Assignment for Venture-lab, fall 2012 courses

1. http://re-cycle.tk

2. About us
When Venture-lab fall 2012 courses started, a group of students, marketing responsible,
entrepreneurs and engineers met together and gave birth to Milky Way team with a
revolutionary idea: recycle pollutant materials and create greener bike. We choosen the bike
market because the core of our group has a lot of experience in creating professional ride bike
yet (http://www.milkywaybikes.com/).
Following, many people appreciated the
idea, and the most proud talent from all
over the world joined to our group.
Designers, financial and students of
different countries joined to our project,
and for this we’re leading this course
until the end! 

3. The Idea
Someone needs... our help!
Bulk of people founds no alternative to an harmful lifestyle, both for themselves and the world
around them. We know that isn't that so! Imagine a new way of moving: no car insurance or
fuel needed, no pollutant parts; distnguish yourself using eco-friendly and high tech
components at the same time. If you are interested, you can learn more on our dedicated
website: http://re-cycle.tk
Sales and Distribution
Based on initial local based selling model
(here in Bologna, Italy), people can
contribute to their bike construction,
bringing broken bike part. Partnership
with the main waste management
company, like HERA, is a necessary
requirement for the re-cycle of pollutant
material

4. What people say
We defined our idea, then we asked some opinions to interested customers by many surveys.
Collecitng data from 131 customers! (Here one of our surveys) Here are our consideration:
People feel involved in green activities, and the customization causes enthusiasm and curiosity.
Nowadays, the economic background helps our point of view, because a new bike reduces fuel
consumption & pollution, and, if making this one can be greener too, it will be better.
However, bulk of them feel unsafe about recycling processes and final price. This is largely
comprensible, given that a Recycled Bike offers the same service of a classical bike. We have to
improve our engineering implant to make cheap and durable recycled bikes. Otherwise,
potential customers react well to simple and cheap local based marketing actions, just like the
one that we did.

5. Sales & Partnership
In our Idea, Sales, Partnership and Distribution channels are part of the same mechanism. Our
sales are related on Partnership: since many customers doubt about quality of our bikes, we
need extreme sport partnership (just like Red Bull or Monsters do) to show that our bikes are
green, stylish, resistant. Partnership for pollutant and recyclable materials are equally
important.
Distribution channel will initially be based on local sale: an open space for exhibition, free trial
self-constructing. This will contain costs.

6. Costs
Costs are the critical point of our project: we offer re-cycled, durable and customizable bikes,
that is possible but not simple. Since customers will pay a re-cycle bike equally or less than a
classical bike, we need to contain costs on production too.
This will be possible using existant production chain, implementing the re-cycling area, and
sharing same technology for more than two model, just like happens in automotive. With
economies of scale and experience graphs, the plant will be cheaper in following periods.

7. Revenue model
Revenue model is really simple: customers
will pay for their bike at the moment.
Alternative revenues are not excluded. For
example, we could make the customer pay
just the real cost of the bike, receiving the
rest in hours of work (i.e. constructing bikes
for people that want just the complete
product).
The other important part of the revenue
model regards green and social revenues:
we need to see if there are fiscal and
financial benefit for those revenues.

8. Risks
Our idea has risks due to affordance of bike and engineering: also if we product re-cycled bike
we are subject to same construction standards. This will make costs higher. We have to review
production costs with few engineers and create the first real prototype

9. Funding
In our researches, we found an interesting example of re-cycled bikes fundraising on kickstarter,
started just the day after our first assignment (21 November!). This shows that all is possible,
and we can reach the target!

10. Thank you 4 seeing!
If you are interested in our business, just check at http://re-cycle.tk and
fill the contact section. We believe in this idea, and we hope that, after
this presentation, you trust in it too (almost a little )
The MilkyWay Team