Assignment 19

1)     I’m a young off-campus rural college student who studies online. I also exercise primarily at home as  transportation and choice of fitness centers is limited for me. I am analytical in nature, I see situations from many angles and play devil’s advocate. I am good at describing the biomechanics of bodyweight exercises, proper form, and the like from studying calisthenics as an interest in my free time. My aspiration is to see more people exercise and realize that they can make a positive change in their health without having large chunks of time or access to a gym. This business could give me an opportunity to fulfill my aspiration and give me a sense of accomplishment if I am able to reach out and truly make an impact on someone’s life.

2)     The product/service would be a plyometric jump box that bundles with the most common home exercise apparatus as well as a handout with exercise demonstrations in both figure form and video form. The jump box can store everything in a compact manner. Virtual personal coaching and access to an online portal with more content (e.g. more exercises, forum for discussion, etc.) can be purchased separately as a monthly subscription.

3)     All of my customers would prefer working out at home rather than at a gym, but maybe for different reasons (e.g. busyness in schedule, work hours, privacy, transportation, membership cost). They need a push in the right direction to get started, but they do not need physical one-on-one guidance or motivation to exercise. All of the current information on the Internet about exercising and health overwhelms them and they need a centralized source of information that they can trust. The figure demonstrations are good but a substantial amount of value would come from the online resources, so customers would be able to use the Internet and have confidence in the information we present online (contrastly, some may not trust online resources even if verified, would rather be somewhere physical).  Also, the bundling and compartments with the product would help save space for those who live in apartments or other small housing units. The box and the apparatus would also have matching designs, making it more visually appealing compared to buying everything separately (with different designs/colors).

4)     Customers will pay money for the bundling as it makes shopping easier and cheaper than buying everything separately, perhaps at different times. As aforementioned, customers can buy it for the form factor benefits as well. Some prefer home exercising for a sense of privacy. Some have busy schedules that don’t allow them to workout for say, an hour. Maybe their shift doesn’t allow them to go to the gym because when they are free, the gym is closed. Perhaps they simply don’t see the benefit of paying x dollars a month for a gym membership. My figures/videos would be easy to understand for people to learn how to do certain exercises; the virtual personal coaching, discussion board, and extra videos would further enhance the product and would be much cheaper than if one were to go for a personal coaching session in a gym. Additionally, with the correct marketing, people would buy-in to my vision and product and relate to my personal experiences.

5)     I have had personal experience with having information overload about exercising as well as not having transportation/access to a gym since I am a rural citizen without steady access to a car. I’ve been confused with the dogma of fad diets, new gadgets, new research, and so on. I aim to make things simple for people to comprehend by focusing on the underlying principles of fitness. I’m not someone who’s trying to emulate what the issues are and trying to capitalize on others’ problems, I am a personification of those issues. In reality, I decided to first think about this as a solution for myself. My passion for helping others to start exercising and my knowledge about bodyweight exercises can also a good selling point since I’ve started my fitness journey from the ground up. I’m not trying to simply capitalize on an available opportunity because the fitness industry is growing or the home exercise industry is growing, I want to provide a solution for myself and others and hopefully I would be able to get that message across rather than trying to get money.

I believe that these elements generally fit together, though I will admit that I do not have any knowledge about any of the physical characteristics of the product or service. I would need a lot of people on my team that would know how to create the product (if even viable), create a website, know supply chain, etc. What I bring to the problem is simply the vision and my direct experience with this problem to sympathize to those that have a similar problem to me.  

Feedback memo: the two main points I took away from my feedback on my last idea napkin were about personal experiences and marketing. The bold sentences are additions in this idea napkin. I focused more on using my personal experiences as a selling point and I recognized that as a potential reason that someone would purchase from me, since they could relate more to an individual rather than a company.