Assignment 29A: Venture Concept No. 2

1) Opportunity

   I have been kayaking for several years now whether it be fishing, partying, or just going out for a sunset trip with my family. I enjoy being on the water and the physical exercise that comes with kayaking but over the years have realized that there is not enough room for all of the things I need. I have tried several different kayak styles and brands and they all seem to lack one thing or a another. If you produce a kayak that has enough room for all your belongings, it will be slow and harder to paddle and probably won't track too well in the water which is why most of the kayaks on the market don't have enough space on them. This makes it difficult especially when fishing because of all the gear you need to cary with you. Many different consumers have this problem because kayaks can be used anywhere that water is present. I have also noticed that this product can be used for paddle boarders and canoes alike. The main market is for any human powered vessel and the people that use these products. You can use them in a lake, lagoon, river, or the ocean which means that the only geographical location that my product can't be of use is where a body of water is not close. Demographically, my product would be used by people ranging from around 10-65 years old only because these are the year I think you are physically able to paddle a kayak alone. They would range by race and other factors such as economic status because kayaking is for everyone. As of now, customers just take less equipment with them out on the water or buy a kayak with a lot of room and deal with terrible tracking or ease of paddling. I think the opportunity is pretty big because of the fact that there are so many people who go kayaking on a regular basis and the popularity of the hobby. I think that the window of opportunity will be open as long as another product of this sort is not on the market. 

Innovation

   Since there is not enough room on the kayak I have come up with a product that you drag behind your kayak that you put all your equipment and excess belongings. It will increase drag a little but it wouldn't be as bad as if you were to have loaded all that equipment in the kayak that you are sitting in. The product is called the kayak party pack and is equipped with both dry and wet storage as well as a cooler, live bait well, fishing rod holders, and bluetooth waterproof speakers. The product is a stand alone vessel which makes its utility versatile. You can use it while kayaking, canoeing, stand up paddle boarding, or even at a raft up sort of event where boats come together at a sandbar and go in the water. After adding up all the costs I would incur, I think that a profitable selling price would be around $400-500. which is a few hundred dollars less than a new kayak. 

Venture Concept

   My concept fixes the issue of additional space on board a kayak while reducing bad tracking in the water and drag on the vessel. I think people would buy this product because the need is there, the price is fairly low, and the product offers so many additional features that you wouldn't be able to get in a typical kayak. There isn't really a learning curve to it which would make the purchase and use of it pretty rational from the customer's standpoint. As of now, there aren't any competitors that I have come across which makes the product unique. I think the price points in which I sell the product for would have a huge impact on sales because f the fact that people already had to spend upwards of $500 on the kayak itself. It would need to be a reasonable price because it is not a necessity rather than a luxury. I would however need a pretty large business in order to run day to day operations such as inventory, filling orders, manufacturing, distribution, and marketing of the product. 

The three minor elements

1) I think my products secret sauce is the location of where I am from and will be rolling the product into at the start of my business venture. Ft. Lauderdale is known as the Yacht capital of the United States which shows how much the water means to people that live there. A lot of people stay out on the water everyday and there are many location in South Florida that offer some of the best ocean kayaking in Florida. It is important to have your target market segment near where your business will be run so that you are able to market your product to the people who will actually use it.

2) I think the next opportunity would be to get into the kayak rental services. If I were able to sell this product to companies like this, I would have an even bigger market. Another market that I might be able to get into is the scuba diving industry. If I made a product dedicated to scuba gear, they would be able to take their gear kayaking rather than on a boat and scuba dive near the coast.

3) I'm not exactly sure if I will ever take this idea and actually make it become reality because kayaking is just a hobby of mine. I do however hope to have my own business within the next 10 years whether it be a clothing company or restaurant. I think this whole process has been beneficial because it went over the entire process of how to generate ideas to actually finding your target market and thinking about how you would actually start the company. 

 2) Provide a summary of the feedback you received from your previous venture concept description. 

I didn't get too much feedback regarding my last venture concept idea but from everything I have heard from people commenting on my post is that it would be a good idea to add items that relate to fisherman because a lot of kayakers use their vessels to go fishing. I didn't originally have this element in my product and I added it as I heard more and more people comment on that aspect. Another aspect that someone said was about making a new but not too different of a product specifically for scuba divers. This would add a whole new market segment to my product. I also heard that I should remove the waterproof speakers because it would add a technological aspect to my product that might be too costly for what it would add to the product. 

3) Describe how you changed your venture concept, based on what you learned from the feedback.

I didn't change my concept too much since the last time I wrote it up in full detail like this because I think my product is really simple and has most of the kinks worked out. If I were to change something it would definitely be to take the speakers out because I think it would be very costly and maybe even unnecessary in my product. The feedback I received really made me think about how else this product could be tweaked in order to enter new markets such as the scuba diving industry.