Venture Concept No. 2

This week, I revised my venture concept.  I made changes based on the comments presented, which were almost completely positive.  Here are some snippets of the comment section fro my first venture concept.  

"I think your idea is the most brilliant one yet! It is unique and inventive."

"I love your idea and would absolutely benefit from a durable, retractable charging cord. I cannot tell you how much money I have wasted on buying new cords and cubes for my phone to charge, all while they break so frequently."

"I love the concept of retractable cords so I very much like what you are proposing. Adding the element of a durable cord is icing on the cake."

"I like your idea, because I think long cables are super annoying. However, there are already retractable and durable phone chargers out there, what makes yours so different?"

The only criticism offered was that my product might not be unique.  I think that is definitely something that needs to be addressed.  I didn't change much in the opportunity and venture concept sections.  However, I did add a few things to the innovation section about setting my product apart.

Opportunity

The first area I am addressing is the opportunity I see and am trying to profit on.  In case you aren’t familiar with my product, for clarity’s sake I will go ahead and briefly describe it.  I am making a retractable phone charger that emphasizes a durable cable.  When I asked myself who has this need, the answer was quite simple: anyone with a cell phone.  You don’t have to do much research to know that is quite a large market, and therefore, a huge opportunity.  When I interviewed people about this idea, almost all of them said it was something that they would spend money on.  First, I just asked people about charger cord length.  That was something that an overwhelming majority of the people I talked to had an issue with.  However, the issue of cord durability kept coming up as well.  That was when I decided to focus on making a durable cord as well.  This brings us to the next segment.

Innovation

There are several products on the market currently that have certain characteristics of my product, but nothing that puts all the elements together like I will.  For example, I found a retractable car charger that was only $6.  However, people complained that it broke easily, sometimes never worked, had a very flimsy cord, and just did not seem like it was very well made.  I also found a company that sells durable, long iPhone charger cords.  They sell for about $18, and their reviews are fantastic.  They last a long time, the cord length is excellent, the design on the braided cords is flawless, and they seem to work very well.  However, this company does not offer any cords that are retractable.  With my product, I would like to take positives from both.  Recently, I had to purchase a new charger cord.  My old one had gotten so worn down and frayed that the wiring was protruding from it.  I looked around for something like the product I am wanting to make.  However, I was unable to find anything.  The retractable chargers mainly had very thin, frail looking cords (even more so than the standard Apple one).  I ended up settling for a long, braided cord, and I am much happier with this cord than my previous one.  When making my product, I want a charger that is retractable, but I do not want to sacrifice quality of the cord in order to do so.  I don’t know for sure what price I will set on it yet.  However, I think it could be very competitive with a price somewhere around $18-20.  Eventually, I would be happy licensing my product out to a larger company, but I want to do my own manufacturing and sales in the beginning. 

Venture Concept

The first part of the venture concept I want to talk about is resources.  There are many valuable resources at my company’s disposal.  I talked at length about these in the “secret sauce” blog post recently.  In my opinion, the most valuable resource or opportunity for me is the sheer size of the market.  There are so many people that have cell phones.  Not only that, but tablets, music players, and other devices need charging as well.  It is also a growing market as well.  For the first time, people are using mobile devices to search the internet more than computers.  As you can imagine, this drains battery quickly.  Our product offers a longer cord to make using your phone more convenient while it is charging.  When I look at the near future for this product, the obvious next step to me is to look into car chargers.  After that, we could look into other applications for our retractable technology.  As long as we can get a patent, we can put our technology on other things as well.  This brings me to asking what the next step is for me.  I would love to get a patent on the charger.  That would give me all kinds of options.  The one that pops out to me is actually selling my product to a larger company.  I could keep some equity in the company, have a royalty, or if the offer was good enough, sell the entire thing.  This would allow me to continue investing and growing new products and ideas.

"Tangled" by Jabiz Raisdana. https://flic.kr/p/aSZZU6