11A- Napkin Idea No. 1

1) You. Who you are. What your talents are. What your skills and experiences are. Also: what are your aspirations? Specifically regarding your business concept, how do you see this business (if you were to start it) playing a role in your life?

• My name is Alex Johnson I am currently a sophomore pursuing a business management degree. My talents consist of working hard and being able to work with others well. My skills are time management along with being able to work in any environment. If I was to start a business today, it would consume all of my life. I would work hard and do everything I could to try and grow the business. My aspirations would be to create a successful business and slowly expand further and further.

2) What are you offering to customers? Describe the product or service (in other words, how you'll solve customers' unmet needs). 

• The service I would provide is a textbook company in Gainesville geared specifically towards UF students for the classes they are taking. The service would have options to rent the textbooks they need rather than purchase new at the bookstore along with an opportunity for previous students to sell their old books to my company. This service will provide a way for college students to save money on textbook costs each semester and make money by selling their previous textbooks. 

3) Who are you offering it to? Describe, in as much detail as possible, the demographic and psychographic characteristics of your customers. Think especially of this question: what do your customers all have in common?

• Im offering my this service to college students at UF. All of them have in common the need of purchasing textbooks each semester for their classes. With 2-3 semesters per year for a student, they will need 8+ textbooks at least throughout the year and all of them have that in common.

4) Why do they care? Your solution is only valuable insofar as customers believe its valuable to them. Here, explain why customers will actually pay you money to use your product or service. 

• Customers will pay me money for my service due to how much cheaper it will be each semester for them vs paying full price at the bookstore. By being able to rent just for the semester, students would save a significant amount of money and would not have to go purchase a textbook new. If my service has the textbook students need for their specific classes, they would choose this option over the high prices at bookstore. 

5) What are your core competencies? What sets you apart from everyone else? Also: what do you have that nobody else has? 

• What would set me apart from everyone else is the specification for each class and the professor students have. One example would be if a student was in Survey of Calculus 1 with professor Harrington. My service would have the textbook he requires already designed for a student to just come in tell us they're in his class and we would provide the textbook. What we have that no one else has is the option to bring in old textbooks and sell them to get money as a student. Its one way for students to get back some money for how much they paid new at the bookstore. 

I believe these elements fit together pretty well with my service idea and concept. My main focus is targeting students at UF due to being one myself. I know how much textbooks costs each semester as I continue to purchase them as every other student does as well. If there was an option to save money or sell my old books to make money I would in a heart beat as textbooks have a high cost each year. Going through these elements makes me believe they all fit together and could be a successful service at UF.