Aerogel: The Business Model
Week #18: How The Filter Will Reach The Target Market
Preface ✨
Hello everyone!
My intentions for writing these articles are:
- Explain technical information about aerogels in simple terms (to the public)
- Store information and habits for my future self and others (in <7 minutes)
Coolio? Sweet. Enjoy the series :-)
The Basics Of A Business Model📄
Try & register as a B-Corporation.
This means it’ll be a for-profit company & strive towards a humanitarian benefit.
But why for-profit, Carlos? Why not give the filter away for free?
Trust is the transaction that occurs when somebody pays for a product/service. Trust is the most potent currency between people.
Example: Let’s say somebody decided to give you a house for free. The catch is that the house must remain of high quality for the rest of your life. You would be triple-checking every nook & cranny of the house. People do not take care of products IF:
- The purchaser knows it’s free
- They can always purchase another one after it’s damaged
There is more responsibility to take care of an item when you paid for it.
Nobody can compete with the price of free. This is another reason why you’re a for-profit company:
You damage the current economic infrastructure of a village/country if you give away an object for free.
Example: Let’s say you give away all the leftover T-shirts from Qatar 2022 to Chad, Venezuela, & Laos. It’s okay… until you realize somebody from these countries makes their income by making T-shirts.
The individual barely scrapes enough money per month from their T-shirt business. People are now willing to wait until the free object arrives at their shores…and you killed this person’s business.
(It’s like if somebody told you that Bugatti would give away free cars to everyday people once a decade. You would have circled that date & have the day on the back of your mind 24/7…and you probably would not pay your current car’s bills anymore lol)
Trade With The Customer. Not Compete.
Distribution Basics 📦
They will manufacture the filter purifiers. But you’ll allow for sub-level local distributors to control the distribution network in their respective villages… Agency.
There are social aspects that I could never understand in 100 years about a specific demographic. People from these areas understand how to market & sell products in their respective towns.
The objective is to sell the filter via sub-district-level local distributors. The district distributors would present the product to the grocery retail stores from where the final customers purchase the filters.
- The primary customer is the sub-district distributor.
- The final customer is the consumer of the filter.
How will you acquire these people?
Let’s take my village; Heroica Ciudad De Ejutla De Crespo, Oaxaca, Mexico.
The first step is to acquire permission/license from the Head Office (Office-In-Charge) of the town police. It will certify that you can perform street & in-house demonstrations of the product without violating the town laws/regulations.
The second step is to have written/recorded validation from local doctors, hospitals, & pharmaceutical stores to demonstrate the effectiveness of the product. Trust is powerful in building a bridge between a company & the consumer.
Understand the customer before they understand the company.
The third step is to begin street demonstrations to acquire the primary customer: the district distributors. The objective is for the distributors to find us because they understand how to find the target customer in their village. (Think of the filter <> Distributor partnership as a soccer team. The distributors are the scouts looking for talent/necessity.)
The distributors would take the products (with demonstrated benefits/results) to the local grocery stores for a partnership deal to have the filters on their shelves.
Grocery/Hardware stores are the target areas because water fits into similar necessities like nourishment & maintenance.
Why Water Quality Breaks The Poverty Cycle 💵
People in developed countries do not think about what is in their water. They mainly drive to a store and chuck water down their throat in under 15 minutes.
Other people have to walk for hours to find the nearest water source because there is a lack of water or primary water sources are contaminated.
Attention is money.
You can yield a higher return on investment (ROI) on your attention depending on what you focus on.
If somebody has to go get water to feed their pigs before selling them on Market Day at 07:00 a.m., they may not be able to sell all their pigs. The ROI was cut short.
Another Example: Let’s say you write articles about tourism in Cabo Verde as a side income. You make $15 per article. You have 4 hours of free time to write articles. But you have ballet & soccer for 3 hours. You lost a chance to make more money because your attention was placed on something else.
“Economic benefits include an overall estimated gain of 1.5% of global GDP and a US$ 4.3 return for every dollar invested in water and sanitation services due to reduced health care costs for individuals and society.”
Michel Jarraud - Former Chair, United Nations Water
Business: Final Thoughts 💭
There must be many tasks that have been consuming your mind. Yet you chose to read this…perhaps because it’s a distraction, or because this is a necessity in your village… and you are waiting for somebody to create the miracle your town desperately needs.
Just one reminder: There are so many assignments that require your full attention. You & I believe water should not have to be one of them.
Water is a primary lifeline of society. This must be secure for the future.
Attention Is Money. 💰
© 2023 by Carlos Manuel Jarquín Sánchez. All Rights Reserved.
