I Need Some Input

[Trevor3]

Hi, this is my first post here, maybe I should have went to the Intro forum first, but oh well. As the title says, I'm looking for some input.

I'm in a high school enterprise class so you can tell where this is going. My partner and I have gone through a series of failed ideas trying to come up with something that will work. We need to develop a business plan that is realistic and could actually make money.

The best idea we've had was custom locker inserts (shelving units), our school recently installed new lockers which are 6 feet tall and only have one shelf near the top and 2 hooks inside. We had 2 base designs which could be modified by each particular buyer to produce individual and unique units. Unfortunately, we ran into some issues with the actual construction stage. Apparently you can't use the workshop equipment outside of school hours even if your supervised by a teacher and trained on that very machine. So after trying a while to figure out how to make it work, we abandoned the idea since it gave us so much trouble.

Current Situation: No ideas, deadline on the 23rd of April (no extension possible)
- About $200 in start-up funds
- target market of about 600 people (school population)

Any suggestions are welcome! Please lend a thought, Its not like I'm asking you to do my homework, we just need an idea to build on!

[Sophie]

If you need some quick ideas to help with your project, I'd recommend getting a copy of Bootstrap Business: A Step-by-Step Business Survival Guide. If you don't want to order the book, you can also view the first 6 chapters online at blog.bootstrapbusiness.org. If you sign up for the blog, you can get the entire book, section by section, for free. That's what I'm doing. Although, I also ordered the book because I want a hard copy. The downside to the blog is that you can't access the whole book yet, just the chapters they've already sent out. I hope that helps with your project! Sounds like fun!

[ejansse2]

I think this is an awesome project! I did this same project in university except we were limited to only $5 in investment capital - that made things really difficult. I wrote a blog post on this exact topic a few weeks ago and I've included about 25 ideas for you, the link is: Summer Business Ideas

I also wrote another post on how to come up with your own unique idea here: Garage Entrepreneurs Business Planning Blog Series: Part 1 (Ideation)

Check them out if you have a chance, and if you have any additional questions don't hesitate to contact me!

[FrioGott]

I would figure out what portion of the funds you need for materials, then use whats left to attempt to pay some machine shop students to help with the manufacturing, also known as employees. If you cannot pay them, then see if you can work something out with the shop teacher if they can manufacture these things for you and the students would receive some sort of special grade or be exempt from some other project as incentive to help you.