24A- Venture Concept No. 1

My name is Brian Maloney, I am a sophomore here at UF majoring in Marketing with a minor in Entrepreneurship.
Opportunity 
College students across the country struggle to manage their time correctly, leaving what they believe to be the "least important", but also the most tedious to do last, laundry. This is a problem that can stem from a number of things, mostly being the inconvenience of their current laundry system or the lack of time in ones schedule. The potential customers within this business are college students that live on or near a large college campus, for this concept I am using The University of Florida. Using a large college campus gives a large market for customers. Also, being on a college campus, most of my potential customers fall within very similar demographics.
Nowadays college students are flat out lazy. Whether they have never done their own laundry before or they simply hate the task, it is a problem that most, if not all college students face including myself. Students at UF struggle to get their laundry done, being that there is no other service currently running on campus. That being said, the window of opportunity for this business could be infinite if everything runs the way it should. I say that because new students are entering the university every year giving a whole new individual market for my business to infiltrate.

Innovation 
I like to call the business that I am creating a hybrid laundry service. I use that term because there are multiple different options you can choose on how to get your laundry done. The different options have different prices based on the amount of work necessary, so I believe that I will make money on the more time consuming orders. Customers are allowed to drop their laundry off and pick it up, drop it off and have it delivered, have it picked up and come in to pick it up, or have it both picked up and delivered...all different options with different prices based on the service, a small fee of $2 per load if they want it to be folded for them. The cost of the business would be expensive at the beginning with all of the initial costs, but they are majority one time investments so I would be making money over time. This is innovative because there are no other services near by with these kind of options and conveniency, meaning the power is in the customers hand.

Venture Concept
I will have to make large initial investments such as the space and laundry machines, but after that costs will be low with nothing really to buy but detergent and fabric softer, things of that type. I will have 2 people working in the store taking in the clothes putting them in washing machines and changing them to the dryer when it is time, also folding when it is done. To deliver i will have 1-2 drivers on any given day based on how busy we are. I will be employing fellow college students to keep costs low. Also, giving students jobs helps market the company because employees will be able to refer their friends and provide a good word of mouth. Customers will be switching to my company because of the conveniency and efficiency, all clothes will be done and delivered within 24 hours guaranteed. It will not be very hard to get them to switch over because there is no large competition in the area. Customer service is one of the most important aspects of the company, if not the most important. That is because word of mouth will be the best way this company is marketed, so a good experience is crucial to make sure customers have a good word about our company.

My most important resource I believe is being affiliated with Greek Life. Although this does nothing to essentiality help the company run, it provides a huge market of people that I can target for the company. Putting customers first while also being connected with them is going to make it extremely hard for competitors to copy. Also, invading a market that does not have this type of business already in it gives my company an extreme advantage in targeting customers.
Whats next for my venture is expanding to other larger schools across the company. Any school that has a very large population that has a center of living for students like UF will have the potential for this business.
Whats next for me is moving on to bigger concepts, while using while I learned in this venture to help in the process.