BENTO

InnovationBrendon Wilsey | Margarette Bou | Dalton Feher

Table of Contents

Executive Summary 2

Day in the Life 3 - 4

Situation Analysis 5-8

Whole Product Analysis 9

Beachhead 10

Go to Market Strategy 11

Unique Value Proposition 12

Why We Might Fail 13

Future Expansions 14

Sources 15

1

Executive Summary

When packing for an outdoor music festival it is easy to forget a camping essential. In addition,

scrambling through your bag for something can be a hassle. The problem our group wishes to

solve is to alleviate the high costs spent on purchasing camping equipment and relieve the stress

of packing for a more enjoyable outdoor adventure.

Our proposed solution for solving the problem would be offering a rental service where

consumers are able to rent a camping equipment pack. We want to focus offering this service

towards consumers attending outdoor music festivals. Our goal is creating a simple process

where people attending music festivals can easily pick up their camping pack when arriving to

the music festival. Imagine a large food truck, our vision is to have a large truck where

consumers pick up/drop off of the camping pack. To create a lean and efficient process of

estimating how many camping packs to have available, customers have the option of pre-

ordering their camping pack online. The impact of this would be a simple process for the

customer so when they show up, all they have to do is pick up their camping pack. If they forget

a camping equipment, consumers also have the option of renting whatever it is they forgot.

According to a Nielsen Music report from 2014, 32 million people in the U.S attend music

festivals. Of the 32 million, 46% are in the age range of 18-34. Millennials are a huge driving

force for attendance and the music festival industry has shown consistent growth over the past

decade. We found that a person attending a music festival travels on average 903 miles to attend

a music festival according to Nielsen Music. In addition, the amount of money an average person

spends on a music festival is high; a 3-day pass can range anywhere from $185-$450. Factoring

the costs of tickets, travel, food, the last thing someone would want to do is spend more money

on camping equipment and also travel with it. Based on the statistics and consistent growth in the

industry, there is definitely a customer need. The revenue stream from this service would come

from the rentals, damage fees, and lost/stolen equipment.

2

Day in the Life

A Day in the Life (Before)Situation Scene: Taylor, a music festival goer has finally arrived to the campsite only to realize he forgot to pack a tent. Feeling frustrated about finding a sleeping solution after traveling 190 miles, he takes a look around to see many people are also on the same boat forgetting some camping essential. Taylor feels uncomfortable sharing a tent with friends and the only solution that came to his mind is traveling to the nearest convenience store that sells tents, that’s 50 miles away!

Desired Outcome: Taylor’s thought process was that he’ll just drive to the nearest convenience store to buy a tent.

Attempted Approach: Taylor finally decides to go buy a tent and quickly learns that this was a huge mistake. Getting out of the venue was hectic with all of the people arriving. Taylor has major FOMO (fear of missing out) when driving 50 miles to go buy a tent.

Interfering Factors: When Taylor got to the nearest convenience store, he notices his tent options are low and the cheapest one was $50. Being a college student and low on funds that could be used for food and entertainment towards the music festival, Taylor experiences buyer’s remorse immediately after purchasing the tent. Finally, after a total of two hours driving there and back, it’s getting dark and getting back into the campsite became a nightmare. All Taylor could think while waiting for all of the cars to get checked in was how he wish he would’ve packed a tent.tent options, tent prices, buying a tent that is used only once or twice

Economic Consequences: Gas, money, time, and stress are all factors that influence Taylor’s economic consequences.

3

A Day in the Life (After)New Approach: Taylor finally makes it to the gorge. He has made it before his friends because they decided to pack their own equipment. Taylor heads over to the Bento booth and gets his reserved camp package. On his way back to the campsite his friends show up and start to set up next to his site. Taylor’s friends notice that he has more room in his small car for food and drink and was even able to bring his guitar and a few lawn games using the room all the camping essentials would have otherwise reserved. Taylor takes half the time setting up his campsite and has more time to relax and prepare for the festival. On the last day of the festival Taylor and his friends decide to pack up early the next morning. When morning comes along Taylor spends half the time tearing down his campsite and takes his camping package back to the bento booth. Taylor grabs a coffee for the road and by the time he gets back to his car his friends have finally finished tearing down and are ready to get back on the road.

Enabling factors: Bento makes it so you don't have to worry about packing camping essentials because they are on site when you get there. You can either rent on site or reserve a camping pack when you buy your ticket. Bento is also easy to use making set up and tear down time quick and easy.

Economic rewards: Ease of mind on the trip up as well as the ability to really focus on the main reason you are at the festival: the actual festival. Renting equipment is also cheaper so customers can enjoy lower costs to an already expensive trip.

4

Situation Analysis

SWOT

Buyer Utility Map

1. Purchase 2. Delivery 3. Use 4. Supplements 5. Maintenance 6. Disposal

Customer

Productivity

X ✓ X X

Simplicity X✓ X✓ ✓ X X X

Convenience X✓ X✓ ✓ X X X

Risk X X X

Fun and Image X✓ X ✓ X X X

Environmental

Friendliness

✓ X

Porter’s Five Forces

5

StrengthsLarge Music Festival MarketSimplicity and ConvenienceAffordable

WeaknessesTriabilityOwnershipBrand Awareness

OpportunitiesNew MarketExpand to Adjacent Markets

ThreatsSecond Mover StrategyOutdoors Geek

Competitive RivalryLOW

Threat of New Entry

MEDIUM

Buyer PowerMEDIUM

Threat of Substitution

MEDIUM

Supplier PowerHIGH

Supplier PowerHIGH - The Bento service relies on its partnerships with both camping suppliers and the Gorge venue in order to maintain a whole product solution.

Buyer PowerMED - While buyers can purchase their own equipment if they wanted to, Bento is the only rental service that caters on site so options for customers are limited.

Barriers to Entry MED - Start-up costs might give us problems but once we establish a foothold on the market then we won't find many more barriers as we are the first to service this specific market.

Threat of SubstitutesMED - As is with many services the threat of substitutes is always present. Whether it be people scalping or renting out their own equipment at festivals.

Competitive IntensityLOW - There are only a few different firms that we can look to as competitors. However, their target markets and core products differ just slightly enough from Bento that we could easily see ourselves as a first mover in this particular market.

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CompetitionOutdoors Geek: http://www.outdoorsgeek.com/Outdoors Geek is a service that allows you to rent, try, or buy camping gear. They have a physical store located in Denver, Colorado and a website where customers are able to order camping equipment. Outdoors Geek is one of our main competition however, what differentiates Bento is the different music festivals and audience we are targeting. Outdoors Geek’s pricing for camping packages at music festival ranges from $100 to $700 depending on the number of people and type of music festival. While Bento is targeting a younger demographic, we want to provide camping packages that are affordable for our target market. Although we are targeting different types of music festivals in different locations, Outdoors Geek is a potential threat because they already have established their service to specific music festivals. Bento stands out from Outdoors Geek by using second mover strategy and eliminating the services Outdoors Geek already provides for their best customers such as renting, trying, and buying. Bento being much more simplified than Outdoors Geek gives the opportunity to differentiate ourselves and build a brand.

Rent-a-Tent Canada: http://www.rent-a-tent-canada.com/Rent-a-Tent Canada is another potential competition. The company offers renting a tent that is delivered to your home. Another service provided is renting a tent and having it set up in specific camping locations in Canada. The service offers different camping packages priced at a flat fee per day. While our main focus is to target music festivals at the Gorge Amphitheatre in Washington, future opportunities would be expanding to other states and possibly other countries which is why Rent-a-Tent Canada poses as a potential threat.

Four Actions Framework

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Eliminate

OwnershipOutdoors Geek services such as rent, try, buy

Reduce

PackingQuality

Raise

ConvenienceAffordabilityEnvironmental Awareness

Create

SpontaneityExperience

Strategy Canvas

Price Convenience Quality Triability Service Ownership Simplicity Spontaneity

3

5

4

0

5

0

5 55

2

5 5

4 44 4

5

0

4

0

Bento Outdoors Geek Rent-a-Tent

Positioning StatementFor music festival attendees Who are frustrated with carrying camping equipmentBento is a camping rental serviceThat provides you with the ability of experiencing the music festival without the stress that comes with packing for the event.Unlike other camping rental servicesWe have created an affordable, simple, and convenient service that will cater to all of music festival camping needs so you can fully enjoy the festival experience.

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Whole Product AnalysisGeneric ProductWhen consumers rent our products and services, they will be receiving any of our wide variety of products ranging from tents and canopies to bare necessities such as sleeping bags and flashlights. These pieces of merchandise will be offered online for pre-orders or on site at festivals for last minute rentals. By creating this system of rentals, our goal is to create a simple process where people attending music festivals can easily and affordably pick up their camping equipment for a pleasurable and memorable experience.

Expected ProductIn order to create the best experience possible for our customers, we plan to use our pre-order system to accurately and efficiently fulfill the customer’s needs. The products that we will provide will meet quality and experience expectations. In order to meet the customer's expectations, we will be constantly listening to customer feedback and implementing new process to meet our customer expectations. Augmented ProductThis service being offered will help raise environmental awareness for festival goers by helping reduce the amount of waste being produced at the festival. Service rentals would accommodate for customers who plan on using the service to cater to their experience or for those who forget something and need it for the festival.

Developing PartnershipsIn order to be successful it would be essential to develop a partnership with the gorge amphitheater. This partnership would allow Bento to operate smoothly and efficiently on the premises. Other important businesses to partner with would be camping companies that we could purchase equipment from.

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Beachhead Below is a thought map of possible beachheads. Highlighted are additional beachheads that we can offer our service to.

The specific market we want to go after is millennials attending music festivals. Why? Because according to Nielsen Music reports from 2014, 46% of 32 million attendees are millennials; that’s 14,720,000. We also want to target millennials because we understand spending money on camping equipment can add up quick. Overall, anyone attending a music festival can value from our rental service by also not having to worry about packing a single camping equipment.

Camping traditionally calls for a lot of forward thinking and planning. If you are in the market for new camping equipment most pragmatists will look to references to see which options are the most ideal. Millennials tend to reference other millennials often because they think others in their generation may share interests and know what is good for them and what isn’t. By focusing on music festival goers we can assure adoption by building these much needed references and establishing Bento as a standard in camping rentals.

Hyper focusing to just the Gorge helps us spread the word by focusing on those music festival millennials that specifically attend gorge events like sasquatch and Paradiso. using word of mouth communication as well as partnering with the venue to promote the Bento services will be a key way to raise awareness of our product. Social media campaigns will also be key as millennials continue to spend more and more time on digital platforms.

Bento is not only for millennials as not only millennials attend music festivals. However, our initial beachhead is intended to cater to this otherwise unserved sector. Most camping services focus on comfort and quality which caters to older generations who are less tolerant to being miserable while camping. Bento caters to the millennial, focusing on price and convenience in order to make it so you can spend less time worrying about your campsite and more time

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Go to Market StrategyPlaceThe core product would be distributed at the Gorge Amphitheatre during each festival but outside the venue we will have a warehouse headquarters in a city close by like Everett or Ellensburg that Bento can use to maintain its corporate level business model. This warehouse would also be where we would hold unused inventory.

PromotionBento will be using promotional tactics to target our specific beachhead of gorge festival goers. We will work closely with both the Gorge and the festivals that use the gorge as a venue to help promote this service to festival goers. Bento will also focus on social media promotion campaigns as well as word of mouth strategies. To increase trialability, Bento will offer a one-day free trial to new customers. In addition, advertising Bento’s service exclusively through music festival sites builds brand awareness. Customer’s will also have the option of pre-ordering their camping pack before a music festival event. In order for Bento to build trust with customers, Bento can offer the incentive of a full refund and a one-day free camping package.

PriceWe conducted a short survey on Qualtrics catered towards our target market (music festival attendees ages 18-34) asking how much they would be willing to pay for a camping package. Our findings showed that people who owned camping equipment were open to renting camping equipment and people who didn’t own camping equipment were definitely interested in renting camping equipment. This data shows that there is definitely a market out there. However, the main focus of this survey was to see how much people within our target market was willing to pay for a camping package. We got a variety of responses ranging anywhere from $30/day to $100 for the whole music festival. This feedback allows Bento to see the average price a person is willing to pay and also compare that to the prices of our competition helping us with what we will set our prices at. Our goal is for Bento to be affordable especially with a younger demographic as they are more sensitive to price.

Link to Survey: https://wwu.az1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_ctDaXmr3bByj9Od

Qualtrics Survey

Crosstabs Results

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Would you be interested in renting camping equipment?  

Yes No Maybe Total

Do you have camping equipment? Yes 9 14 17 40

No 3 0 1 4

  Total 12 14 18 44

Unique Value Proposition

Bento provides an exclusive rental experience for customers by prepackaging and fulfilling whatever requirements customers need when attending a music festival. By offering a prepackaged rental service where customers can pick up their customized package, Bento is able to simplify the stress festival attendees experience while packing and attending a festival. This process allows customers to affordably rent camping equipment without spending a large amount of money to purchase it.

Bento is also unique in that it will have an onsite store where festival attendees can rent camping equipment that may have been forgotten at home or may have broken in transport. By providing this service, Bento will help festival attendees create unforgettable memories by removing unnecessary inconveniences.

Unlike other comparable services, Bento rental services values the safety and wellbeing of the community and its environment. By providing this rental service, Bento is able to responsibly reduce the amount of waste left at venues by packing in and packing out all merchandise. Not only is Bento concerned about the environment but also the community.

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All of this…

…fits into this!

You just pick up/drop-off off at music festival

Why We Might Fail

Damaged or Stolen EquipmentAnother key risk would be damaged and stolen camping equipment. The endowment effect applies by people who lose something they don’t own are less sensitive to people who own something. People are more likely to feel bad when they lose something they own as opposed to something they rent. This affects why we might fail because people might feel less bad about damaging or stealing our product which results in depreciation of product life. A solution to that would be damage fees that would cover the value of the entire pack and having the customer sign a liability form.

Second Mover StrategyOne of the risks we would face would be new competitors moving into our newly established market and using a second mover strategy. Currently no other business model uses tactics that the Bento rental services would like to apply. If new businesses began to create a similar service as ours, then the market would begin to split and this could be a reason why Bento could fail. If we are proactive and listen to our customer’s feedback, this idea could work.

Trusting a rental serviceA lot of trust is being placed on Bento to provide the right products to the right customers when they need to rent them. If any rental was accidentally forgotten and not shipped, then the customer could potentially have issues and it could ruin the experience for them. In order to create trust and succeed, Bento will have to accurately and efficiently ship and meet customer orders so that it can build a good reputation. If Bento is unable to meet the requirements of its customers and cannot build a good reputation, then this could be a reason why Bento potentially fails. As mentioned before, in order to create trust, Bento would offer incentives such as if a camping pack was forgotten or sold out, Bento will fully refund the customer’s money as well as offer a one-day free camping package.

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Future Expansions

Adjacent MarketsOnce Bento has established themselves at the Gorge as a prominent option for campers and festival goers we can work on ways to look to adjacent markets. One way to do that is to stay local and target a few other Festival venues such as Pemberton up in BC. It is important not to expand too fast as we want to maintain our whole product solution and really set a foundation at each new festival. Focusing on larger festivals is ideal to be able to use the already pricey ticket to justify an affordable renting option.  

Venue ExpansionThere would be three major stages to expansion. From the gorge we would try to stay within the Pacific Northwest. This is intended to continue targeting a specific sect of festival goers and to keep travel and overhead costs low hoping to operate solely out of the flagship headquarters. Once we establish ourselves in the Northwest we can then expand to other large music festivals around the country, Namely those down in Vegas, Palm Springs, Austin and other major music areas. And stage three would be the long term expansion to international markets. Bento has the potential to be a huge success. With such success our 5-year vision could be to be a standard in camping rentals for some of the largest music festivals such as Pemberton, Coachella, lollapalooza, ‘what the festival.’ And in 10 years we can expand into other countries and be the standard for camping rentals for the largest outdoor music festivals.

Other ServicesBento rental services will also offer unique products such as hydration packs that customers can bring into the venue to stay hydrated. By doing this, Bento rental services will be able to reduce the amount of health issues festival attendees may experience at a festival.

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Sources

Chan Kim, W., & Mauborgne, R. (2005). Blue Ocean Strategy. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Lynch, Joe. "Check Out These Surprising Stats About U.S. Music Festivals." Billboard. N.p., 22 Apr. 2015. Web. 25 July 2016. <http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/music-festivals/6539009/music-festival-statistics-graphic>.

Moore, G. A. (1991). Crossing The Chasm. Harper Business.

Outdoors Geek. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 July 2016.

Qualtrics software, Version 2016 of Qualtrics. Copyright © 2016 Qualtrics. Provo, UT, USA. http://www.qualtrics.com

Rent-a-Tent Canada. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 July 2016.

Ulloa, Nina. "32 Million People in the U.S. Attend Music Festivals - Digital Music News." Digital Music News. N.p., 14 Apr. 2015. Web. 25 July 2016. <http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2015/04/14/32-million-people-in-the-u-s-attend-music-festivals/>.

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