25A: What's Next?

Existing Market. 

Step 1: Talk about what you think is what's next in terms of products and services for your venture.

I believe that Dorms By Design’s next step in terms of potential expansion would be to simply get out and start building test or sample rooms and survey what students want most. Having tangible samples to show off and definitive price points would greatly help out ability to guage market fit and test our hypothesis more in depth. It’s difficult for me to advise an expansion of product offering etc. when we haven’t even rolled out the products in our original hypothesis. 

Step 2: Interview three customers who are already part of the market you have identified, and ask them what they believe is next for a venture like yours. Describe to them your business, and simply ask "What should we be doing that we aren't planning to do?" Next, ask them about your ideas about what customers might want next. 

Since this week we all have three posts to review, I will just summarize each interview essentially with what their suggestion or thoughts for our moving on should be.

1.    John Wojick. He guided me in the direction of the Nike quote, “just do it”. Like my own prediction, the only way he sees my business working is to actually get out there and start making concrete steps towards selling products and testing what works best. 

2.   Ashley Murray. She enlightened me with the idea of doing more market research for not only students moving to their first dorm but also for students moving from their dorm to their first apartment. She pointed out that often kids don’t always need tons of decorations for dorms, but apartments however feel really empty and bare without all new sets of decorations. This is a really interesting theory in my mind and I think that my business idea could work well in this instance potentially even better than my original. College students are extremely busy trying to balance their academic and social lives and really don’t have the time to go shop for the apartment décor that fits them best. 

3.   Cassidy Hoag. She pointed out that many students will potentially find my service after they see dorm sets from their friends dorms that come from our site. She believes that my business’s next steps should be towards providing a system that matches a la carte decoration items with a user imputed color scheme that could make it easier for existing students with existing décor to still use our service to beautify their space even further. 

Step 3: Based on your own expectations and the feedback you received from customers, set a path for the future. 

I think that in terms of my current target market, my most logical focus should be a focus on simply getting out there and trying the first version of my service. I think that a definitive plan of attack is a must here and should be assembled using the research and knowledge I have thus far and them put into action. By testing my original ideas and receiving constant feedback from my customers, I’ll be able to see if my solution is solving the user’s problem or if it is still falling short. 

I’m a believer that entrepreneurship must work in a pattern in which a solution to a problem is created, put into play (tested), then re-worked into an even better solution. It’s too easy to sit here and assume that I could expand into different markets or offer X, Y, and Z when I haven’t actually tried to sell any products to see how the market reacts to my current solution set. 

 New Market.

Step 1: Identify a radically different market from what you're currently planning to target.

My new market that I think would be successful would be current college students moving into a new apartment complex. 

Step 2: How you think your venture concept might be able to create value for people in that market. 

I believe that while I had previously been targeting solely students looking to move into a dorm with absolutely nothing previously purchased, having a side of the business that allowed for a little bit higher end pieces to suffice a nice new apartment’s furnishings would solve a big problem. I’ll express the gist of the problem in the summary of my interviews. 

Step 3: Interview two people from this new market.

I’ve interviewed two individuals, one male and female, who are both planning on moving into an apartment by next fall and expressed that they were worried about being able to furnish their apartment in a pleasing and stylish way. 

Katie Desmond. Katie is a second-year student who currently lives in my dorm, Infinity Hall. She was telling me how excited she was that she signed a lease at the apartment complex here in Gainesville called The Standard. This apartment complex is definitely one of the more expensive places to rent from in Gainesville, so it was clear that her budget might not be such a huge issue. Aside from budget, she expressed that she wanted different decorations than the cheap Target made dorm decorations she currently has to go along with the higher end feel of her apartment. She also expressed that while she had lived in Gainesville for two years now, she had never had to shop for decorations before and didn’t really feel like she had a ton of time to explore the city to find cool and unique decorations. 

Spencer Serrano. Spencer is a first-year student and is one of my friends from around my dorm as well. We are actually planning on rooming together in an apartment next year but have come into the same problem as Katie. Upon touring many of these very spacious apartments, we realized that our collection of Saturdays’ Are For The Boy’s flags probably won’t cover the entire place. Given that we are both fairly busy guys, Spencer expressed his concern that there would be no time to get out shop and that having a service like mine to just mail him a set that looked great and was good quality would be an enormous help! 

Step 4:  What have you learned about this new market? What surprised you the most? Were any of your expectations/assumptions correct? Does this new market, on second thought, appear to be as attractive as your existing market? And so on. 

I think that this new market is a really excellent potential expansion. From the little field research, I’ve had time to do, it sounds like people who are buying or leasing apartments are more willing to splurge a little on higher quality decorations more so than a high school senior just coming to their first dorm. From a business perspective this means potentially bigger ticket items and higher margins from those products; always a benefit when moving into a new market place.

While I had originally been targeting busy high school students, college students are just as busy and go through a very similar transition in living situation. I feel that I could successfully and seamlessly utilize the technology from the dorm design element for an apartment service but input products that are slightly higher end reaching not only an older crowd but a more affluent audience. Having a higher income side of the business could open up all sorts of potential such as paid personal stylists, subscription services, etc.