11A- Idea Napkin

Assignment 11A: Idea Napkin

1.) You: 

• My name is Julia Alfano and I am a freshman at the University of Florida.  I am pursuing a finance major and thinking about pursuing a minor in entrepreneurship.  I have grown up in my family grocery store business and have worked my way up to a department manager.  I am extremely motivated and always want to achieve the best I possibly can.  My aspirations are to turn this ambition and business experience into my own business one day.  If I were to actually start this business for my magnetic ink idea, I would dedicate a lot of my time to it because I want to be successful in anything I do.  I think with my knowledge and experience in the grocery store business, I would bring the grocery store and retail sector of the economy a necessity that they have been in need for.  Therefore, with my product idea, I will be able to amalgamate my experience in a grocery store with my ideas for the magnetic ink to create an effective yet affordable sensor system to detect and limit shoplifting.  

2.) What:

• I am offering grocery stores the ability to more affordably and effectively detect shoplifting.  I would be solving grocery store owners' unmet need by offering them a sensor system that detects theft and would therefore save sales and profit.  The rate of shoplifting in grocery stores is dangerously high and the shrinkage rate for inventory loss in grocery stores is 2.2% which is ridiculously high.  By offering this magnetic ink, these businesses would be able to catch shoplifters even if they stick an item in a bag without anyone seeing.  Grocery stores need a way/system to detect the people that they are not capable of catching themselves.  

3.) Who:

• To best sell this product, I am targeting small and medium-scale grocery stores who cannot afford high quality sensors such as the big machines by exit doors or the plastic tags that go on every item.  I would be offering the magnetic ink to labeling companies who produce and distribute the food labels and packaging tape to the grocery stores.  Additionally, I would offer the ink directly to the grocery stores for any printing they may do for personal items.  The owners and managers of grocery stores are my targeted customers because it is extremely difficult to detect shoplifting of food items because not everything can have a sensor on it; however, every food item has to have a label of some sorts on it.  Therefore, the grocery stores will want a product that can detect theft without being obvious.   

4.) Why:

• Customers (grocery stores) will pay money for my magnetic ink that acts as a sensor along with two small physical sensors because in the long run, it will save their sales and profits.  The costs of shoplifting have left grocery stores without the sales revenue that they work extremely hard for and deserve.  Grocery stores want to have a way to know when an item is being stolen and to hold shoplifters accountable for their actions.  By having this system, customers will know not to mess around with these grocery stores and if someone is shoplifting, the ink will be detected and the manager will be able to call the cops on the shoplifter. 

5.) Core Competencies:

• According to the research I have conducted, no one has created a magnetic ink that acts as a sensor for theft.  Therefore, by creating this new product, I will have something to offer these retail grocery stores that no other company can.  Buying the ink and the small detectors will also be cheaper than a company buying the very large sensors and plastic tags that most retail stores buy to detect shoplifting.  Grocery stores in particular will be attracted to my product as they need something applicable to every single food item, no matter how big or small or if it is sold singularly or not.  By offering a product tailored to the needs of grocery stores at an affordable cost, I believe that they will be more inclined to buy my product.

Reflection:

• I believe that each of these components works really well together in relation to my product.  However, since no other company has used magnetic ink to act as a sensor, I will need to conduct a lot of research to find which metals would work best to serve as a magnet yet still be cheap.  Therefore, I will have to attribute enough money to start up a company to sell this magnetic ink and the small sensors that go along with it.  Besides figuring out the logistics of what would be the cheapest and effective version of the magnetic ink, I believe that the ink would be a great product for grocery stores to buy.