Venture Concept #2

Everyone has the need to clean their living or working space, but my customers will be the primary caregivers to children under the age of thirteen. These will be: mothers, mostly, in the age range of 40 to 50. Women are joining the workforce at a faster rate than ever before which means they have less and less time to clean. They, like the rest of the world, want a convenient way to clean their home and most of these women’s homes will be in suburban areas.

\Of course, these caretakers are finding less than effective methods to clean difficult to reach areas, but through prior research, I believe these people would be open to a better method. This opportunity is of a decent size because some mothers will want this product more and will have the resources to utilize it. Others however, will be skeptical and keep doing things the way they were taught or will want to save money and not buy it. Typically, caregivers only clean up for their children if they are under thirteen so my window of time is from when their children start to crawl to the time they’re able to keep themselves and the area around them clean.

My innovation is adding small things to ordinary cleaning products to make them much more efficient, like making a duster corner shaped to sweep where the wall and floor meet or adding some absorbent material to the edge of a dustpan. This is not radical in any way, it’s just an improvement on something that’s not working to its fullest capacity. I would be selling this for slightly more than the average cleaning product. This still needs to be affordable enough for a middle-class individual to be convinced enough to invest and use it. It should be around $15 per unit.

Right now, you can’t get something completely clean, like the floor, no matter how much time and effort you put into it. The older someone gets, the more set they become in their ways and so I’d be facing that challenge. Stubbornness is one factor as well as just using the classic products. Not everyone needs to have something completely clean so they will settle for mostly clean, but their weaknesses are that they’re not efficient. They’re made to do a general purpose very well; my products are very specialized. One of the biggest things that sets me apart is my advertising. Instead of having commercials or billboards, I’m just going to give a small group of people this product to try out and if they like it, most likely they’ll tell their friends. Word of mouth is one of the most efficient ways to reach this demographic and I’m utilizing that here. The location would also be nestled in the community which will foster a feeling of trust and focus on the person, not the product or making money.

Continuing on how this business would be set up,

• ·        my employees will be few in number and they would all be pretty young. This would remind the shoppers of their children and make them want to support them and buy something.

• ·        Other than selling the product, helping people make an informed decision, and being the face of my business, they’d also expand my weak ties. My employees would believe so strongly in my product that they would tell others in their life on the helpfulness of these products.

It’s been mentioned a bit, but my secret sauce is the personal relationships I’ve made with members

of my market already. They will be key in getting my product off the ground by starting my grassroots marketing method.

I’d like to expand my product line with a baseboard cleaner, a self-cleaning mop and other products that include essential oils and non-scented cleaning products, but then eventually I’d like to develop a cleaning party a.k.a. simplified maid service. This would show off my products as well as giving moms a much needed helping hand. Their friends will be gathered around and this kind of a party is more feasible and enjoyable for moms, or so I’ve been told.

In the next five years, I’d hope to learn something and grow as an entrepreneur. This isn’t something I’m incredibly passionate about and so with my knowledge of having started a business and maybe monetary gain, I’d go and start another business. For this venture, I want to see it increasing the quality of life among parents and other caregivers because they deserve to have a higher quality of life. I want to make a difference in the world with whatever business I run and the more experience I have, the better-equipped I’ll be to do that. 

 What's Different

The mothers I interviewed in our What's Next assignment all stressed the need for natural cleaning products, not just tools. I got a particularly emphatic request for non-scented products because smells in general can trigger an allergic reaction in some children who are particularly sensitive.There was flack for my "cleaning party" because some mothers may not have the time for this and also, some women feel the need to clean before someone cleans just to get the more embarrassing mess out of the way. This creates unnecessary stress for moms.

Because of this feedback, I added the cleaning products that were naturally sourced. I don't quite know how to change my cleaning party to be more convenient, so I left it as it was, hoping the pre-cleaning would wear off after awhile. I decided to also not create a general price for my products because they're all different and shouldn't be priced the same.