24A Venture Concept Analysis

Venture Concept Analysis: Dorms By Design

The Opportunity: 

The ideal customer for our business is either a high school senior preparing to go to college or a student already in college. The main element our customers must possess is a need for ways to express themselves in terms of living situations and college decor. All of our customers are geared to be mostly first-year college students moving into their first dorm, but another side of our market is that group of students is moving out of their first dorm into a bigger apartment. For myself and many of my friends, time is our most valuable asset, and spending time hunting and shopping for dorm room decorations is not an effective use of this asset. Having a service, it allows you to fully customize and create in dorm decoration package would free up lots of time during college and before you even come to university allowing for more time with friends, family, doing things you enjoy, and maybe even studying. Having dorm decorations that suit you are, makes your apartment or dorm feel like home. More importantly being able to obtain this homelike essence without having to spend hours and hours hunting and picking different decorations frees up your time for more important things in your life. 

When students are transitioning from a life at home with their parents, they gain a sense of freedom and with this new space to call their own, they want to decorate it to even further represent their hobbies, personality, and style! 

Geographically, we are looking for students across the US currently. Demographically, they are around 17-19 years of age but have a mental age of someone in their twenties. Our designs will tend to have a more mature and contemporary feeling to them, some of which younger minded people won't understand or appreciate. 

As of now students and future students are spending hours traveling to various home décor shops such as Bed Bath and Beyond or Pier 1 Imports, which can be time consuming, expensive, and very limited in options. Based on the variety of stores students are traveling to and shopping with, I have reason to assume that there is little loyalty to just one store. 

Having the ability to target every college student in the US or potentially the world means that our audience is enormous. With a society that is encouraging more and more people to skip over labor intensive work and head to get a college degree, our market for dorm and apartment decorations is only growing! 

The Innovation:

Dorms By Design is aimed at allowing students to skip the hassle of hunting for days on end for dorm decorations that fit their style and skip the frustration of having to pack all of their gear into the car and then have to unload it up in the dorm. I think the main premise of what we offer here at the dorms by design is the ability too easily customize your dorm and express your true style without spending every bit of your summer shopping for your dorm. Our packages are designed to provide a solid platform it encompasses all things needed for your first dorm or apartment.

Alongside this all inclusive box style dorm kit is the ability for users to endlessly customize and design their own bundle. Using an AI function on our website we will be able to intelligently manipulate catalogue items to provide both direct recommendations and “best fit” options for the customer. It will allow users to sort by color scheme, theme, or even select a premade set from one of our designer bundles and customize the aspects of it they desire, similar to a starting platform. 

The website will also feature a live preview feature which will allow users to visualize what their selections will look like within the realm of their own dorm or apartment. If that wasn’t enough visualization, we hope to be able to implement an Augmented Reality feature set that allows users to use their smart phone camera functions to get life size equivalent helping users to gauge proper fitment and ensure that the new pieces being ordered match their current and future setup. Similar to how paint companies are using this feature to try colors on walls or furniture companies are allowing users to “place” a digital version within their home, our platform will allow users to visualize a fully customized dorm design. 

The Venture Concept: 

With all these features combined, we believe that the dorm and apartment decorations business will be turned upside down. Customers will be able to shop for everything they need all in one place and customize it in the easiest, effortless, and interesting manner possible! 

Given our current market analysis, the theme we picked up on was that our future customers are simply confused and frustrated. They are tired of wasting time and money trying to find exactly the decoration set they desire. By leveraging an aggressive social media advertising strategy, we believe it is very reasonable to expect a large number of users to convert to our system and feel more loyal to our service simply because of it’s inclusive and easy to use nature.

With today's options being limited to bed bath and beyond or other really pricey apartment boutiques or the horrid "package" design provided by many universities, opportunity lays in the ability to offer a service that allows people to customize and order stylized decorations in a one stop shop and spend their time on things much more relevant to their rapidly changing lives. Additional competitors in the marketplace include higher end retailers such as Crate and Barrel or Pier 1 Imports, both of which provide high quality decorations but are more targeted towards middle bracket income levels and a much older crowd.