24A – Venture Concept No. 1

Business Name: Sucking doesn't have to Suck Inc.

Opportunity

In Gainesville, plastic straws have been banned, and restaurants have switched over to paper straws. These straws do not work as intended and create customer dissatisfaction. There are many alternatives that could be used, but are expensive when bought in smaller quantities. There are places around Florida such as St. Pete, with these regulations, but I would first start in Gainesville, which is a smaller market, before expanding into other territories. I would start geographically and demographically around Gainesville, locating smaller locally owned restaurants and coffee shops first, in order to build up a client base. I feel places such as Opus Coffee and Pascals, which are close to campus and the Downtown area would be the first to start using my products. These places that are selling small coffees for big prices to college kids are the ones who could even add say a ten-cent surcharge which would even add to their profits considering they are only paying six cents a cup. Customers at these places are satisfying this need by either not using straws or using paper ones. The problem with this, is beverages like ice coffee that needs to be mixed with a straw while it gets watered down, or Frappuccino’s needing one to drink. Paper straws do not work as intended and always fall apart with use. This opportunity is huge because some of these coffee shops and restaurants sell hundreds of drinks a day, requiring them to use hundreds of straws a day. This added up across Gainesville shows the huge market. This window of opportunity will be open until someone comes and starts a distributing service and commits the local restaurants to their service.  

Innovation

My company would be a distributor for alternative straws. For capabilities of the distributing center it would start small, the pricing for packs of 1,000 bamboo straws are 0.03 a straw, but it does specify there are discounts and incentives for bulk quantities and purchases. Even assuming I buy for the full price of 0.03 and sell for 0.06 a piece to restaurants, selling the whole initial stockpile would result in a $10,500 profit before taxes. Since straws are small and lightweight, I would be able to keep a lot in my SUV and fit the rest in either my apartment or friends’ garage. I would say this low overhead is definitely a resource because I would not even have to hire a staff or rent office space. My organizational culture would push environmentalism as a image, so that companies could advertise they are environmentally friendly. I would try to keep myself always open to order requests and work with companies that need help fulfilling their orders. There are many different products I could offer including customized stainless-steel straws, paper straws, bamboo straws and grass straws. There is even more type of straws I could offer, but would limit it to these products to keep inventory smaller, unless special requests are made by customers.

Venture Concept

Customers will switch because if competitors switch first, then they will lose business. They will also switch because it will increase customer satisfaction, which in turn increase customer loyalty and business. I feel like many places would not be to hard to switch, they are already buying straws, just need a very little increase in the budget for what I am offering, which can be done by raising prices a few cents, or budgeted with the money from increase in sales. Chains will be harder to convince, because they may already have contracts in place, but there are so many local restaurants and coffee shops that I feel like it would not be too hard. My competitors would be online places like amazon that sell these, but looking at their prices, it would be much more money for them because they sell in smaller quantities. The straws come in smaller packs already so I would not have to repackage, I would simply be buying large boxes with hundreds of packs of a thousand straws, and then selling these packs individually. I would be the only employee to start, because it would only take a few minutes on the phone or email for companies to reorder, and Gainesville is a small city where I could drop off straws to many businesses in one drive. If it does expand, I may need more help, but as of now I would be the only one.