10/18/17

- Damian to do 3 min pitch for final pitch day - 6 slide preso

- Emotional story
- Experience XYZ pain point
- Weve additional research and found that many other retailers experience the
same issue
- Our solution provides XYZ
- Our vision is to ___
- Billie to start pulling information into the Weebly site
- Booth for final presentation
- Bring Xisha and Julias posters
- Bring wine and cheese
- One blown up screenshot of the UI on UI
- Print out of the 6 images on the weebly site on plan overview
- Our journey pulling from our photos 6-8

9/27/17
Go together to do some interviews
- Need to call ahead of time to make sure that the owner or manager will be there
- We should aim to have 10-15 interviews done by 10/4 (10/7 latest)
- Aim to have potential solutions by 10/11
- Do second round of interviews after we come up with potential sols
- Aim to have prototype shown to potential customers by 10/18
- Work on final preso to be completed by 10/25

In class on this sat 9/30

- Revisit the metaphor conversation
- Start coming up with potential solutions

In the next 2 days we should call some businesses to set up appointments

Segment - Clothing and Furniture

Business Name Contact Name Phone Appointment Type

date

Standard & Strange (510) 373-9696 Clothing

 TM Joy (510) 703-1909 Clothing

Minds Eye Vintage (510) 529-6519 Clothing

Dandelion Post (510) 858-3742 Clothing

Rubys Garden-xish (510) 595-5325 Clothing

Alis Golden (510) 904-4556 Clothing

Upper Playground (510) 649-0740 Clothing

Anastasia New and (510) 900-6121 Clothing

Vintage Clothing

Futura (510) 883-9050 Clothing

Viking Trader (510) 486-1090 Furniture

Peoples Bazaar (510) 655-8008 Furniture

European Sleepworks (510) 841-5340 Furniture

Katz Modern (510) 388-8433 Furniture

Mid Century Mobler (415) 497-6626 Furniture

Savvy Rest Natural (510) 244-4155 Furniture

Bedroom

Artisan Burlwood (510) 549-0664 Furniture

Furniture

Alpha Design (510) 246-3547 Furniture

Fenton MacLaren (510) 524-1580 Furniture

Home Furnishings

Teak Me Home (510) 725-7258 Furniture

Comfort Zone Sleep (510) 527-1436 Furniture

Gallery

*** Add appointment date or No Meeting to the appointment date column ***
Try to set up 4-6 interviews for sat

9/20/17
Observation

Gautam
- 3 stores visited in his neighborhood
- Grocery Store
- There was an existing store and a new owner bought the store
- New owner brought in a lot of new groceries and now the store is doing well
- Restaurant
- Owner changed
- Nice new furniture, new decoration, menu changed
- Tea store - Tea Papa
- Started about 6 months ago
- They closed down
- There is a different tea store
- near a school and the business is booming
- There is another individually owned grocery store that has been there for 20 years and
hes going to visit it

- Noticed that with the small businesses in his neighborhood they have been around for
many users, ownership has changed but they the business itself hasnt changed a lot

Julia
- Visited 3 stores that are representative of typical local stores
- Hardware store
- Most people are local customers so they dont really browse
- They come there with a specific need, get it and leave
- Observed 4 purchases
- Hardware purchase, lip balm, dogfood
- A bit more expensive than Amazon
- Lots of supplies, including very small hardware
- Clerks are very nice and check with customers
- Clothing Store
- Has been around for almost 75 years
- Very typical western style clothing
- A bit on the pricey side
- Most customers are local residents
- 30 people visited
- Owner seemed to have a personal relationship customers
- 2nd floor is completely shut down
- Art Gallery
- Also has an online website
- Very nice display of art and sculptures etc
 - Price is very expensive, on Yelp many people complain about price
- More customers in this store than the others
- Didnt observe anyone purchase just browse
- Most common purchase was photos or picture framing service

Damian
- Visited Castro street in Mtv
- Clothing
- Interesting concept, everything for sale, assortment across different categories
(almost random)
- Not many clerks (only one) - couldnt focus on helping customers
- Prices - high
- Assortment - not unique (items could be found in big chain stores)
- Music
- Huge assortment
- Store space was divided between the sales part and services part (where
people could take lessons)
- Not enough people signed up for lessons in this quarter (they had to call them
and refund them which was painful)
- People were sitting and chilling in the store
- Not many customers
- Rent instruments not just sell
- Candy Shop
- Nice layout (unique sodas and interesting looking candies), special posters -
everything was for sale
- Cool store setup (cash register in the middle - with a computer, security monitor +
3 different credit card readers)
- Chinese convenience store:
- Had assortment from other Asian countries (+little figures)
- Half of the store is used for storage
- Store setup was very weird (not very comfortable/intuitive - maybe not the best
use of space)
- Overall observation: Stores use the space in a different way, not always the most
effective

Xisha:
- Research:
- Amazon isnt going against small businesses
- Retail isnt dying but competition is harsh (against Amazon?)
- Some small stores actually sell on Amazon as a store front
- Customer is digital - mobile focused
- Interesting example in Korea where grocery store put pictures in subway
- People dont like to go to brick in mortar because of bad service
 - You go to a store with something in mind that youre looking for but no
one comes to help you, you cant find it, or they dont have it
- Some retailers are becoming more of a showroom experience, where customers
go into the store, try things on and there are several people helping them, if they
dont have an item in stock theyll ship it to you within 2 days
- Music store
- Didnt have enough sales so they started renting out musical instruments
- On amazon you can check 2-3 stores within minutes
- As a retailer you need to figure out how to give your customers your
undivided attention and give them a differentiated experience

Billie
- Been reviewing industry reports and surveys
- What SBA reporting, banks, various research organizations
- Top challenges
- Their concerned with the national and regional economies
- Taxes and inflation
- Labor costs and overall costs
- Access to capital
- Most likely to go to banks but least likely to get approval
- Infrastructure - IT or physical infrastructure
- Staffing, quality of labor
- Lack of innovation ideas and products - this has been a focus for a long time now
-
- Top opportunities
- 83% of small business that start start from scratch
- 8% of businesses are takeovers of existing businesses
- The rest are family takeovers and things like that
- Thinking a lot about growing in size -46% are looking to grow 45% are looking to stay the
same
- Thinking about adding new products or services to grow 31%
- Adding new partners
- Moving operations to online online 8%
- Adding mobile PoS capabilities 8%
- Retail
- Survey - done by the national retail federation
- 4 of 10 SMB retail owners site economy as worry
- National economy
- Quality of labor
- Staffing issues
- Finance, interest rates, access to capital
- Most spend their time on recruiting and hiring employees
- Developing products and employees
 - Order supplies
- Marketing and advertising
- Helping customers
- Data security and payment processing
- Time on website
- Taxes
- Business was concerned with getting support for their customer, some small
companies dont have access to 24x7 support
- Optimism index for SMBs is growing, which means theyre optimistic about the
economy and how their businesses are growing
- US Census bureau has s service where you can put in a city and state and the type of
store you want to open and it will tell you other stores like yours, who your customers
- would be etc

References:
https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/rs332.pdf
https://cbb.census.gov/sbe/#
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2017/business-dynamics.html
https://census.gov/econ/isp/sampler.php?naicscode=44&naicslevel=2
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2012/econ/2012-sbo.html
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-EVHaBDGU83bzhqYnYzLVJJTnc
https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/small-business
https://www.sba.gov/advocacy/small-business-facts-and-infographics
https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/Whats-New-w-Small-Business-2017.pdf
https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/SurvivalRatesAndFirmAge_ADA_0.pdf
https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/Small_business_bulletin_June_2015.pdf
http://www.pwc.com/us/totalretail
https://nrf.com/sites/default/files/Overregulation_Burdening-Americas-Small-Retailers_NRF-repo
rt-May-2016.pdf
https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/United_States.pdf
http://online.wsj.com/ad/article/execdigest-technology
http://www.nfib.com/surveys/small-business-economic-trends/
https://eu.futureofbusinesssurvey.org
http://about.americanexpress.com/news/pr/2017/amex-sme-survey.aspx
https://clutch.co/agencies/social-media-marketing/resources/small-business-2017-survey
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/smallbusiness/2016/SBCS-Report-EmployerFir
ms-2016.pdf
By saturday everybody identify 2-3 problems

From Gautam ---

Some survey questions:

How many years have you been in business?

0-3
3-5
5-10
10+

How many employees do you have?

1-5
5-10
10+

If you have been in business for more than 3 years, have your profits
increased/decreased in last 3 years:
Increased
Decreased
Lost Money
N/A

Who are your major competitors:

Local small businesses
Big retailer such Walmart or Costco
Online retailers such as Amazon, Overstock or Walmart

How do you access market report related to your business:

Never seen one
Local chamber of commerce
Small business specialist

Online
Start with very open ended then get more specific

Next
Continue to do research on the problem space as we have been
Everyone review notes from today
Everyone come up with 2-3 ideas about what the pain points are
Have prof B or Carina guide us through how to move forward
Julia to schedule time during lunch with Carina