24

Opportunity 

Businesses in Gainesville would benefit from more affordable office and facility supplies while helping reduce waste by using recycled goods.

Although this may not be urgent, my solution would be advantageous as it would make the businesses more profitable while helping support other local businesses. 

The forces in the environment that makes this possible is the availability of recycled goods at the RePurpose Project, a local Gainesville thrift-like store, and the variety of locally ran businesses in the Gainesville area. 

Due to the limited supply of this store, it would be advantageous to mostly focus on Gainesville businesses to sell to. 

Customers are currently solving this need by using big retailers to provide their supplies, including Office Depot, Staples, and Amazon. Many of these businesses do not hold contracts with these companies and simply have opened a non-binding business account with them. 

This is a limited opportunity but there is almost guaranteed profits to be made. However, I think I may be limited in expanding my business as paying employees would dip too far into my margins which already are low.

This opportunity will be available as long as RePurpose is open and there are small businesses who are willing to do business with me. 

Innovation

The RePurpose Program partners with local Gainesville businesses to provide them recycled office supplies by an established partnership with a local thrift-like, junkyard store known as the RePurpose Project. We offer low prices by buying products from the RePurpose Project and marking them up to make a solid profit but also remaining a good amount below retail price for new goods. This is advantageous for the companies as they are able to save money while reducing their waste and helping another local business. 

At first, the idea was to work with different offices throughout the University of Florida and help them be more environmentally conscious. However, after considering the amount of work that is required in becoming a vendor to the University it made more sense to focus on outside businesses that also serve the students of UF and the rest of the Gainesville population. I would first focus on the locally-owned businesses and then see if we could expand to helping some of the bigger businesses around UF’s campus that have parent companies.

Venture Concept

I think the biggest incentive for companies to switch to my product is the cost savings. Since the ultimate goal of most companies is to make profit, I believe that any way for them to do this while retaining the quality of their services would be seen as a good thing for them to do. However, I believe that I will encounter a lot of questions about the reliability of the supplies to be available when they need it, for it to be of good quality, and also if it will be delivered as quickly as they may want it and therefore quicker than Amazon, Office Depot, or wherever else they are sourcing these goods. This has become of greater concern to me as Amazon is pushing for all of their goods to be available within one day of ordering. 

These are our biggest competitors by far. Due to the massive size of their business they practically ensure quality. I definitely am concerned by this. I will say though that this is probably the biggest advantage they have over my business, in addition to having some sort of obscure item that is not as common as a hot glue gun or stapler. I definitely will do my best to ensure that our products are held to a higher standard and are fully functional. 

Our product offerings are not delivered in any particular packaging except whatever is available at the RePurpose Project. We would deliver mostly using old cardboard boxes. Customer service may be hard as my initial intent is to run the business by myself. I am not available 24/7 as some of these customer service lines are for our big competitors yet since the nature of this business is not very urgent, I do not see a few hour delay being a huge make or break factor. I do think I would need to focus on businesses close to campus since I do not have a car. I may need to enlist a friend to help me in delivery and pickup in order to be able to get the products to customers quickly. Besides that, I believe the structure can be pretty laid back. 

3 Minor Elements

Our biggest resource will be our partnership with the RePurpose Project. This enables us to be the only company with access to their goods, creating a monopoly. I believe that we could also work on establishing partnerships with local Goodwills incase our demand proves to be too grand for the supply at the RePurpose Project. 

What’s next for our venture would be expanding to more places in Gainesville. I believe we could provide value to a wide variety of businesses beyond just office supplies. I would start with businesses close to campus and RePurpose Project and then try to expand further from there. 

I would not be able to run this business forever unless I hired younger UF students to fill orders. I do not think this would be too hard as many students work for similar businesses like Uber Eats and Bite Squad. I would still be able to take the orders and translate them to whoever I have working in Gainesville. This would be concerning since I wouldn't be able to help fill orders if the students are busy. I am unsure that I would be able to generate enough profit to keep the business going if I had employees. Also, I would have to have someone in charge of quality control which would dip even more into my margins. I could potentially just pass this program off to the Warrington Goes Green club that was recently established.