24A

Venture concept:

Today one of the most important topics when it comes to our daily life is the protection of our nature and the environment that we are living in. No matter if you turn on the TV, walk down the streets of the city or engage in a conversation with your friends. You either see news regarding oceans that get destroyed, demonstration that are happening to prevent environmental harm, or a highly vivid conversation about how bad we are treating our environment. Hence my venture is taking a huge step towards a more conscious way to live and to deal with these problems. How the venture was founded was by me who came to the US a couple of months ago for an exchange semester. My home university is in Maastricht, the Netherlands, but I am originally from Germany. In both of these countries in which I have lived in my life the policy in supermarkets regarding plastic bags is much different than here in the US. If you would like to use plastic bags provided by the supermarket you will have to pay 30-50 cents, which adds up to a large sum if you bought many groceries. The reason supermarkets do this is to make sure that customers either re-use for another trip to the supermarket or recycle them in a conscious way. Because plastic is non degradable it will stay in the atmosphere and especially in the ocean if it finds its way there.

The venture I develop is a firm that sells reusable bags. These bags are made of materials that are sustainable and will not harm the environment. They will have 3 features. The first feature is the durability which means that this bag has the ability to serve the customer for not just one or two trips but for many years in the future. Moreover, they will be very functional. Things that you buy hot or cold will safely stay in that way until you bring your stuff home (up to 2 hours). Lastly we will offer many designs, which means that we will offer colorful designs which will perfectly suit the customers preferences. If this is not good enough for him we offer the option of a customizable design on our website.
The distribution channels are two-fold. First of all, we will offer the bags in supermarkets. This means that we will closely cooperate with supermarkets all over the country and place the bags near check out counters. Secondly we will offer an online shop with the previously presented custom bag option. Our production will happen somewhere in Asia to keep costs low.

The team that I will start out with will consist of mainly two people. My close friend from back home in the Netherlands and me. Moreover, my dad will serve as a advisor since he works in supply chain and has a big network of people that he knows.

We will start out in a home office environment, which makes sense because we do not have the resources for an office yet. This way we save money that we can use for other purposes, such as trips to Bangladesh and Vietnam to source new suppliers. Since my parents are from Vietnam and I speak the language fluently, I would prefer to have the manufacturing plant in Vietnam through an independent firm that already does these kind of things. It will be easy to gather contacts and gain trust of people there since they will acknowledge me as a local and not a foreign businessman.

After we successfully source the supplier we will engage in consumer research to see which designs are frequently asked for at time being. This will be important to make customers happy since the design is the first thing they notice on the bag.

The most important thing for our company is the cooperation with supermarkets. We have to show them how bad the problem with the plastic bag is for the environment and why it makes sense to sell our types of bags. Of course we will also show them profitability and revenue forecasts which they get a margin of since they sell the bags in the end.

After a trial period in for example Gainesville we can see how customers react to the bag and if there is enough demand. If this is the case we can move on to a larger scale.