We were invited to Rotterdam by the ‘Rotterdam Business School’ to get an intensive week on business Model and Value proposition design.
During this week we got the chance to work more on the robustness of our business model. In this week we mainly focused on the left part of the business model canvas (customers, channels, revenue, …). Next to the business model, the value proposition was filled in yet again. Doing this repetitive without looking at the former ones, made us discover several new aspects.
Our target audience remains the same, although we discovered during this week another potential segment of users. Later more on that, because we also noticed that our current Target audience, that consists of two different parties, could serve as a catalyst for one another. The expressionist serves as a role model and inspiration for the escapist. It’s the dedication and time put into the sport which inspires the escapist. The escapist, in a sense, could be seen as escaping into the life of the expressionist for a temporary timeframe. The expressionist on the other hand lives of the acknowledgement he/she gets from the escapist. The expressionist sees the acknowledgement he/she gets from the escapist as a recognition of his/her dedication for the sport.
Later in this week we went to Amsterdam to visit ‘Fashion for good’ and do some exercises concerning ‘Sustainable business models’. During this short period of time in Amsterdam, we went to visit a specific store called “Rapha cycling club”. Rapha was founded in 2014 as a small Exhibition showcasing photographs and stories in a London gallery. Over time, Rapha has transformed from a cycling apparel brand to a community for cyclists from all over the world. Through clubhouses all over the globe, from Berlin to Tokyo, Sydney or New York, Rapha has connected thousands of cyclist over the years. Giving workshops, exhibitions and group rides, Rapha embodies many aspects we also want to incorporate into Quiver. Therefor it was very interesting to see firsthand how the Clubhouse was curated in Amsterdam.
One key take-away from our visit was that the age group differed greatly from ours, the customer where of an older age group and judging by their appearance, it seemed that they had a good/above average income. It seemed that people working in the clubhouse would fit into our escapist category as they were younger, had tattoos and seemed very open. Whilst the clubhouse has the idea of social acceptance, maybe the older customers are striving for acceptance in the community and want to escape from the inconformity. An idea we want to keep in mind and incorporate into quiver the following weeks. The incorporation could very well be in the MVP as in the plan of scalability for Quiver.
The following article substantiates our way of thinking; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2643854/Are-running-marathon-getting-facelift-tattoo-Youre-probably-grip-mid-life-crisis.html
We also got to meet Engelbert Gieskes in the Netherlands, a young man with experience working for G-star raw and Nike. We got a presentation of him where he explained us different business forms and models. The information we acquired from this lecture was very useful for the construction of the revenue streams, pricing strategy and scalability.
The deliverable at the end of this experience abroad was a storytelling of the business, focused on the aspects we touched upon this week. We started the story with a personal touch and explained how the idea was born out of our shared personal experience and passion. This was also the time to reveal our first wireframes we had been making during the winter break. Than we touched upon the different milestones in the project we challenged, and we will have to challenge. The presentation included the expected subjects such as the revenue, the different impacts Quiver could cause, the scalability, …
The presentation: https://issuu.com/viktordm/docs/presentation_rotterdam_quiver_vikto
Pop-up Biz 2
Not more than a week later, a Pop-up biz presentation was expected from us, which was aimed to make us go more tangible and more in detail in terms of the different aspects of the Business model canvas like partners, key resources, channels, … We started with reminding everybody of the touch and feel of our wireframe we developed, with a short video. The potential partners and key resources we thought about were exposed as well in this presentation. Later, we realized this needs to be reviewed and adjusted in terms of WHEN to approach these people, HOW to approach them and WHAT to offer in order to convince them.
At this moment we’re also conducting an experiment concerning the interest of action sport enthusiasts and engaging with strangers sharing a passion for their sport. We started looking at Meetup where there are many groups one could join to get together to practice surfing, skiing and mountain biking. This is already a big pointer to the fact there is an interest. What we also notice is the lack of skate groups. There are only a few Meetup group for this sport, with all a very limited amount of users. This despite the interest being indicated on the application of +50 people in skateboard-meetups.
This made us decide to launch a meetup group by ourselves for a month and see who is interested, why, how many people would be interested, when they want to go skateboarding, … Furthermore, in this pop-up biz we announced our discovery concerning the possibility of the broadening of our target audience to the 40+ after our research and later our visit to “Rapha cycling club”.
The presentation: https://issuu.com/viktordm/docs/popupbiz2_felix_-_kopie
Next up: The setting up of the website as an MVP for Quiver to co-create the app with our users, encouraging the community-feeling around our product.