25A-What's Next?

Existing Market
The next step for our product will be taking the design to be manufactured and then the biggest hurdle of getting the product out there. The design is relatively basic and the materials won't carry a high cost, in fact every feature of our design is very common in terms of being manufactured for other tech products out there. Basically we have just combined a few different tech features and the only hurdle in terms of manufacturing it will be making sure we obtain a strong enough power supply for the capabilities we desire. The consensus when talking to a few people that are very familiar with the market about what is next for us was that we should expect some resistance getting the product into the hands of retailers. Unless my connections are stronger than they are thinking, I could be a little disappointed in the early results. The reasoning was that with the tech accessories market they are very much dominated by the major brands. So, not only will you have to compete with the phone companies own line of accessories, but also fight off the major tech accessory companies. Having heard all of this I think it makes the most sense for our product to spend more money and more resources to create brand awareness. Rather than trying to get our product on the shelves at Best Buy and Target as fast as possible we should build our brand first. Social media is certainly one of the ways we can do this. Contests and giveaways will get people talking about it and into the hands of consumers. Another idea we will explore will be celebrity endorsement. I have a few contacts in the music world and they all have a lot of followers on social media that we could target to build our brand.
New Market
If we were to enter a new market radically different from our current one it would need to target a poorer part of society. Essentially meaning we would like to make a cheaper type of product, not necessarily off limits to wealthy people, but they won't be the more frequent customer. This market would be for rechargeable AA batteries. The cost for our product would be much lower and the customer will be able to use it for anything in their household requiring AA batteries. The value a product like this creates is it is a money saver in the long run. You will no longer have to go to the store and buy AA batteries. Talking with a couple customers of the market I heard a couple of things that I had already known. I knew going into this it there are other companies out there with this product and there isn't much we can do to separate us from our competitors. The best thing we can do is pride ourselves on having the cheapest rechargeable batteries out there. This would echo our idea of targeting a poorer part of society and the hope is that it would push our brand into as many consumers as possible. Profits wouldn't be much off of this, but people would be more aware of our brand and look into purchasing other products of ours, products where we are turning more profit. This market is not going to be one where we will make a lot of money, but getting into it would serve a purpose.