After almost the testings done we made some critical changes to our BM. We devided our changes into three categories:
1) Changed Hypothesis
Customer Segment – With the interviews and all of the work done during the course we refined our customer segments so we could communicate better to them. Regarding the students, we clearly think that we want to appeal to non-local students both Portuguese and international. Regarding the businessman, we still want to communicate to them but we think their customer segment should be Urban Working People since it’s less connotated to that men in suits stereotype, and we want to appeal to those first-time workers and the woman in the house that decides on the laundry options.
Key Partners – In a scale of options regarding our activities scope we could go to the extremes: or we outsourced both laundry and distribution and become the middle men whom could more easier be cut off from the scene; or we could do both laundry and distribution ourselves which in a very start-up stage would be very costly especially because we couldn’t achieve high economies of scale and could probably lose focus on either things. So we decided to outsource the laundry services but not to a unique laundry, but to a network of partner laundries that, are usually set in neighboorhoods and would be responsible for a particular area.
Cost Structure – Taking into account this last change we think that an important aspect of our service would be the monitoring of the quality of the service provided by the laundries so that everything is given to the client in the best quality as expected. Also, we abandoned the box idea, which was completely shut off in the testings. But the testings also showed that people still value the personalization of our service, and would value a free box if existed, and because we still needed a mean of transportation for the clothes we thought on recyclable laundry bags, which are consistent with the results of the testings done.
2) Rejected Hypothesis
Value Proposition – We were surprised but people actually valued our service and perceived it as a premium one, which they would be willing to pay for it, so that’s why we decided to remove the money saving aspect of our value proposition, because it no longer communicated our message.
Channels – We decided to focus on distribution, also because we didn’t found a partner that would be willing to use its existing distribution process in a flexible way, like the post company. Also the public hotspots were actually subject of a very negative consensual view on the interviews, people had a lot of privacy and security concerns and the ways to solve it (like hide them in not very public areas or have people survailling them) would completely g against its idea. So by focusing on an online flexible distribution service we could go at the encounter of our clients without needing this hotspots.
Revenue Streams – Because we drop our laundry services our main revenues would come from the margin on the transactions that would be based on a discount get from the laundries and the premium charged to the customers.
Key Resources – By outsourcing the laundry services and abandoning the hotspots idea we would focus more on our distribution facilities.
Key Activities – The same happens to our laundry as being one of ours main activities.
Key Partners – Also one of the implications of not doing the laundry ourselves would be the fact we would no longer need to partner to cleaning product suppliers and laundry machines manufacturers. Due to the post negative answer and ours initial willingness to focus on having our own distribution system we would no longer partner with them.
3) Added Hypothesis
Value Proposition – Since our customers perceived our service as a premium one and would be willing to pay that premium for using it we decided to add that premium service aspect as one of our value propositions.
Revenue Streams – by deciding on this Business Model our revenue stream would come mainly from the distribution fee we already talked earlier (margin from the discount get from laundries plus the premium customers would be willing to pay)
Key Resources – Now our main resources would be our distribution system comprised by the cars, the mobile GPS system, the internal calendar tool that determines the hours and dates of the different distributors and the distribution staff.