24A- Venture Concept 1

Opportunity

When coming up with my business idea of creating a service that cleans a customer’s marine vessels at a marina, when they return from their voyages, I thought to myself, who exactly has the need for such a service. The answer was quite simple: anybody who owns a boat and keeps their vessel at a marina. The nature of the need exists because no existing cleaning services such as the one that I am offering exist. Currently, boat owners are required to clean their own vessels that they store in marinas. This is an inconvenience to the boat owners, and because they are already paying such high prices to store their vessels at a marina, this service should be included in the monthly storage price. This is why I proposed to act as an independent contractor who would sign contracts with different marinas to institute my marine-cleaning service as part of the amenities that they can offer to customers.

The market is defined geographically by people who live in coastal cities, as this is where most marinas are located. The demographic customer is a middle to upper class male who owns a boat and spends a large amount of money on monthly rent at a marina. There are currently no widespread existing services that offer the same amenities that my business is going to offer. There are services that exist but they do not offer the service at multiple locations. Customers have to bring the boat to the building where the service is offered. This is extremely inconvenient because people who leave their boats at marinas do not have any means of taking their boats out of the water in order to clean them. It is because of all of the reasons that I outlined above that my opportunity exists, and that I have selected a niche market with no major competitors at the moment. I believe that the window of opportunity will remain open for a long time. The only thing that would affect my business in a negative way would be a recession, as boating is a hobby and would be one of the first things that people would give up if they are making less money. Other than that, I believe that I have a good business idea and a large window of opportunity to make money and become successful exists.

Innovation

I believe that I described my innovation in moderate detail in the section above labeled “opportunity.” My plan would be to create a contract with the marina, where they label my service as one of the things that would draw in more customers and attract more business. For example, if Marina A offers a cleaning service, and Marina B does not, customers would be more likely to store their boat at Marina A for the convenience of having their boats cleaned after every time that they would use them. I am still unsure on the price, because I would have to negotiate numbers with the marina owners and factor in initial capital and manual labor and labor hours into the pricing of my service. I believe that not everyone would who stores their boats at the marina would actually take advantage of my service, so I believe that I would be able to offer a fair price, as even those who would not use the service would still be paying the fees and generating revenue towards my business by paying the monthly marina storage fee.

Venture Concept

My business venture is a service, so there is no packaging or old product versus no product. There are only competing businesses that offer a similar service. The difference that my business has is that it is more convenient to the customer because the customer does not need to do anything additional, such as bring their boat to somebody that cleans it, in order for my service to be done. The only weakness would be if some boaters wish to clean the boats on their own, but I plan to overcome this weakness by including my cleaning fee with the marina rent fee, so even if they chose to clean the boat on their own, I am still getting paid. My employees would be well trained independent contractors who are skilled in the marine industry and have a marine background. They would be different based on the county or city that they are located in and each have a special zoning. The job is not full time, so they would be on call and get paid hourly, with extra money for working in odd hours.

My unfair advantage would be convenience for customers. The next thing that I would like to tackle with my company would be expansion out of South Florida and into other coastal cities and marinas on the West coast of Florida and in marinas up and down the East Coast of America and the Gulf of Mexico. With the money I make from this business, I would like to launch another marine related venture. I am unsure what this venture is going to be, but hopefully this business venture raises enough money for me to invest in myself and start a brand new business.