4A- Forming an Opportunity Belief

During this week’s first exercise I realized an unsolved problem, with what I think to be a fairly simple solution. I personally feel like I lose a decent amount of clothes, and once they are gone you have a slim chance of ever getting them back.  I’m sure this is a problem in many people’s lives.  We all have a lot of different clothing and through the course of our lives we lend them out, take them on vacations, or just lose them; and we end up just buying more.  These behaviors cause people to end up going through a lot more clothes.  Right now there are no products on the market specifically designed for tracking clothes.  The only way to avoid losing them is to be careful, but still, responsibility wont keep you from losing any of your clothes.  If a tracking chip could be made, small enough to be un-bothersome, and easy to put on clothes, it could change this. It could connect to your phone, and you would know exactly where they were. I think that this product could be useful for anybody.  The prime consumer though would be some one with either an expensive or expansive wardrobe. It would probably be most attractive to women, and upper to middle class men.  I think it would appeal to the younger audience (who tend to move around and swap clothes more), as well as parents(whose children are very good at losing clothes). I’m 90% sure that this opportunity exists.

I interviewed three people: Martha, a Mother of four, Evan, an 18-year-old UF student, and Bowen, a 30-year-old man who works in Finance.

            

            Everyone I interviewed had different things to say about this opportunity.  Martha told me that the way she solves this problem for her kids now is by writing their names on the tags of their clothes.  She said that this method works well.  Since this method is free, she was unsure about wanting to spend the money if it would only make a slight difference.  She did seem interested in the product for her own, more expensive clothes though.

            Evan seemed very interested in the product.  He tells me that he loses an article of clothing about once a week.  He said that he though college kids were especially susceptible to losing their clothes. He admitted that he didn’t notice this problem until entering college.

            Bowen seemed to believe in this opportunity, but was a little weary.  He said that he could see the value in this opportunity for his more expensive clothes (like his suits or some of his shoes), but didn’t see any value of it’s use on say a t-shirt.  He thought it would be most useful for protecting only his high end clothing.

            The most surprising thing I realized while doing these interviews was that the opportunity seemed to many people to be more of a luxury than something for use on everything.  I realized to actually sell the opportunity to a wide variety of audiences, I would have to sell my product in relative bulk.  Without this, I would most likely only be able to market to upper to middle-class audiences who have clothes they really want to protect.  I think I was correct about younger people being a prime consumer group.  Evan said he only started to have the problem once he moved into college.  It seems like while living with their parents, most kids don’t really worry about losing their clothes.

            I would say about 60% of my original opportunity is still there.  I believe that my new view of the opportunity is much more accurate than my initial thought. I still believe that the opportunity is lucrative, just not as marketable as I originally thought. I know more exactly the consumer markets I would be trying to sell to, and how to sell to them.  I think it’s crucial for an entrepreneur to adapt his product based on consumer feedback. Just because you thought it up doesn’t mean it can’t be improved or perfected.  You are trying to market to the consumer, so their opinion should be paramount.  I believe it’s almost always positive to take consumer feedback.