19A- Idea Napkin No. 2

1) You
I am a 20 year old college student at the University of Florida. My talents consist of being good at sports, knowledge when it comes to sports, and video game skill. Some of the skills that I have are being a hard worker, competitive, and reliable in a variety of situations. My aspirations are to work my way up in a company with a managerial role and eventually start my own business. If I started this business today it would consume my life. I would put all my time and effort into it to ensure I am doing everything I can to make it succeed. 

2) What are you offering to customers?
The service that I will be providing is a textbook company in Gainesville that offers cheaper alternatives than the bookstore and renting options. Included is the option to bring in old textbooks for either cash or store credit for students who have previously taken classes. This motivates students to use my service as they will save more money on textbooks each semester and have the ease of obtaining them. The customer's unmet needs will be addressed by having cheaper textbooks with a variety of ways to obtain them with the option of bringing in old textbooks for money.

3) Who are you offering it to?
The demographic of who I would be selling to is college students at the University of Florida or Sante Fe. Since it is a textbook company, it would directly target them since they are the ones in need of books and have them from previous classes. What they all have in common is the need for textbooks each semester since typically they have 3-4 new classes every one. This is perfect for my service with renting options and the ability to get money back from previously owned textbooks.

4) Why do they care?
College students will actually pay me money for my service as they could save around $200 a semester on textbooks and could get money on top of that for previously owned ones. College students most pf the time are on a budget so saving this much money would be important to many people and something they would want to pay for if it is cheaper.

5) What are your core competencies? 
What sets me apart from anyone else is the option to bring in old textbooks for cash or store credit. For example, a student can bring in his old calc 1 textbooks and trade them in to go to his calc 2 textbooks. If he gets $100 store credit for his calc 1 book and the calc 2 book costs $250, he saves $100 and would get it for only $150. What I have that no one else does is this process along with the option to rent only for the UF semester terms each year.

I believe these elements fit together pretty well as a whole. I think there is a big demand for textbooks each semester at UF and costs are a major problem for students. My service would focus on having cheaper alternatives and making the process a lot smoother for students each semester.

Feedback
One key takeaway I got from my feedback is how I need to be more aware of other companies that I would be competing against. To deal with this, I need to make sure I explain why my service is better and what distinguishes it. Another take away is to further explain more my trade in process and how the students would want to choose that over the competitors. I incorporated this feedback into this idea napkin by providing a specific example of the trade in process for a student at UF.