11-A Idea Napkin No. 1

11-A Idea Napkin No. 1

You-

Who are you? I am Shae.  I am in my Junior year at University of Florida. I am majoring in business, but only because my company is paying for my degree and dictates what I can major in.  I work in retail and manage three departments within the store.  I have been with the company for almost 18 years.

What are your Talents? I love what I do at the retail store.  Mostly because one of my departments is fabrics and crafts.  I have a talent for getting the ideas customers have in their heads out and into merchandise where they can realize their imagined masterpieces. I actually have customers that seek me out to help them get those ideas out of their heads.  I also sew, more specifically I quilt.  I am really good at it. 

What are your skills and experiences? I have great people skills.  I am told frequently by my managers that I have the best customer service skills of anyone.  My years of experience in the retail store have helped me home in and perfect my customer service/ people skills. I also have excellent leader skills.  I am still learning this skill, but then again, we should always be striving to learn better management abilities to keep our associates engaged.

What are your aspirations? My true aspiration is to get rich and be able to retire so I travel the world.

How do I see my business concept playing a role in my life? I see this as a side business.  A way to make that aspiration come true.  It would in no way be anything I would dedicate my whole life to.  I already see serious limitations to it.

What are you offering to customers?

Describe the service I will provide to solve customers’ unmet needs:  I will be giving my customers back their customers by making their parking lots, safer and easier to navigate in.  I will survey the entire parking lot property.  Then I will design and determine the best, safest way to get as many cars as possible in the space allowed.  I will then remove old paint and repaint the lot in the new scheme. 

Who are you offering it to?

Describe the demographic and psychographic characteristics of your customers:  I am looking for businesses that have poorly laid out, or designed parking lots that have 90-degree angled narrower than 102 inches.  The demographics are anyone within the cities of Far East Dallas, Garland, Rowlett, Sachse, Richardson, Murphy, Plano, Wylie and Rockwall.  About a 12-mile radius. 

Why do they Care?

Explain why customers will actually pay you for your service:  Businesses need customers to come to them.  If their customers are not coming to them because of poor parking lot setup my customers will gladly pay up to get those customers back in their stores.

What are your core competencies?

What is your Secret Sauce? There is nothing that sets me apart from others who can design and paint parking lots.  Maybe the only advantage I would have is a special software written just for me that can get the most out of an allotted amount of space but keeping safety of all vehicles and pedestrians in mind. Ultimately though anyone can create this same software.

While the need is here for this business idea, the only person that actually cares is the customer who drives the cars, not the businesses that have the parking lots.  I have a problem, but no one that actually cares who can and will do anything about it.  When I try to talk to businesses, they tell me flat out they do not want to pay for their parking lot to be completely redone, other than a nice repainting of it.  Others tell me that they have no power to even make the call.  Essentially this business is already dead based on the idea that started it.  I could probably make a side business of actually just repainting businesses parking lots in the exact way it looks now.  I would be wasting my time trying to get them to completely change the entire parking lot.