Jomato's Last Entry for the Semester!

Our group initially set out to provide a great product that would appeal to everyone. It was hard to identify such a product because there are too many differences in opinions so we decided to go with a product that we knew a majority of the JMU population would love enough to pay money for. We also wanted out product to be inexpensive but be worth buying at the same time.
We came up with a great product in the JMU Ping Pong Balls that many agreed is a great idea and was a great thing to have because it combined the ideas of school spirit and a recreational sport.

We sold them at the rate of 1 ball for $1 or 6 balls for $5. As of December 6, 2010, Jomato has sold $354 worth of ping pong balls in a span of about only 3 weeks. We are very proud of our achievements up to date but still have some selling to do. This is because it took us a while to come up with a viable idea so we missed a few opportunities to sell our product in the beginning of the year. During the BRAINSTORMING SESSIONS during class, we actually put JMU Ping Pong Balls as a potential idea but it was overlooked by other ideas that ended up being not used because of really high initial cost or lack of interest such as JMU opoly, buying and reselling USB drives, or a commoditties basket.

A FEW SIGNIFICANT LESSONS that can be learned from JOMATO:

*Don't waste time, every second spent of the venture should make it better! (TIME IS MONEY)

*The earlier you can start, the greater your chances of success

*Avoid having HIGH initial costs!

We DO plan on continuing to sell the ping pong balls next semester as the weather gets nicer and more opportunities to sell OFF CAMPUS come up such as open house at different apartment complexes, continued word of mouth advertising, and other major social events.

Slow Week but PLANNING FOR A STRONG FINISH!

This week, we tried to sell our ping pong balls at ISAT but it wasn't as successful as we had hoped. More than that, we were informed that we weren't allowed to sell our product on campus unless it was through the bookstore. We had thought the original agreement was that as long as the bookstore wasn't currently selling the product, we were allowed to sell on campus because we wouldn't be competing with the bookstore. We will NOT be making that mistake again. We do apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused to the Bookstore, Mr. McClain, or Dr. Wales.

On a BRIGHTER NOTE, we do have a final strong sales method planned to try to get sell the rest of our balls this semester. We are currently working with bookstore representative, Mr. Mark Glenn, to set up tables in the bookstore during finals week. The plan is to catch the attention of students who have just sold back their books and have cash on hand. We know our product is purely bought on impulse so we are hoping with the joy of the end of semester and the feeling of having cash, students would be more willing to BUY OUR BALLS!! Despite the fact that the final sales figures are due Monday, we will continue to try to sell the balls until they are gone.

OUR FINAL BUSINESS STRATEGY:

STUDENTS SELLING BACK THEIR BOOKS WILL LEAD TO

MORE MONEY IN THEIR HANDS WHICH SHOULD LEAD TO

NO MORE BALLS IN OUR HANDS!

BIG THINGS CONTINUING TO HAPPEN!

We have sold enough of our balls to cover half of our cost in only 3 EFFORTS up until now! Our current revenue is $300 and growing. We are very optimistic about being able to sell the rest of our inventory. 


Anyone interested in buying JMU ping pong balls!?!?

--> MONEY MAKER!

DR. WALES WANTED AWESOME THIS WEEK!

As you all can tell, we had huge expectations this week from our professor.

Our ping pong balls are all finally printed, packaged, and ready for sale!!

Despite our limited marketing efforts, we managed to make a lot of SALES in a few hours in the showker lobby!

Here is some feedback we have gotten from people:

"“What do I win?”- Janitorial Lady in Showker

“Finally something interesting to buy!”- Frequent Showkerer

“I like this, its sweet!”- Someone who would buy our product if they had money at the time. (We will be seeing this person next Tuesday)

We plan to continue to sell in the Showker Lobby next Tuesday, November 16, 2010 from 11 am to 2 pm.


We have full confidence that next week with improved marketing as well as a for flexible schedule for our entire group, we will sell out in no time!

 $$$$$$$$$$$$$HERE COMES THE MONEY!! $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Anticipation Builds For the Release!

We decided on a single design for the balls, which was based off a survey we took in class a few weeks ago. This will be the design printed on all of our balls. Last week we placed our order for 1,000 balls. It was VERY expensive, but we our confident that with our Amazing business skills we will be able to sell out our entire inventory at our original price of $5 for 6 balls. We do have some alternative pricing plans as a back up, but we hope that it won't come down to that.

Once our balls arrive we will actively push our product both on and off campus. Our main goal is to sell our balls at tailgating events. As the football season draws closer to its finally we are anxiously waiting for our inventory to arrive so we can make the most of what little is left of the football season. We hope that having alumni and parents around who have more money than students will help us sell more than just targeting students. Also, adding tailgating.. activities in the mix should hopefully cause our market to be more receptive to buying our product.

HERE COMES THE BALLS!

So there was some lag time for our venture because we had to wait for the price quote and invoice from S.O.S.
BUT.....

THE ORDER HAS BEEN PLACED!
In a few short days, all the JMU students and even townies will be able to show their love and passion for JMU everytime they play table tennis.

For now, we are execs like this one ----->

BUT WE KNOW ONCE THE

JMU PING PONG BALLS GET SOLD ,

WE WILL HAVE ALL OF THIS---->

Up up and away!

After a week of exploring different printing and delivery options, we'll be placing our first order tomorrow after Entrepreneurship class!  We're very excited about this and some of our distribution methods.  Our current favorite plan is to sell our ping pong balls at the tailgates before upcoming JMU football games.

Several classmates have already expressed interest in our ping pong balls so we have high hopes to see some profit soon!  Stay tuned because we'll have some sales to report soon!

JOMATO ALMOST READY TO FLY!!

<------- FIRST OFF, CHECK OUT THE POTENTIAL LOGOS! AWESOME RIGHT?!?

We at Jomato have had a ton of great potential ideas but all the ideas had something that prevented it from being successful whether it be COST, COMPLEXITY or simply STRANGE.
HOWEVER,
we are now set on a very very very awesome idea!

PING PONG BALLS WITH THE JMU LOGO'S ON THEM!!!! 

We got the approval from the JMU FOUNDATION and JASON MCCLAIN!

Unfortunately, we are unable to record any costs/profit yet BUT we are in the process of getting 

PRICE QUOTES from 9 different APPROVED printers so once that is determined and confirmed, 

we will be rolling in cash (HOPEFULLY!) 

IT IS A HUGE RELIEF TO FINALLY HAVE A VIABLE PRODUCT! We even have customers excited for when we start SELLING! Please check back to see our venture take off!

-THE JOMATO EXECUTIVES

A New Direction

In the past week Jomato has seen a lot of changes. We have moved away from all three of our old ideas and begun researching two new products. We have continued researching the toiletry resale concept which has taken the majority of our time. We have continued to receive a good response from our target market. 

Our newest venture would consist of us selling JMU related ping-pong balls. We our still unsure of whether we will only be selling balls with the JMU logo on them, or whether we will target different organizations within JMU. As we've begun researching different manufacturers and custom printing companies the main issue has been pricing. It seems that if we want to make a larger profit and get the balls for under 50 cents we will have to order several thousand. Since we do not have the start up capital for such a venture, we will be spending the weekend researching alternative manufacturing techniques and suppliers. 

This week we have also worked on creating a company logo. Originally we had several ideas on how we wanted to make it, but we have all agreed on the same image. We are currently in the process of formating it from a freehand drawing to an image file that we will be putting on our packaging and advertisement.

Research, research, research

After a long stretch of ideating we've begun to move into our next stage... Research!  Our ideas continue to shuffle around as we explore them further and try and decide which ideas will create a substantial amount of value and which ideas are just worthless for us.

Already we've had to axe our favorite idea, the custom JMU Monopoly board.  Unfortunately all of the producers of custom-opoly boards we discovered required large 500+ bulk orders that we just don't have the capital for.  So alas, no JMU-opoly for now.

On a more positive note, we've been engaging with Freshman and questioning them to determine top needs and discomforts within the freshman class.  Currently one of the popular responses we've been receiving is that freshman experience discomfort because they frequently run out of necessities and bathroom supplies such as deodorant, shampoo, soap, toothpaste, fingernail clippers etc.  We're currently exploring the option of a necessity-package or a system of ordering bathroom supplies to capitalize this discomfort and create value for us and the freshman.

Also on our list of ideas are JMU boxer or boxer-briefs!  This one is very newly formed so we're not positive the bookstore will allow it yet, but we're excited to visit the bookstore this weekend and determine whether it will be possible.  We're also contacting people we know with experience in making customized clothing and learning from their experiences.

Perhaps the most exciting part about the entire process so far has been watching our ideas spawn more and more ideas.  We've bounced from JMU medicine balls all the way to valet services, blending student homework (will it blend), and even event hosting for different clubs. 

That's all for now, we'll post back soon with the beginnings of our plan implementation!

Search for An Idea Continues...

Welcome back to Jomato's blog! We are still in the process of deciding on a great idea. So far, we have been cleared to collect money by Sgt. Debbie Spart. As far as idea generation goes, here are the top 3 ideas we came up with:

1) Purchasing a bulk amount of USB drives for cheap and selling them for only a little more than we bought them for. This will provide customers with a much cheaper solution than their other options, because stores mark up their USB drives to very high prices. We will also be targeting freshman, with the notion that they are still getting used to college and haven't realized how convenient a USB drive is for college work.

2) Creating a JMU edition of monopoly. There are many special editions of Monopoly around the world, there are even some other universities that have their own versions already.
-University of Michigan has Michiganopoly.
-University of Connecticut has Uconnopoly.
This shows that the idea is very feasible and we believe that there would be a lot of people who would love to get this game a memento of their time at Jame Madison.

  

+

 = 

Great idea?

 
3) After hearing of the success of the Springfest glasses, we believe that we could market a similar design that is targeted to football fans. By purchasing and customizing sun glasses with "JMU Football 2010 - 2011," we strongly believe that there would be a significant target market for it. It would also give us the entire semester full of football games and other opportunities to sell them, where as the Springfest glasses were only applicable to one weekend.

In a recent class with Dr. Wales, we were given examples of pass successful products and we are starting to get the itch to create a new product. That will be something to discuss in the VERY NEAR future. Thanks everyone and please let us know what you think of our ideas so far.

Jomato A New Beginning

On the memorable day of September 6th at 12:46 the new cash cow Jomato was born! Led by the up and coming executives; John Howard, Matt McCrory, Tony Truong. Currently we're in the process of idea generation and several promising ventures have already come to mind.  Through this blog we're going to document our entrepreneurial process.  Look forward to the start of our venture!