24A- Venture Concept No.1

1. Opportunity
     The SmartSofa will cover the need of eliminating the bother and annoyance of having to look for your control remote every time it gets displaced (which can take up to weeks at times). People who have this need are mostly mid-day nappers or people who tend to fall asleep while watching TV. However, anyone that has a living room and likes to sit in a comfortable couch and a TV that you like to watch has this need. Also, individuals can have this need as well as entire businesses.
     The forces or changes in the environment that are creating this opportunity is the fact that more and more people are opting to stay at home and watch TV instead of doing something outdoors. Because there is so much more time being spent watching TV, it is more likely that ou will lose your control remote, which makes the need greater. Also, with this world becoming so technologically efficient, people are getting lazier. The SmartSofa allows someone to be lazy, as they can not work as hard trying to find the control remote all the time.
     This market is not really defined geographically, as sofas are an object that many households have, no matter what part of Earth they live in. Demographically, this product will be targeted mostly to recently graduated 20 year olds as well as anyone who likes watching TV or anyone who tends to fall asleep while watching TV.
     Currently, customers are not satisfying the need of eliminating the possibility of losing your control remote because they do not think of it as an option. Customers now purchase mundane sofas that do not do anything besides allow you to sit on them or maybe even recline backwards. I do not think that consumers will be very loyal because everyone changes their furniture from time to time, and once they do this there will be an opportunity to show how our product is simply better.
     This opportunity is pretty big since most people that I have talked to seem to really enjoy the idea, as well as the fact that it has such a large target market so many people would be interested in buying it. The window of opportunity is open until a Sofa company releases a version of the product that offers a retractable remote control.

2. Innovation
     The SmartSofa will be a furniture item (ranging from Sofas, sitting chairs, beanbags, beds, etc.) that will have a control remote attached to the SmartSofa itself. The control may detach and will be held on by a chord so no consumer loses it. This will eliminate the need of having to look frantically for your control remote whenever it gets misplaced, which happens a lot. The SmartSofa will be connected (via Bluetooth or WiFi) to the TV.
     The money for this product will come from individual people or businesses that purchase the product either from retail or online. Since there will be many products, some as basic as a sitting chair and some as extravagant as a full sofa or bed, there will be different prices but we expect it to range from $200-$2,000.

3. Venture Concept
     Consumers would switch to this new product because the sofa, or any type of furniture, that they have at home today, I can guarantee, has caused them issues at least once as the control remote has gotten lost in between the pillows/sheets of simply it was just misplaced and hard to find. This product will eliminate that problem as well as have a more luxurious item in comparison to the mundane piece of furniture that was there before. I do not think that it will be very hard for consumers to switch because it will be a better product for relatively the same price.
      Competitors are all other bed, sofa, and furniture brands. Their weaknesses and vulnerabilities are the fact that these are just furniture items, while my product will be a furniture just like theirs with the addition of having a retractable control remote, and have your sofa connected to the TV an have better speakers, sound, etc.
     Packaging plays a role as there needs to be large and strong package to migrate the furniture from the store to home or business or from the inventory (online purchase) site to the purchase location. Price points will also be very important because I want the product to be as cheap as possible, to have many consumers who are able to purchase the product, as well as maintain a high-end brand. Customer Support will also be very important because, in the scenario that the chord breaks off, eliminating the purpose of the product, we would send a repair man to the house or business to fix the issue as soon as possible. This way, all customers can trust that the product will be a good and useful purchase.
     If I were to carry on with this business, I would look to partner with a big time investor and probably someone that already knows the ins and outs of this market. Since I have never ran a business before, especially in this market, I feel that I would need much outside help for me to make all of the right decisions of the company.

The three minor elements
1) The "unfair advantage" that this product will have will be the extremely large target market. This product will be aimed for young and experienced, men or women, and any type of culture and personality. The fact that the target market is so big allows for there to be many consumers, which is crucial because if we manage to get enough, it will be very hard to not earn a profit.

2) The next opportunity I would want to tackle with this product is expanding it and adding more features to each piece of furniture. In order to do this, however, the first product must be released and I will need to wait for customer reviews and ideas on what they would want to do to better this product.

3) If I end up going with this project, I see myself as selling the idea to a large entrepreneur and possibly working alongside them. Entrepreneurship has never really truly been my passion, so I can admit that others can make more rational choices.