Junk&Funk

@junkandfunk-blog

20 posts

25.02.2013.

Heyooo!!!

It's your Junk & Funk team

It's been a while since our last post. However, Junk & Funk are still with you! Some main questions answered in this post:

What we have done so far?

What did we do last month?

What are we selling and how we see our company in future?

We have made a lot of products (prototypes). However, we believe that not all of products made are carrying out the idea of being junk and funk. There are some products that are really good but some are not. Nevertheless, we had fun even being unsuccessful, because we were trying to be playful all the time. And being playful, yet motivated by our lecturers we can say that we have caught this "entrepreneurship-like" feeling. And success comes by hard-work.

What we did last month, was basically finishing our products and introducing them to bars and cafes in Old Riga. We went to the Old Riga last week and did what our lecturers advised us to do. It was hard to step out of our comfort zone, what is, actually doing sales, however, we went to 20 different cafes and introduced our products. Here are some photos:

What we were surprised of was our results. Although we didn't sell anything we made some contacts; with 7 out of 20 bars we exchanged contacts and 2 bars were really interested in our products and said that they are almost sure that they will order 3 bicycle lamps and 1 infinity mirror (if nothing goes wrong). We must admit that lack of experience in selling our products was the reason why we didn't do better. Last LOE lecture by Z.Tosun was awesome and will definitely help us - this so called "Sandwich method" is the one which we will try to apply next time clearly presenting emotional and rational advantages of our product.

Actually we started believing our idea even more now and we see ourselves as a great team of friends making crazy ideas come true. At the moment we are thinking that we should make products which are more expensive in order to get back more for our invested time. Dealing with small things takes a lot of time and effort selling them. We have been thinking about renovating an old sofa or cool retro chair but at the moment that's impossible due to our limited resources.

Remember, always truly believe in your ideas or else it won't work!

Cheers Your Junk & Funk team

07.01.2013-13.01.2013 Weekly Report

Hello everyone!

First of all, Junk & Funk wishes you happy new year! It's been two weeks since our last report, since it also was our winter break! Everyone had a chance to relax, spend some time with their families and enjoy different events. Even though it was our break, we still managed to do a couple of things, or at least we tried! One of our team members went three times to Latgalīte, which is a junk market. Sadly, it was closed or there wasn't anything we could use for our ideas. The other thing we would like to point out is creating a page in www.draugiem.lv - the most popular social network in Latvia. it's draugiem.lv/jnf. In this page we are going to publish our created items and hopefully sell at least some of them. More news in the page coming soon.

We have also talked to one of our lecturers. Since we all know it is quite difficult to sell hand made items in Latvia, we also had to come up with an alternative project. But more about that, if it will be necessary to realize it.

Our team also will be working on business canvas again because it's time to test the most important presumptions. We will also have a meeting with our lecturers soon where we will present our work.

For now, our goals are to work on the draugiem.lv page, realize our ideas and hopefully sell something!

Best of luck, Junk & Funk

7 days till Christmas

Hi dear readers,

We are happy that this is the last week of school this year, everyone is starting to become a little bit cheerful and happier, despite the cold weather outside. We thing that this is a great opportunity to enjoy some hot beverage, look outside at the beautiful view or read some interesting book. But we can’t imagine these evening with the perfect lighting. Junk and Funk have some new and really cool ideas, that will make your life more enjoyable. Take a look

We found that these ideas would be perfect improvement to boring and plain rooms.

Another thing we want to inform you about is that we had our meeting with TA. We discussed many ideas and actually came to the same conclusions as before. We need to continue working on production and need to find places to sell it. We are going to focus more on recycling things, giving them ability to shine literally.

Our New Year’s resolution will be to work harder in LOE. We will talk to you some more after holidays. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Junk&Funk

10.12.2012-16.12.2012 Weekly Report

Good evening dear readers, our 7 followers to be more precise,

It is campaign week! The new SA board candidates are trying to get everyone's votes, good luck to them. In the mean time our team is continuing to develop new products and new ideas.

One of the most exciting aspects this week is that the Infinity mirror is the process of being made. We have part of the materials, now all we need is a frame, some glass, wood and some other materials. It is estimated that you can wait for our finished mirror right after the winter break.

The dark part of the year is here, everyone needs lights ._., our team can help if any of our 7 followers are in need of a lighting source. Holla' at us.

This week our team is planning to:

ummmmm... Wait a bit. Let us think..

Oh yeah, We are going to produce mooooooooore goods :)

and do all of the stuff our lecturers asked us

Same old stuff ..

Here are the goods we have so far needed for our Mirror

This is how the LED lights look when attached to a surface, our team member's table for example.

All we need to do now is make something equally beautiful using mirrors and stuff' :)

And now we will hope to answer all of our questions right :)

3.12. - 9.12. The week of relief. OR NOT!

Exams are behind us. Some passed, some still bothering us, some set for another time. We all feel exhaustion. This first semester has proven to be a tough one, but yet there is still a course on the rise and one dragging along since August. Financial Accounting and some re-exams are the latest focus of the students, including us.

Last week: we had a meeting and were directed in a defined direction of only restoring old items and not creating new ones. This posed more problems since some of our ideas involved creating items from scratch; We also received an assignment on an Activity Plan.

This week: we have to create the Activity plan; Come up with some new ideas of production and our customer base.

The team members are busy at this point of time with personal things and individual assignments. Almost everyone is taking some electives and the Tests/Exams for them are due this week, others have to prepare for re-exams, no-one has time to relax, it's even been tough to arrange a team meeting that all of us could participate in.

We'll keep on trucking and fighting for our priorities.

Holla'!

Junk&Funk.

26.11-2.12 a.k.a. week right after micro and before statistics

Received an e-mail about LOE meeting. As we had mentioned in previous blogs, a lot of time was sacrificed for other courses, because it was also important to prepare for exams and to pass them. For example, during the last days of writing report in Micro we remembered those harsh days during the first weeks when we had lectures till late evening and challenging assignments for next days.

Talking about our progress over the last week. What else to say - we are "supporting" this idea only by imagination but not by real work. Thanks to the comments about our business plan, presentation and idea - we started to consider our idea, but we haven't thought of anything else yet. For us - good ideas are not coming the easy way so at the moment we are still moving on with Junk&Funk main idea.

For this week - We would like to say, that we will make some new lamps or finish our suitcase stereo "thing". However, we know that it won't be possible due to Argumentative writing and Statistics. Maybe that's an indicator that the idea is not good enough to sacrifice some extra-curricular activities and results in other exams but time will show. We are hoping to get back our inspiration or maybe even think of some new ideas.

That's all for November blog! At least we have time for the blog :)

Cheers,

Junk & Funk team!

21.11.2012.

Weekly report

Hello, this is Junk and Funk again......this is plan for next days ;)

We have faced a lot of difficulties and have understood that being an executer and manufacturer is not easy at all. Due to the lack of time we are rather slow producing our products and we are not still ready to sell anything. We have made some products but entering this business in our opinion is not reasonable with 3 lamps We have 6 members on our team and this means a lot of ideas as well as a lot of diffenerent opinions. We decided on spliting as a team for a week again, to work on ideas ourselves. So by doing that we agreed on thinking and making products that will still carry the idea of being funky.

Last few days we discussed idea of returning to speakers in suitcase. We believe that we could do better than we did and we have to try this again:)

Cheers, Junk and Funk team:)

12.11.2012. - 18.11.2012 Weekly Report

Hello everyone,

Junk & Funk's weekly update is here. Over the last week we have accomplished a couple of our goals. First of all, a classy hat lamp has been created, thanks to Jānis. Secondly, we are currently working on the white old lamp, which is expected to be finished during the following week. Here are the pictures of our new products:

AND

Our goals for the upcoming week:

Finish restoring the white lamp

Put more lamps up for sale

Actually sell one of our products

Create a lamp from a pot lid

Hopefully finally get the materials from China

Come up with new ideas

That's all we have for now, have a great and productive weekend everybody, we sure will!

Best wishes,

Junk & Funk

05.11.2012. - 11.11.2012 Weekly Report

Hello,

This is Junk&Funk with weekly report. So many things have happened during the week, we put an advertisement in one website, just to see if people respond and so on.

The link:

http://www.ss.lv/msg/lv/home-stuff/furniture-interior/lusters-sconces/ppcep.html

Sorry, it is in Latvian. Keep your fingers crossed that we would succeed and someone called. This is the lamp we are selling:

And this weeks challenges will be

Keep waiting for the materials from China

Keep looking for other materials we need

Come up with several designs

Restore this old lamp into something cool and stylish

So have a good week you all, we will keep you posted if something exciting happens and just good luck! Be happy and don't let the bad weather affect you. Bye :)

Junk and Funk

#LOE2012 #submission

29.10.2012-4.11.2012 Weekly Report

Good day to you all.

Micro and math results are available, for some it creates suicidal thoughts, for some it is a sign of relief and celebration. Nevertheless the LOE project must continue, and our team is continuing to create new products and is coming up with some new creative ideas. Last week wasn't very productive because, well no one understands why, but let's be honest, we were lazy after the Midterm

A major problem has struck our company. Kristaps is having several issues with his idea of an infinity mirror. He ordered some materials off Ebay more than a month ago, and during the weekend received notification that his item hasn't even been shipped out due to some safety regulations in China. Because of this, Kristaps is going to shy away from his project for the moment until supplies are available. In the mean time, he is going to look in another direction and promises to create a product until the start of the next week.

The amplifier for the “boombox” has been found, and is on it's way.

We have yet to create a logo that will be put on our products, but our chief designer Jānis is working on it.

Other than that Oskars has created yet another product. Yet another lamp.. (see picture bellow)

Our team has set out some goals for the week:

Make our label idea a reality

Keep looking for advertising options

Get over the pain and hurt after finding out our results in math and micro

Hope the Chinese send the materials needed for the Infinity mirror sooner

Finish the products we have started to make

Start making money!

That's all from us now, we will keep you posted.

By the way, happy Halloween for those who celebrate it.

22.10.2012 - 28.10.2012 weekly report

This weeks adventures!

Slowly but surely we are making progress on our first products.

Oskars Š. made a wooden lamp and brought a chandelier to Linda's place. Linda started to decorate the chandelier and it should be done any day.

The materials for the infinity mirror should be here really soon. When they arrive Kristaps will be able to get his hands on the creation process.

The amplifier for the "boombox" has been found, this will provide the opportunity to play music from a USB Flash drive, as well as will provide user to adjust bass, treble and master volume on the amplifiers panel.

Microeconomics has definitely slowed us down due to preparation for the Mid-term exam, that's why we might not have done all the things we set out to do in the previous week. The label logo is only in an idea stage, we are still trying to find different designs for it to find the best one, and we also have to find a company that will produce the labels for a relatively cheap price (probably metal/wood processing company) so we could attach them to our products, when they would be ready. We also haven't started working on advertising our company and brand yet.

Up ahead.

With the exam out of the way, I suppose we will have more time and strength to devout to our project. Hopefully with an increased pace we will be able to show off our newest products at the end of this week.

Tasks:

Finish the started products

Keep the ideas coming

Make our label idea a reality

Keep looking for advertising options

Cheers! And good luck everyone with your tasks!

15.10.2012 - 21.10.2012 weekly report

Hello everyone!

This is our blog post for the following week!

PROGRESS OF THE PREVIOUS WEEK

One of our tasks was to make more bulbs of cotton string and Linda managed to deal with that.

Another task was to find a speaker and a leather (or any other material cover) for "speaker-in-suitcase". We found a good speaker on www.Ebay.com but we still have to decide and find a suitable cover.

Progress on infinity mirror is also moving forward -but we till have to wait until those LED lamp will arrive.

We also made a presentation, but it turned out to be inadequate, so we had to change our presentation speech so it would match and represent our real idea and vision.

However, we did not make a blog yet, because we decided that we should make one only after we have our first batch of products ready.

PRESENT

Last Friday we had a meeting and we decided to continue working on our products. We also came up with an idea that we should get some kind of label which we could attach to the products. It would also represent our brand and make it look more serious.

It would be similar to label in the following picture, the only difference -it would be smaller (depends on product size) and with our brand logo.

This leads to our tasks for this week!

1) We must continue working on our products;

2) We have to make a special logo for labels, because we think that our current logo won't be good for them;

3) Must think about the ideas how to advertise our company and develop a brand.

That's all for this week,

Good luck everyone with their goals,

Junk and Funk team!

Today's guest

Dr Bert Twaalfhoven

Serial Entrepreneur and Founder

Bert Twaalfhoven is former chairman of Harvard Business School Alumni, receiving the Annual Alumni Award from Harvard Business School for his activities stimulating entrepreneurship in Eastern and Western Europe in 2001. Indivers started 51 companies in 11 countries including Italy, France, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Holland, Belgium, England, the USA and China. Most companies were successful; 17 ventures failed. Indivers was also co-founder of the first venture capital company in the Netherlands (Gilde) and has participations in several venture capital companies.

In addition to being an entrepreneur, Dr Twaalfhoven is active in many capacities in the international networks of universities and entrepreneurs, especially the promotion of dynamic growth entrepreneurs. He is Founder of the European Foundation for Entrepreneurship research (EFER) and Initiator of EASDAQ. Over the last three years, EFER has sent 200 European Professors of Entrepreneurship to a one week course at Harvard Business Schools. These professors came from 30 countries and 90 different universities. He is Founding Member and board member of Europe's 500, now Growth Plus - the Association for Europe's fastest growing entrepreneurs. Dr Twaalfhoven is board member of the Fordham Graduate School of Business in New York and of the International Advisory Board of the Netherlands business school, Nyenrode. He was board member of United World College India and board member of the GEA College of Entrepreneurship in Portoroz, Slovenia. Bert Twaalfhoven has been a Visiting Entrepreneur since 2006.

Qusetions:

1. Why you are in Latvia?

2.You have been in entrepreneurship field for such a long time, isn't it hard?

3. Europe and the U.S. Which is better for new business venture?

8.10.2012.

Hello, this is Junk and Funk again. This tumblr post will take you trough our recent activities as well as about our next week's plans.

So this far we have faced a lot of difficulties as a team, which has lead to a confirmation to our team-building course lecturer's advice - to form a team of 4, max 5 people. We have 6 students in our group and that means a lot of ideas as well as a lot of diffenerent opinions. One of members is kinda free-riding with us and it's hard to find a thing to do for her and we find it hard to involve her in our work. So that's why we decided on spliting as a team for a week, to work on ideas ourselves. So by doing that we agreed on thinking and making a product that will still carry the idea of being funky.

So the ideas came and we worked on them and best are:

Lamps of cotton thread

Linda, a member of our team made a prototype, which made us think about mass production of a product like this, due to it's attractiveness and simplyness. Oskars Šulcs found a chandelier in his basement, on which he could make lamp bulbs of thread, which would make a really great and funky product.

A prototype made by Linda

Infinity mirror

A idea, which we came across in youtube. A mirror that makes a illusion of never ending area behind the mirror. This is really promising idea, which could be done. We find it atractive to clubs/bars/pubs as a mirror. So we have ordered LED lamps from ebay and Kristaps will make the prototype. But before even thinking of making first prototype we thought of making a ceiling cover out of this mirror, which could make ceiling look by illusion amazingly tall. And would face the problem of low ceilings for a lot of people, who live in USSR-time block apartments.

Infinity mirror

What we are doing this week....

We will make more bulbs of cotton string to apply them to Oskar's chandelier, which will be done by Linda.

Oskars Bērziņš will find a speaker and a leather or other material cover for box inside the suitcase for our musical suitcase idea.

Oskars Šulcs and Kristaps Apšusals will find a frame for infinity mirror and will make the prototype if LED lamps arrive.

Jānis Bošs will make our presentation of tuesday and make a blog for selling our products, which is extremely important. He will also extra-think of advertising our blog.

Annija will look for new ideas...

Cheers, Junk and Funk team:)

Guest lecturer of 20.09.2012.

Ragnar Sass

Serial startup entrepreneur. Angelpad Alum. Co-founder @Pipedrive.com & @Garage48.org. Founder of world 2nd pet owners sn @Uniteddogs.com.

Says about himself: An experienced startup rockstar from Estonia. Been founder in different startups. One of them failed, others are more or less successful. Its not about the money, its about how you change the world into a better place.

Questions:

Which is your favourite startup made by you?

Do you like Riga as a place for new startups?

Do you find antique furniture refreshment business as a successful startup?

Presentation about "Valmiermuiža"

Our presentation is ready!

Here are our main points of our presentation (the structure) 1) Idea

2) Organization

3) Business model

4) Market

5) Financial performance

6) Financing

7) Management, Development and Plans

CHEERS!

17.09.2012.

Today’s guest lecturer

Krists Avots

Current

Project Managerat Garage48 Foundation

Business Development Lab Coordinatorat Stockholm School of Economics in Riga

Past

Expert for Economics study direction evaluationat Council of Higher Education of Latvia

Assistant Project Managerat University of Latvia

Vice-President of Student Associationat Stockholm School of Economics in Riga

Education

Stockholm School of Economics in Riga

Latvijas Universitate

Āgenskalna Valsts Ģimnāzija

Questions:

1. Is it hard to get a license for your business?

2. Where parties are better: SSE Riga or UL?(we know the answer anyway)

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