Venture Concept No. 1

Venture Concept: Project Pet Shelter, Hotel Rescue
Opportunity:

As far as who has the need here, the most basic response would be overcrowded animal shelters. For who the potential customers are, I would say both small individual-owned motels and businesspeople away on trips. Forces in the economy that’s even creating this opportunity is the constant travel for businesspeople, and the ever-increasing amount of animals in shelters that end up resorting to euthanasia. The market is more centers around smaller towns at the moment in order to have a drawing-in factor, but as far as geographically, this idea could take place anywhere. Customers currently are just traveling to normal motels, and just go in and out without really thinking. The motels stay in business because as long as people have to travel there will at least be some business coming in. So on that note, the customers are loyal now simply because of necessity. I don’t think the opportunity is huge, but because of the nature of the specific market, I think the opportunity will be open for a long window. Especially because there are so many animals in the shelter unfortunately being put down due to overcrowding. 

Innovation: 

My innovation is a service that teams up local motels with overcrowded animal shelters. Every room would be assigned a pet that lives there, and in exchange for taking care of the pet, the room’s fee would be paid for for as many days/nights as the business trip lasted, since I’m making the initial pitch to businesspeople on conferences. For each room that has an animal, profits for the hotel would come from sponsorships and donations, ideally from big-name sponsors like Petsmart. This arrangement would also work for out-of-towners later down the line with a love for animals looking for lodging. The money will be made from the sponsors, companies I partner with for supplies, and I’ll get a percentage from all the business I bring to the hotels involving the program. 

Venture Concept: 

My innovation will solve the unmet need of a place for animals in shelters to go rather than being put down. I feel like customers will invest in and be a part of my innovation because many people do care about animals and want to help in finding a solution for them, and my program is also a way to make a long dreary trip feel a little bit more refreshing and like home, and these are two reasons that customers would be likely to switch to my product. I don’t think it would be too hard to get them to switch as long as the service had had a first test run to iron out all of the hiccups. As far as competitors go, the only competitors I see would be big hotel companies that have a never-ending stream of revenue in general. Their weakness against my concept would be their lack of animals. Price point and marketing would play a key role in getting my service up and running. I’d go with marketing heavily, to try and drum up interest, and then use the cheaper price points of local motels to my advantage in drawing customers in. For the business organization, I would have may regional managers to oversee the whole interaction between shelter, motel, and customer, and I’d also ideally like to have several employees specialized and working in each of these areas. I’d also like to have a team of people who work in expansion and travel to new towns with the potential to implement the program. 

Three minor elements: 

1. I think the most important resource here is the creativity of the idea. This will be the factor and the difference from everything else that draws in customers. Also, just the fact of working with and helping provide care for animals I feel like will be something many people will want to take part in, which will help business even more. It will be hard to compete with because of the feeling that it gives the customers- feelings of helpfulness and of having a home-away-from-home. 
2. What’s next for the venture is more resource to go through every last detail that I have yet to think of or any of the ones that have come up in the interviews. After that, I’ll probably start with polling of large samples of people to see if this product is something a large group of people would be interested in and what other improvements could be made. After this step, I’d go to implementation in a few select motels for a test period before going on a larger scale. 
3. As far as what’s next for me, if I were to get this idea up and running, I’d like to always work closely with is, as it deals to an issue so important to me. Eventually, I’d like to just be able to travel to all the motels and regions the service was in to check up on how its going and work with the design team to come up with changing advertisements. This first venture idea has helped me into thinking big and because of that, I could potentially see myself joining in with other individuals to work on new projects I feel passionately about.