Website Under Construction

Hey team,

Our website for His Man Friday is in the works and I hope to have it done by next weekend. I will post the URL as soon as I have it published so that you can check it out and post feedback as to how we can improve it.

Also, I am still working on sketches for the floor plan, and as has been suggested, I will scan my paper copies to post on our team blog to get some feedback for those as well so that I can churn out a more sophisticated prototype ala Google Sketch Up to post here as well.

Upcoming Assignments!!!

• Defining Key Partners/Resources/Assets - Due October 3oth!


• Create a One Page Project Plan outlining the key tasks for your team over the next 6 months after this course is over and post to blog - Due November 6th!


• Look over powerpoint slides and review what needs to be done for this assignment


• Mock up website - Due November 6th!

Weekly Scrum

What did we do last week?

• Post meeting minutes from Advisory Board meeting on Thursday, Oct 20th
• Spoke with Evan about the blog
• Started on floor plans

What are we planning to do this week?

• Make agenda for next Advisory Board meeting and send it out
• Refine the prototype - sketch out a floor plan
• Develop product line mock up
• Refine the blog with more detail - update the sections
• Start on actual website for His Man Friday for the 'world' to see
• Everyone needs to make post, comments, and comments on other blogs
• Try to schedule a meeting to get together and work on prototype, website, and products
• Complete any assignments that are required

What problems or issues may we encounter?

• Timing issues, people missing class

A Couple More Offerings

I was doing some research about what men search most often, which products they want, and what they seek advice on. This has inspired 2 more ideas!

1. Hair rejuvenation! I think that could be a huge product/service for His Man Friday!

2. Hair removal! I found that men often seek advice on how to remove unwanted body hair. We could look into offering some great products to solve this problem.

Opportunity Cost

I have been thinking about Grant's opportunity cost comment. He mentioned that if we are going to offer grooming services, we should be careful how much floor space it will take up because it will bring in less revenue than our product sales. We talked about it, and we decided that we would like to have some space dedicated to service so that our customers are able to see/experience some of our products first hand. We have to work out the highest earning ratio of service:product sq ft. 90% product sales, 10% service? 75% product, 25% service?

Example:

If we had 40sq ft to work with, lets see how much service could bring in, and how much product could bring in:

I estimate that we could fit one barber chair in 40sq ft, which could make $25/hr. In a 12hr day at the mall, that's $300. $300/40sq ft = $7.50/sq ft.

On the other hand, if we had 40sq ft of product, we could carry thousands of dollars of product on multiple shelves. I estimate that we could sell $1000/day. That's $25/sq ft daily!

Therefore, if we had a 400sq ft store, and did 90% product and 10% service, we could bring in $9000 in product sales and $300 in service, daily. That's $9300 total.

If we split it 75% and 10%, we could bring in $7500 in product sales, and $750 in service sales, daily. That's $8250 total.

With that said, I believe it is necessary to offer our services, but we should keep it small so that we can capitalize on the high $/sq ft of product sales.

Mock Up

Hey team,

I'm starting to make a mock up page of some of the products that we're going to offer within our store. Once it's done I'll post it on here and we can also use it for our website when we have that up and running. As for our logo, I'm thinking we have to stick to a concept that Evan talked about in class - Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS). We all loved the crest idea that Jared came up with, and still do, but I think the logo may be too detailed if we're trying make it small and put it on a bottle for example. To stay along the same lines as our theme I'm wondering if we could go with an anchor? Let me know what you think so I can get going on this product mock up. Leave a comment!

The meeting minutes are now posted. Please go over them and add anything that you think I may have forgotten. Today was a great meeting; we covered a lot of different issues and got some great feedback from our advisors - great work today team! Lets keep it up and start on that prototype!

Meeting Room

Advisory Board Meeting will be held in the Sinclair Boardroom on the second floor of the Bissett Building at 9:30am tomorrow morning - Oct 20th

Weekly Scrum

What did we do last week?

• Started on a prototype
• Changed the name to His Man Friday and changed the blog URL to match
• Did the MVP
• Gained potential member for our Advisory Board - Cara Wolf
• Sent out meeting agenda

What are we planning to do this week?

• Advisory Board Meeting - Thursday, October 20th and post minutes
• Sit down with Evan and discuss blog
• Refine the prototype
• Look into redesigning the blog template - more like a website than a blog
• Plan to build a simple website for the 'world' to see

What problems or issues may we encounter?

• Figuring out what our prototype will look like since we are a store based business

Floor Plan in the Works

Hey team,

I have gotten started planning some ideas for the floor plan of His Man Friday and I would love input as to how we want it to look. Some of the biggest things that we need to figure out are:

1. Arrangement of the floor plan - how we want everything laid out in terms of seating,"grooming" area (for haircuts, shaving, etc), lounge area (should we choose to have one), and so one

2. Design scheme - what is the tone that we want to set in the venue? What colour schemes and textiles will aid us in achieving the desired atmosphere? Lighting will also play a big part in this.

3. Location - where do we want to set up shop? We need to come to a definitive conclusion as to whether we are going to aim at procuring a location downtown, or if we are going to target a mall setting for His Man Friday

Something that may be worthwhile to keep in mind while brainstorming is how we hope to affect the five senses: how do we want His Man Friday to have an impact in terms of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell? (Perhaps not taste - unless we want to serve food/beverages)

I am also starting to dabble with some of the online modelling tools that Evan mentioned in class to get a feel for how they work for when we go to make a legitimate mock up of our establishment.

Love the new look!

I have read your latest blog for your new venture idea and love the new look! I just wanted to let someone know that the executive summary needs to have the old name (Kosmenika) revised to read (His Man Friday) in order to match all the other name changes in your document. I think it's a wonderful work in progress!

Cheers,
Monica Dowhaniuk

Take Aways From Group Meeting - Oct 13

• Name change from Kozmenika to His Man Friday as well as our URL
• Send out an email to the class notifying them of this change - Lane
• Due to the new name we should try and find a logo or picture that we could use for our product and brand identity - the 'crest' that was discussed
• Complete the Minimum Viable Product – Due Sunday Oct 16 at midnight
• 700 words
• Define it’s feature set
• The MVP prototype approach taken (Mock-Up Demo) and rational of why we decided to do this
• The hypothesis that the MVP feature set is based on and the validation tests to confirm the hypothesis
• Read pdf document to fully understand MVP
• Revise the Demand Creation Plan - Lane is on the ball and already posted
• Develop a prototype - store front, floor plans, rational behind the logic of the prototype
• Why did we choose the lay out that we did?
• Why did we choose the colors or materials?
• Perhaps explain why we chose the location we did
• We are going to go ahead with the advisory meeting on Thursday, October 20^th during class time, as well as an extra half an hour for time to meet with Grant
• An agenda for this meeting should be created and sent to the Advisors - Madeline

House Keeping - READ ME

Hello group,

Please look at the revised sections on the right hand side, and make comments or edit anything that you feel needs to be changed. The Demand Creation Plan also needs to be completed.

Since two of you missed class today, I thought I would catch you up on what is happening for the next couple classes. Evan is now back and says that we should be blogging regularly. There is also no scheduled class for this Thursday, October 13th but we will be meeting to discuss what our plan of attack should be - please meet in the Bissett Atrium on the main floor. We are also required to attend the Sweatbox Challenge Night this Thursday at 6pm on the second floor of the Bissett building - we are supposed to get 2 relevant LinkedIn contacts each that we could use for our venture.

We need to make an agenda for our next Advisory Board meeting as well as decide on a time to hold the meeting that will generally work for everyone. Please have a look at the latest PowerPoint that is on the Topic Schedule - that is what we went through during class. We should now be looking at the MVP, which is due on Sunday, October 16th.

We should also get started on our prototype ASAP.

Suggestion Toss

It was so great to meet all of your group this morning and get a feel for your passion and excitement with your proposed adventure. After reviewing your business canvas for the company "Kosmenica", I would offer the idea of including "Marketing and Advertising" to the category of Costs. I believe that this will not only be an on going expense, but a crucial one to reach your target audience.

Stay Passionate!