for the full price of the shoe. If they decide they don't like the shoe they will be provided a return label in the original box that they can use to return the shoes and the hold on the card will be released provided there is no damage to the shoes upon return. This method provides everything they need for a purchase decision that an in-person store provides but in an online format that removes the costs associated with a physical space. Since we are already going to have to clean shoes that are returned we can also offer a cleaning/refurbishing service for shoes that the customer already owns. Customers can send their shoes in, pay a cleaning fee that's dependent on the level of damage to the shoe. On top of everything else, a popular website also provides the opportunity to monetize with ad space as well.

Venture Concept

I think customers will switch to this because it will cut their search time substantially and makes the process incredibly easy for them. This would provide them all the same resources as an in-person store without them having to leave the house. I don't think it will be hard to get people to switch with the right types and quantity of advertising to increase the customer awareness of the convenience this would provide. I would not be a manufacturer of shoes so I wouldn't be competing with the big names like NIKE or Adidas. In addition to this, I haven't come across or heard of a similar service to this so competition would be low in the beginning. The most important part of this venture is the customer service and customer experience involved. Providing a better experience than what is currently available is the main defining aspect of this business concept. In terms of organizing a business around this I would have the typical executive officers like CEO, COO, CFO, and CMO. In addition to that I would need people to track inventory and control shipping and returns, people who will clean and refurbish the shoes, as well as customer service reps to deal with customer problems. The number of employees would be dependent completely on how much traffic and sales we have in the business to handle the operations.

The Three Minor Elements
1) My most valuable resource in my opinion would be the fact that I have the same unmet need as the customers I'm trying to serve. This helps me to understand additional problems I could offer solutions for. Also, this allows me to find additional unmet needs than a competitor who has to search for the problems instead of seeing them on a day to day basis.

2) The next opportunity I would like to tackle is women's shoes as well. I currently don't know the comparable size in women shoes that this service would fulfill but it would be relatively easy to integrate that.

3) In five years with this venture I would want to be over one million site visits and over 100,000 orders. As an entrepreneur in the next decade I would like to still be focusing on this venture until I believe I could put it in the hands of a new person and step back as CEO to pursue other ventures or sell the business for a fair price.

Feedback

The good feedback I received talked about how the one stop shop idea was good and that customers in this time prefer that level of service from the places they shop. In addition, they thought the broadness of the opportunity being in shoes was important. Everyone wears shoes so it's not bound to any specific demographic. The thing people thought I should change is my 5 year goals and that they were a little ambitious

Changes

What I changed based on the feedback were my goals. I still the the one million visits to the site is reasonable but I lowered the order goal from five hundred thousand to one hundred thousand. I also added the idea of a cleaning service for both returned shoes and as a stand alone service as part of this venture concept. I also tweaked some lines to make the idea clearer and fixed any typos I missed the first time.