Rethinking Our Market and How We Are Going to Reach Them

What is our market?

The product we want to see, an integrated greywater filtration and thermoregulation system, is a resegmented market, and our product is very unique because no other companies are producing an integrated system.  Some issues with this type of market is the public's lack of awareness about what our product is and how it can benefit their lives.  Because a widespread project to educated mass consumers would be timely and costly, we decided to spend our time educating businesses such as home construction companies.

What is our distribution channel?

We plan on advertising our product at trade shows and by making inquiries at large construction companies such as KB Home.  We then plan to rent a large warehouse to store our panels until we are able to have a large bulk order from one of these companies makes a purchase.  We will then ship the panels in bulk to the desired location.  To sell the panels, we plan to have a clean website that provides purchase information as well as education as to why they should purchase the product.

Enter: Ecoflow

Who are we?

This week, our team finally finalized our company name and which patent we wanted to go with.  We decided to go with the greywater filtration system that is integrated with thermal regulation for our patent; and we decided that the name "ecoflow" was best for our company.  We really liked the patent because it seemed very easy to sell to business and we feel like we could actually be making an impact on the world/environment.

Branding!

This week, I was in charge of creating a company brand and logo!  To start off, I wanted to think of the core impacts and values of our product, as well as the image that we wanted to portray to the world.  I felt that water, the sun, and maybe something "eco-friendly" were the best options for creating our logo.  I made a few sketches of possible logos, and our team narrowed it down to the one including the sun and the waves.  For the primary and secondary color of our brand, we wanted to use  a bluish green and a yellow.  Personally, I think aesthetic makes a product more appealing and so I felt like I should put a lot of effort into creating a nice brand :)

Team Feedback

Who's doing what?

This week, our team was able to decide our roles!  For my role, our team decided to appoint me as CTO because I have had the most interaction with the professors and graduate students who created our patent.  Nitin was named CEO because he seems to be leading our team and making strong delegation actions.  Lei Wong is head of operations because of her background in civil engineering.

How am I working with our team?

As CTO, I'm working really closely with Lei Wong because she is a civil engineering major and can provide specific insights that I wouldn't think about, or that I overlook.  I report to Nitin with my findings and specific features that I think we could implement to make our product more appealing.  Niels is in charge of finance so we often come to him so ask about the feasibility of things, and whether or not we can implement certain features.

The Rejection Challenge

What is the "rejection challenge"?

This week, we had an interesting task for which we played a game called Rejection Challenge. Each team started with a plastic box and had to make trades to see what people would trade and can we end up with something of more worth. The Rejection Challenge was very interesting because I was curious to see two things: one, what would people be willing to trade and two, over the course of the one hour, how valuable of an item can we get.

What did we do?

When we got our first item, I had the idea to ask the girl scouts to trade the box for a box of cookies, if i bought two boxes from them.  From there we went to the library where we thought that we could find a lot of students who would be willing to want the cookies.  After asking around for a bit, our team's strategy was to split up after receiving a few boxes of girl scout cookies so we could maximize items within the time slot.  We ended up with a 10 dollar gift card, a water bottle, and other items,

What did we learn?

It's interesting to see how value of items is subjective as it changes from one person to another. It was also eye opening to see some more shy members of the team be more out going and asking questions.  I think the most important thing that we learned was how to approach strangers and ask for things without being embarrassed

Update on Team!

So far, our team has been working pretty well!  We all understand the general direction we all want to take and make sure to hear everyone's ideas out.

The Team Meetings

Our team has met up about 4 times so far, and each time we have made strides in choosing a final project and have finally narrowed our options down to two.  The first meetings were more logistical and we just assigned who does what, but as of late, we have been being more collaborative and speaking our minds.  In this collaborative environment, everyone feels more comfortable and we are able to understand each others ideas.  We have narrowed down our projects to focus on a possible two patents: a patent regarding cyanobacteria conversion of ethanol and a greywater filtration system.

Issues that our Team is Facing

Currently the entire team is excited to start planning our project, but we have met the barrier of having limited information about what the patents are about.  We have all repeatedly sent emails to the respective professors, but we haven't been able to actually meet up with any.  Unfortunately the greywater filtration professor has not responded and the cyanobacteria professor was unable to meet the past week.

Market Needs and Unique Value Proposition

LE' GO

"I'm gonna pick up the pieces

And build a Lego house

When things go wrong we can knock it down"

INSTRUCTIONS

At the beginning of the game our team was split into two smaller teams, one team was "engineer based" and the other was more miscellaneous.  The instructions for the game were pretty vague, but everyone just played along and didn't really ask any questions.  After the teams separated, we were given papers with lego images and asked to write instructions to the other team on how to build them.

THE GAME

For the game I was placed on the miscellaneous team which consisted of a pre-business major, an IDS and me an MCB & Media Studies major.  My team was given a picture of a lego formula 1 car.  We initially tried to write out steps by focusing on specific parts, but decided to give more broad instructions about the separate parts of the car.  As it became increasingly difficult to give instructions, we just said it was a race car. Additionally we tried to give a link to what the car looked like.  When we got the bag of legos we realized that the parts were all random and that the instructions that were given wouldn't work.  As a result, we just improvised to follow the instructions of what our other team said.

WHAT I LEARNED

From the game I learned to use my resources to the best of my capabilities and in context of the situation.  Additionally, I came to understand that the end results don't always turn out as expected or as planned, but I should always try my best to make a product.