25 A What's Next?

Existing Market
My existing market is the college students buying from my bulk food store.

1. I first interviewed a 21 year old named Maddy. She told me that if she was running the store, she would reach out to college students as "influencers" to market the store in their clubs, organizations or greek groups in order to increase customers and overall revenue.

2. Then I interviewed a girl named Jessica (20). She is very involved with environmental issues and told me the best thing to do is to advertise on campus the overall impacts that our store has. She said this could greatly increase the amount of people showing out, because they'll know we're an eco-conscious store that cares about the Earth.

3. Finally, I interviewed a guy in class, Joe (22). Joe let me know that he thought by moving to other college campuses, we could increase the amount of influence we have, and keep recreating the same model every-time to be successful in each town.

Overall, it's extremely interesting to see what students at the school are suggesting; this gives me more insight in the future as to what I can do. The plan would be this. First, open the store. Then set up openings for store influencers (people who table at Turlington or hype up our business at meetings in exchange for pay or discounts). These influencers then will stir up traffic into our store, greatly increasing sales and buzz about the new bulk food store in town. Slowly, we will grow the business, and when it's booming and requires no more work, we will move on to new towns.

These new towns will consist of other big, profitable college campuses who have an emphasis on helping the environment. Then, we can move in, do the same model (hiring college students to hype us up), and then taking over the bulk food store market there. We can spread like this for a while.

New Market
For a new market, I decided to look at the business-to-business model, by selling bulk food to other smaller stores.

1. I talked to a Publix Manager, Mark, who has looked at bulk food as a possible option. He said by creating more businesses, and then transitioning to bulk selling to other stores is dumb. He said I'm better off looking for an easier way to accumulate a bulk food path from factory/farm to Publix, and we would be payed monthly for that path.

2. I then talked to a small convenience store owner, Todd, He said that as a business owner, it would be difficult to create a bulk food path for smaller stores, but doable. He advised it'd probably be easier to create your own bulk food supplies and then sell them yourselves, instead of being a middleman.

Overall, this market does not seem as attractive as the last market. Business to business is extremely hard, when the model I've been planning on doing the whole time relies on customers. However, some of the suggestions were intriguing. It would be interesting to create a bulk food path from farmer to store, which costs less money and less inventory than any of the other suggestions. But this means that we would be working on the inside, and not publicly building a brand, which is half the project.

The brand showcases our compassion for the environment. Without the brand, we will have trouble growing, and this will be detrimental to our mission. Therefore, I believe our existing market is the way to go to create the greatest amount of growth in the long run. Plus, the storefront with our existing market will be the best for the environment, too.