19A: Idea Napkin 2

Assignment 19A: Idea Napkin No. 2

1. You: 

• My name is Julia Alfano and I am a Business Finance major.  I have grown up in a family-owned grocery store which is where I believe that I acquired my determination and productive values.  As I have grown up in a business where I have become the manager of a department, I understand the qualities that a business leader must have in order to be an effective authority rather than becoming a dictator.  
• Using the entrepreneurship qualities that my family instilled in me through our family business, I aspire to become an entrepreneur myself by starting my own successful company one day.  If my product idea that I have been working on in this class were to become a successful company, I would dedicate a lot of my time to making my product a success.  I definitely see this potential business taking time to develop and to make it widely known.  However, I believe that starting a business takes time and persistence and I am dedicated to making my product successful.

2. What are you offering customers:

• As I have discussed in numerous of our other assignments for this class, I will be offering my customers the ability to protect their business and physical store environment from shoplifters while also protecting their inventory sales and profits.  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.  As I discussed before, the rate of shoplifting in grocery stores is dangerously high and the shrinkage rate for inventory loss in grocery stores has been recorded at 2.2% which is ridiculously high.  I think this number is extremely important to identify because it shows how much money these business are losing in profits every single year. The magnetic ink offers these businesses to catch shoplifters even if they take an item without anyone seeing them do so.  These grocery stores need a way to detect the people that they are not capable of catching themselves.
• However, based on the research I have conducted and the feedback from my classmates, I have realized that grocery stores are not the only retail store that needs a detection system like this.  Therefore, although I am specifically targeting grocery stores, my product can be useful for other retail markets such as clothing stores.  I can give these businesses the ability to retain their social status of the type of business atmosphere and culture they foster while still being able to detect thieves.  

3. Who are you offering it to:

• All of my customers are hardworking, motivated, and most likely middle-class people who started their businesses from the ground up.  These people can range from basically any age; however, many of them may be middle-aged because they have already started their businesses as they have developed a need for a product such as mine.  These people have all invested so much time and money into making their own ideas a reality and deserve to earn the profits that they work for.  They are interested and concerned in making their business the best that it can be.  One of the biggest values that all of these customers have is honesty as they desire for their customers to be honest with them and their business. 
• As I described before, I am specifically 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 and to the grocery stores themselves. 
•  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.   
• Once this product is bought by grocery stores in need and gains success, I will further attempt to sell my product to other retailers such as clothing stores as I recently mentioned above.  Once again, this targeted customer also values dedication and honesty within their business. 

4. Why do they care:

• As the purpose of my product has remained the same from the beginning of my creation of it,  grocery stores can limit the rate of theft that occurs in their stores with my product idea. Grocery stores have experienced a drastic increase in the rate of shoplifting in recent years and owners want to find effective and efficient ways to stop it.  
• By buying my product, grocery stores will be able to 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. 
• Additionally, these businesses want to be able to portray their store as sophisticated with the  advanced measures to protect itself.  My product will give these grocery stores the ability to depict the strong extents to which they are willing to protect their stores, product, and sales.  

5. Core Competencies:

As I stated in my previous idea napkin, the research that I have conducted has shown me that no other company has yet created a magnetic ink that acts as a sensor for theft.  Therefore, by creating this new product, I will have something to offer these grocery stores and other retailers an opportunity that no other company will be able to offer.  Another attribute of my opportunity is that 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.  

 Personally, an attribute that I have that not many other people would have is that I have grown up in a family-owned and operated grocery business and I have first-hand witnessed people stealing and attempting to steal.  As I have listened to numerous discussions with my family about ways to stop shoplifting in our businesses, I have learned of exactly what it is that these stores are looking for in a product.  I can use my expertise and knowledge of the grocery store business to create a product that is truly desired by these companies and that will be effective for them.

Grocery stores in particular will find my product intriguing as it is capable of detecting theft of any 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: 

• As my first idea napkin expressed, I believe that all of my elements described above fit in well together as they each complement one another.  I think that my core competency of having personal experience in the grocery store business benefits the potential customers of my product as I know exactly what it is that these ideal customers are looking for and what I am offering them in my product.  Additionally, I still agree with my thought from my last idea napkin that an aspect of my product that needs to be better identified is how the magnetic ink will be made because the process of making the ink will determine its price and how effective it is or not.   Therefore, the production aspect would be the weakest part of my product which means that it is the most important part to spend time on. 

Feedback Memo:

• One of the biggest points that I took away from the feedback I received was that my personal experience really helps me get a different, more advantageous viewpoint in the shoplifting dilemma.  As my classmates commented that they were intrigued by my experience in the food business at such a young age I was able to incorporate this value into this idea napkin by using it as one of my core competencies. 
• Another point that I took away from the feedback I received was that my product has the ability to deter shoplifters from continuing their illegal acts.  I incorporated this point into my new idea napkin as it adds to the reasons why my potential customers would care to buy my product as they want something that is going to portray them as a strong, prepared company.  
• I also extended the ultimate targeted customer to include other retail stores besides just grocery stores.  Even though grocery stores are my most individualized target, the larger scale of my targeting would be small to medium sized retailers as a whole which I identified in who I am offering my product to.