Expanding Upon Initial Ideas

Although FhStress, my teams business of selling stress relieving products is moving along rather nicely, we are having minor issues making our product unique. Yes we are the only people in the school selling our product, however we are attempting to make our product "ours" in a sense. Why wouldn't someone drive 5 minutes to the dollar store and buy one of our products. We have convenience on or side but not value. Currently our team is working on solutions, but we need to fully know what this unique property about our product is before we have to go in front of the committee.

Reality Hits: The Struggles of Startups and my Mission

This week brought many realities into play. I personally was able to realize the challenges and speed bumps on the road to making a start-up function.

Distributing the workload is a big focus for my team to be ready to give our pitch on October 9th. I
went through a possible business base case as I was thinking of questions to ask in a survey to the school students. I have been looking at possible products for our business to offer, buying them from Costco and the location where to sell in school.

As I thought on the survey and the business, I made some assumptions about pricing, quantity of purchases by students per week, along with possible periods of the day to be "open".  sales based on consumptions. I also thought that if the business takes off, or we individually have less time on free periods, we could hire a few other sales people paying a 10% commission on the sale $ they sell or service.

So we need to now send out the survey through Survey Monkey, get feedback to establish our base case to put into the Business Presentation. We need to distribute tasks to the 3 team members to do for the case. We need to do a practice run the day before.

I am worried about really having enough time to do all of this and maybe we should request a date change.

Personal Reflection #2

1 month into the course, and just a few days ago i joined a t-shirt/logo business, originally named Tuff Logos with a fellow classmate named Duncan Addams. We are both sophmores, and we are really excited about the company, though we have changed some things from the original idea. Firstly, we have decided to focus our efforts on the t-shirt market, and most likely we have dropped the logo idea. Secondly, Tuff Logos was a name made by Nathaniel, so we realized that we wanted an original name for our business, which took quite some time to decide. From ideas such as Paragon Shirts to Flassa Clothing, we chose just today that our name will be Skyfall Clothing. The link to that business name is available as a .com, which is fantastic because we are only looking for a name that is available as a .com and sounds good. We have made some designs, very few, but those few that we have shown to fellow students they have said that they would buy them. We will buy shirts in the $10-15 dollar range because we are buying bulk, then selling for $20-25. We are contemplating over how we are going to chose the designs, whether it is going to be weekly suggestions by customers or just new designs we will put up once in a while. Duncan is better at design than me, him taking 2 courses in design and myself only one, but i believe I can contribute too to the design aspect of the business. I believe that our business will perform well, and I am excited for the future of the company.

Hungry Huskies on the move

In today’s class we went through the SHIPIT packet and talked about the problems we might come across with our business. We started to make a flyer to get the word out about Hungry Huskies and started to make a survey that will help us research to form a list for inventory. Our plan is to survey students to find when they are hungry and what snacks they would want. Through this research we can find what periods we should work and what snacks we should offer. The picture attached is a screenshot of our survey that we intend to send around to our peers.

Greenway & Co.

      Today we have decided to pursue our idea of making a venture capitalist company. Our company will give small businesses money in exchange for a royalty percentage of each product sold. Despite the reluctancy of our teacher to let us start this company, we have begun to convince her by creating a detailed plan for our work. We have started to address potential problems in our company and have begun to analyze each company. The analysis consists of potential profit, initial start-up costs, and figuring out a fair percentage for royalties. Despite our hardships, we are determined to clear out a path for success.    

Skyfall Clothing

As of now, our business name is going to be called Skyfall Clothing. Since our last posts, we have been brainstorming all of the possibilities for our company, and have come to the decision that we will sell personalized t-shirts, but the idea is much more complex than just that. The customer will have the option to have a logo created by our design team or by themselves, and then with that design they have the option to have it released for public sale, or to keep it to themselves. It is almost like creating a personal brand within our company. We believe this will gain the attention of the public by people wearing our products because people will be able to make profit off of the t-shirts they design, and they will be able to wear fine clothing that they want. So far we have been making good progress, but we need to work on our pitch now in order to get the money to create our business including the website, products, and copyright information. Our other idea is that we will have people submit different designs for shirts every week, and the winning design will be used for the shirt that week. We will only sell a limited number of that shirt, and each week the "shirt of the week" design will change. We also need to get started on prototype designs for the main shirts that our company will sell, which we plan to create within the next week.

-Duncan and Peter

Catering to the Sweet Tooth and Sweethearts of the FHS Community

Hello lovely citizens of the internet who may or may not be anonymous trolls, 

We here at Candy Yes have embarked upon a journey of self discovery and candy delivery. After completing the mandatory "Ship It" pamphlet, we've realized that though our failure may inevitable, we are required to continue with this project. 

Our idea is to create a candy-gram service that operates year-round and can be used for anything from a thank you to a friend to a homecoming proposal for that special someone. Ordering will be a simple online process through google forms and delivery will be within the week the order is placed. We hope to keep our production expenses low so that our prices can remain affordable and appealing to the Flint Hill student body and staff. With luck, we will make a product that the public loves and a profit that our investors will love even more! 

- J&H 

Team Planning Underway

Last Friday students broke into 5 business teams by interest and began sorting through their initial ideas.  We have a mix of school-based and online businesses and a blend of good and services.  It took us two weeks longer than last semester to arrive at theses teams, so I am optimistic that these businesses are founded on more student investment.  In two weeks the teams will pitch their ideas to the school administration to receive permission and funding.  You will hear more from each team soon!

Venture Capitalists

Hungry Huskies

Candy, Yes!

FHStress

Custom Printing

FHStress-Not like the Rest

Since we got the group together, we have discussed how we could expand our inventory and not just provide stress balls.  We are looking to get 2-3 different items that would relieve stress.  Some possibilities we have thought of were handheld massagers and even hacky sacks.  We have found a website that we could buy stress balls in bulk at a pretty low price of around 30 dollars at most for 48 units.  We feel that these simple items may seem like nothing special, but people don’t realize that these small purchases of such items can really aid them with their stress.  Also people like emojis, so hopefully they are enticed by our design of the stress balls. 

We are looking to finalize which other products we will provide.  Also we should continue work on our business plan. 

Overall I feel that the team is at a good spot.  We came in with a positive attitude and we have worked well together so far.  I have high hopes for this group and I believe we will succeed, but only if we all give our 100% effort. 

Ms. Stares' Reflection

Hi, my name is Peter, a student of Flint Hill and the Small Business Start-up class in Flint Hill. I have been associated with business for quite a while now, taking many online courses about the stock market. Through these courses I have been taught a substantial amount about the financial aspect of the business world. I have made a few bucks in the stock market over the past weeks, which is a success in something similar to business. When I think about starting a business, the number one thing in my mind, which has been self-assured through this class, is that a bona fide idea is the root of any business. An idea can be expanded on, but originality is a key to a business. One thing that I learned from this class in the first week of class is that in order to start-up a new business, you have to be in a sycophant in a way. You have suck up to the guys with the big bucks and laugh at your competition if they make a mistake. In regards to starting a new business, I am quite frankly bamboozled on what I should make my business on. The online business market is a treasure mine with so many aspects of it still to be discovered, but it is complicated for someone like me to tap into that mine with very little experience in anything relevant to making an online business. The mobile app business I believe would be the most profitable section of the mine, with people being glued to their phones 24/7. I am also thinking about starting a business somewhere around the school, but I still don't have any ideas concerning this, but I hope to think of a bona fide idea to make me profit and have a prosperous business.