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namanmehrotra-blog-blog · 9 years

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Haley Trikes - Notes

General

Not ready for big orders.

Competition average is $4000 (such as European trikes)

He is relatively famous in Philly – people call/visit him

His organic market that already exists can be leveraged as an advantage.

Loves welding and following customers on social media THE MOST.

His biggest bottlenecks: 1) underestimating how long things will take (especially sanding) and 2) he needs more people (currently he only has volunteers working for him occasionally and only Sarah knows everything about the business).

Library trikes are 50% of their business and they make 30 trikes a year.

Custromers

Half of his customers are libraries. It is a growing market where “no one competes against him and he dominates the marker.” He gets anonymous emails from librarians.

Many of his customers are using his trikes to start their business.

Customers know all that they want.

Food trikes have to abide by the local food truck/trike rules so he talks to his customers to make sure if they are doing that.

The 1st library trike was in Chicago and then it snowballed into Tuscan and other places.

He wants to give his customers a choice to be able to customize online or by calling him. He likes having a more personal interaction with his customers.

Marketing/Branding

Does no marketing at all.

Does not have any branding on his trikes.

Details for how to use his trikes were embedded within his videos on website and are hard to find.

He needs to brand himself.

Branding of his trikes is through the curved design on the side of each of his trikes.

He gets most of his customers through word of mouth.

Article in American Library Magazine.

Having an article in Spokes magazine.

He doesn’t have a budget but wants to advertise to musicians if he had one.

Product, Design, and Process

Painting is in the same place dust.

His website needs to be improved.

Makes both customized and standard trikes (for example, library trikes are all the same).

Makes the whole frame by welding it together.

Working on 4-5 trikes at the same time is just enough to be efficient but going more is too much. Especially grinding after the 4th trike is difficult and spoils most of Stephen’s day.

He gets most of the idea of what to make from his customers. (eg. Waffle trikes)

There is one room for welding and spray painting.

Assembly of boxes and cuts them using table saw.

Spray painting of metals happens in the special room while spray painting of the wood panels happens outside.

His designs are simple so he can adapt to the different sizes.

He spends a lot of time looking for things because he isn’t great at organizing.

Let’s people work on what they want to work on. Doesn’t pay too much attention to what they are doing and is often happy with the results.

Sourcing/Shipment

Doesn't order stuff in bulk. Buys bikes at very expensive retail price.

He makes the packaging look terrible so they can treat them carefully.

He ships using trucking companies or Amtrak (they are cheap but he can’t track where the package is).

He can’t get his parts from Taiwan because although it is cheaper there, he doesn’t have enough scale yet for it to be cheap.

Their supplier is a large steel supplier.

Accounting/Back Office

Can't track his shipment orders. Paying for his shipment.

No real tracking of supplies, inventory, or logistics.

No tracking of how much money he makes, when the money is made.

Sales/Finances

Getting money is another problem because startups raising through Kickstarter pay him 50% in the beginning but they underestimate their other costs, so many times they are unable to pay the whole cost many times. He has not proper procedure for that.

People give half of the price upfront and are supposed to pay the rest of it at the end but cannot sometimes because they underestimate their other costs.

Gets all of his payments either in checks or Paypal.

Places he stores information

All of his designs were in his mind or blackboard.

Didn't have a repository or blueprints of what he has done in the past.

No tracking of change in the process so his assistants have no idea when he ends up changing something. They go with the old process and find out later that he has changed the design.

All information on the design and business is in his head, so if something happens to him, noone can take over his business.

Does not formally track marketing and where customers or publicity come from.

There is a chalkboard painted wall where he puts all his ideas and thoughts.

#finalproject #haleytrikes

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