The Ideal….
The Reality…
Report of Planning: Tuesday, November 28th
Well, with the concept in hand, Tuesday morning began with a trip to the Provo Towne Centre mall, where I learned that there was an available kiosk, but it came with a hefty price tag.
(You do not want to guess how much!! Let’s just say it was slightly more than $100.)
On one hand, that seemed like a complete shut-down to the mall idea. How can you come up with thousands of dollars when your budget is only $100, not to mention, who as a student has thousands of dollars sitting around?
But on the other hand… principle 3 of our experiment says that “Money is the last thing needed to start a business”, and principle 9 says “Get around obstacles.” So with that tucked away, off I went to an appointment at University Mall in Orem.
At this point, my idealistic notion that a mall would just… I don’t know… “donate” some space to us, at the busiest, most profitable month of the retail year… was becoming less idealistic, and more “what is plan B? plan C? plan D?”
I had a great discussion with the management at University Mall, but discovered that there were no empty spaces, and they’d been booked for months. So, back to the drawing board.
At 2 p.m., Rachelle and I met with a mentor from BYU’s Center for Entrepreneurship. Two key things he said were:
1. Don’t think about if it will work or not– just do it.
2. A good business has three things: Sales, Finances, and Product. Make them work together, or you’ll bomb.
At this point, I had come up with a plan– we had 5 products in mind, why not see if any of their owners would split the cost of the kiosk? For 1/5 of the normal lease, they could get their products into a mall at the busiest month of the year.
One of things I’d done over the weekend was to compile a list of the people I know, and what businesses they’re involved with, and how they could be included in our plan. As we got started, it was amazing how principle 1, networking, is seriously underestimated in its value at growing a project.
The good news was that by Tuesday afternoon, we’d developed agreements with 2 vendors to feature their products in our business– books & other miscellaneous, nuts & gift trays, and had leads to at least 5 more vendors.
But, when we approached vendors, the sponsorship idea was a no-go. So the roadblock continued, for a little while! 
By the end of Tuesday, we were gradually gaining a more solid concept– that we would assemble holiday-type gifts (whatever we could find), and then offer the Santa delivery service as a fun extra. The only things left to get were: a Santa suit, more vendors & products, the cost of the kiosk lease, not to mention business licensing, bank info, etc.
Yikes. On to Wednesday!
