Ideation - Coming up with a good idea

Your product or service will be the backbone for all that you do in your FBE business, and it can be the difference between success and failure. Even if the marketing is flawless, you will not be able to make profit if the product is not a good one.

The product should fulfill some criteria, the most obvious of which is that there must be a demand for it. There must be a reason that people would want to buy this product. The product must give the consumers some benefit - comfort, protection, style, efficiency, hunger alleviation, etc. Most importantly, this benefit must be strong enough that the customer is willing to pay money for it.

The most obvious market for FBE business is the Olin College community itself. It will be easier to get people you are already friendly with to buy your product, so keep your friends in mind. If you have a good product idea for another market, that's great, just be sure you have a way to reach that market. Ideally your product will be cheap and easy to manufacture so that you will be able to keep prices low. Also consider the time of year in which you are selling - no one needs new blankets when it is getting warmer at springtime, but people might need room decorations at the beginning of the school year. Your product should be simple so it is easy to advertise, but flexible in case it turns out to be a flop.

Our idea for sofTee was that we would take a customer's old t-shirt, sew up the bottom and sleeves, stuff it full of stuffing, and then sew up the collar. What we liked most about this idea was the use of the customer's own t-shirt. We felt that this gave our pillows a more personal touch, and our pillows would stand out in marketing because they were so unique. The idea was simple and we had moderate interest shown in a preliminary survey. The primary cost for these pillows was the stuffing, and with a sewing machine the manufacturing process was easy. There was a cost to making the pillows, but it was not so high that we could not sell the pillows for a reasonable price.

It turned out that the aspect of our product that we thought would make us stand out, the personal touch, did not help our business. People would be interested in the product, but not interested enough to take the time to sort through their closet to find an old t-shirt, and then give it to us. It was an inconvenience to the customer, and the benefits of the product were not strong enough to overcome this inconvenience. It's possible that we would have sold more pillows if this idea were implemented in the fall semester, when people were more concerned with putting things in their dorms rather than packing them up. The sofTee pillow met the criteria of being demanded somewhat well, it was easy and cheap to manufacture, but it could have sold better had it been easier to buy.