PJM Needs Assessment Integration

Urban Bicycle GoToMarket Project PJM 6910 – Spring 2020

Capstone Project Background Sponsor – Gavin Brauer

Faculty – Tim Mills, Rose Marota, Mimi Wan

Location / Time Zone To assist students in setting up the Student/Sponsor kick-off meeting once the term starts, identify the Sponsor’s preferred meeting times. Sponsor Gavin is in the eastern time zone. All faculty are in the eastern time zone.

Organizational description / background for project: Go to Market Plan for Urban Bicycle Description: A high-performance bike company is launching a new specialty bike and is seeking a go to market project plan for launching the newest bike, "The Don". This bike is an aluminum commuter/gravel bike targeting people living and working in urban locations. Prior to launching The Don, all of the bikes were targeting "cycling enthusiasts" willing to spend CA$3,500+ on a bike. The Don bike is targeted to people interested in cycling for transportation and leisure/fitness. Priced at CA$2,399, The Don will likely be the first performance bike for these target customers. These customers do not typically visit traditional bike shops and big bike brands are less appealing to these customers. Going after this market requires innovation in distribution channels and marketing tactics. The deliverable is a go to market project plan that enables the company to sell as close to 200 bikes as possible by December 31, 2020. This go to market plan needs to be one that can be implemented with the organization’s constraints of limited capital for marketing spend and upfront inventory. A successful go to market plan will require creative solutions and resourcefulness from students who are encouraged to think outside the box. Website: https://www.kindhuman.cc/us/ Goal: The goal is to sell 50 The Don bikes during 2020. The stretch goal is to sell 200 bikes during 2020. This project will support the company by navigating a new marketing campaign for their newest specialty bike.

Problem(s) to be solved by the project: The assumption driving this project is that there are folks who want to get into cycling and they have not bought a good bike ($2000 CA) to support this. The problem to be solved for is to meet target or stretch goals sales by the end of 2020.

What is the objective of the project? The Don is part of Kindhuman’s strategy to go after a new market with a lower cost (low margin) product. Revenue goals will be met through volume sales. The challenge is to solve for how to achieve this high volume. The objective is to sell 200 bikes by 12/31/2020 (stretch goals) or 50 bikes by 12/31/2020 ( The objective of this project is to create a marketing plan to meet 2020 sales goals . There are four potential ways to accomplish this as noted in scope below. What is the scope of work that should be reflected in this project? The scope of the work is a marketing plan – that, when implemented, will support Kindhuman in reaching their sales goals. In addition to its website presence, four other projects have been identified for achieving this goal. Your team will focus on ONE of these projects.

1) Linked in – social media is a key element for Kindhuman’s marketing. In considering different social media, LinkedIn is the social media that we have been asked to explore. The scope of this project is to create a plan to market and sell The Don via Linkedin.

2) Direct outreach strategy – this project considers how to leverage work that Gavin has been doing. He has been working with wellness programs within companies to include cycling as well as other wellness strategies (Gavin is a Tiny Habit certified coach and also works to promote hydration). The scope of this project is to create a project to identify companies to conduct outreach with, create a proposal for, secure, design and implement outreach programs (based on the company need).

3) Brand Collaboration – how to best place The Don with collaborative retailers. Through networking, Gavin has been able to connect with Root (their iconic brand is their sweatpants); their ideologies are similar and Root wants to be able to show a lifestyle where their clothes can be used. They are beginning conversations with Patagonia. This project is to identify potential brand collaborators, secure the relationship and design a placement strategy for The Don with that product.

4) Place – the current store is in the wrong location to attract millennials and the resourcing does not support multiple locations – this project is to solve for how to get the bike to where the target customer lives, works and shops.

To provide context for students to build on, what work has been done on this project to date? What other information may be relevant. The Don is part of Kindhuman’s strategy to go after a new market with a lower cost (low margin) product. Revenue goals will be met through volume sales. The challenge is to solve for how to achieve this high volume. Persona work has been completed to inform this work. The persona of higher end bikes is a 45 year old, whose children can stay at home along and are advanced in their career so that they can afford a $5k CA bike. The target persona for The Don is a millennial who wants to commute to work/ ride in the city. This persona has been working 2 plus years, is making a reasonable living, is living in the city and does not have a car. They prefer not to take public transportation (but, Kindhuman realizes that though public transit is their primary competition, they do not want to compete with it). There are two ways to sell bikes – one is by sponsoring a world tour team – however, this would cost millions of dollars. The other is personal referrals through trusted sources, used in this case. In analyzing sales, the number one source of new bike owners are personal, work based referrals from current bike owners – people that work at the same company. The geographic target market is Toronto and the Northeast USA (Boston, NYC, other Northeast cities). Longer term the plan is to expand to Australia, which is also a country of cyclists. In your work, consider how other similar products are marketed – for example, Peloton sells a low quality spin bike – packaged with the lifestyle that its target market desires (house, relationship, good job) and is done through e-commerce with retail shops in locations where people show. Insights about marketing shared by the sponsor: Bikes need to be positioned to be appealing. Bike shops can be intimidating to buyers if they do not identify as a “cyclist”. The vast majority of current customers did not ride the bike before they bought it – it is not about trying the bike, but trusting the bike. Important to bike owners is for their friends to say “Wow! Great bike!” – if the brand is not familiar, it is important for the bike owner to be proud – through quality, cost and other cool features. The Don’s cache is that it is a custom painted bike and the name of the company (also on the bike) - Kindhuman – appeals to Millennials. It is important to work through the resistance mindset to cycling – potential customers have to overcome their fear of being hit by a car. Then, to target people who will ride - on a sunny day. And, once they will ride on a sunny day, can that extend to being comfortable with other weather and traffic conditions? The goal for this plan is to focus on those who will ride “on a sunny day”.

Additional information from Sponsor Gavin:

• I uses 2 landing pages for our wellness programming depending on how I want to approach the target organization...

o Cycling specific : https://www.kindhuman.cc/tiny-habits o Hydration focused : https://www.kindhuman.cc/hydration o This is an example of my hydration presentation

: https://www.tinyhabits.com/hydration-and-why-it-matters • Here is our referral program : https://www.kindhuman.cc/referral • We're in the process of launching the KindHuman Cycling Show

: https://www.kindhuman.cc/show • Brand collaborations

o This is the launch with Roots : https://www.kindhuman.cc/roots o Use above link to enter to win a bike!!!! o We are also working on a Roots Edition version of this bike. It's on hold until after

Covid-19.