Whether you're at Dunkin Donuts or some cafe, you can (if you're like me) always conduct an informal focus group and glean some excellent marketing insight. I particularly like Dunkin Donuts because the people tend to be more open than the Starbucks crowd and, besides, let's be frank, Starbucks coffee tastes like burnt ashes--it literally makes me sick. In my most recent early morning foray into meeting stangers--this time with a group of mothers with young children--I overhead a great conversation about their desire to eventually start a new venture together once their children get a bit older. In looking at the current market situation, they correctly noted all the stores that had closed or were closing, and expressed concerns over becoming too overextended in this tettering economy, and expressed hesitancy in terms of committing to any serious fixed asset commitment, such as a lease commitment, etc. Being the impertinent child that I am, I began speaking with them and going over the current commercial real estate crisis and how, incidentally, it just might work in their favor, should they opt to rent a space for their still ill-defined idea. To the three of them, I asked a simple question: What do you like and what do you know? One of them expressed the fact that they all had different interests and skill sets (which could turn out to be a positive, since you don't want too many redundancies in any startup). The one constant that they mentioned was "our babies," so I suggested that they look for a niche in this area and conduct, as I was doing, informal focus groups with moms in similar situations. I gave them, besides my site, three good Websites to start their journey: ladieswholaunch.com, startupnation.com, and cafemom.com, which is a great online community to connect with other women to just poke around and see if any discernible patterns (of serious needs or wants) pop up. I also told them to avoid patents, if possible, due to their inherent cost and the associated difficulty in protecting them (thank you, China), and also to keep secret their company name. Once settled on, the company name should be trademarked, and this can be accomplished at a decent cost either through legalzoom.com or via a nice local attorney, a friend of a friend, preferrably. The latter is preferrable due to the follow-up correspondence that normally flows from the government's examining attorney, which a normal local attorney should be able to handle with ease. I also told them, once they like a name, to do an initial search at uspto.gov, and just use the "Basic Search" feature under the Trademark tab (TESS database); this will give them an initial idea to see if the name is already in use in a similar or exact category, such as they are planning. Each product--from t-shirts to mugs to books--has a separate trademark designation number...and each separate designation will cost you a little over $300 just to file with the government. If you use a high-priced attorney, all of this will add up quickly...so all entrepreneurs should learn as much about copyright and trademark law as possible. |
