| Summary: | 碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 國際創業與經營管理學程碩士在職專班 === 98 === It’s a rainy afternoon in San Francisco, contrary to what the weather report said
this morning, and you don’t have your umbrella. When you got off work you wanted
to get your haircut across town but you’re going to have to drive there, and doing so
means spending time looking for parking; parking far away from the shop means
you’re going to get wet, possibly soaked depending on how far you’re going to have
to walk. So you decide not to go today. In a perfect world, your barber would have
free valet parking. In the world of this business plan, it won’t be free, but at least it
will be an option.
Picture yourself in another situation. You’re a parent of young kids, a well-paid
manager or assistant manager at a restaurant, and a proud owner of a modest but well
furnished San Francisco flat in the Richmond district. Unfortunately you don’t have
the privilege of owning a garage and that’s a big problem because when you get home
at night getting a spot for your car is up to the parking god and you might spend 20
minutes searching. In a perfect world, your rent would include a garage. In this world,
you could share a professional one.
In my dreams, I come home from work and pull my car right up to my home, and
wait briefly for an angel in white to hover along on her bicycle and take my car to its
nightly bed. She is a deliValet angel, and she is the saving grace of city parking.
Many densely populated urban centers such as downtown San Francisco face a
major shortage of street parking. As city streets become more congested with cars,
city planners and civil engineers are looking for ways to encourage the use of public
transportation through infrastructure improvement projects such as dedicated bus or
tram lanes. Street parking is quickly fading as a priority for municipal governments.
Relocating these spaces to garages would be cumbersome to street side businesses
that rely on quick customer turnover such as restaurants, and our service could
provide the solution.
Our service is the Pizza Hut of parking. It is valet parking, delivered. It is
delivered not by motor vehicle, but by bicycle: the most efficient, low cost form of
eco-friendly transportation ever devised by humanity. This is how it will work: the
customer calls in a request, a central server processes the request, the request is sent to
a valet cyclist who travels to the customer within the shortest time possible, folds his
bike into the vehicle, and takes the vehicle to a nearby lot. When the customer
requests his vehicle to return, the valet cyclist delivers the vehicle as soon as possible
to wherever the customer requests it and returns to the street on his bicycle to await
another request.
Marketing this service effectively will involve a combination of timing, creating
a viral message, and following up with delivering a quality service that demands to be
mentioned in casual conversation. Initially, marketing will involve recruiting
customers to participate in a test of the service. We will advertise by method of
Internet via Craigslist.org and paper flyers on car windshields. Advertising will be
clean, simple, and self-explanatory. The service should speak for itself. The assumed
message should be simply: "We park cars with bikes."
Our customers are people who drive cars in densely populated areas with a
shortage of street parking and inconveniently placed parking lots. Drivers whose time
is too valuable to be taken up by petty nuisances like finding a convenient place to
park.
Competitors in the valet parking industry in San Francisco are typically small,
simple organizations that are unique to each parking lot. A firm that owns a lot will
have will often contract a valet service to compliment it. Larger parking lot
management companies own multiple lots and coordinate valets to utilize those lots
when one becomes overcrowded. In every case large or small, the strengths of
competitors are that they have established systems, contracts with lot owners, and
agreements with large customers. The most obvious weakness of competitors in
comparison to this firm is that the customer has to drive to the valet. To coordinate the
proposed service effectively, a firm would require a robust software system to handle
the logistics of customer requests and valet tracking. It would require small, cash
strapped competitors to make a substantial investment, and large competitors to
undertake the risks of diversification.
Our service will sell because it provides customers with a convenience that
they've never had before, a garage without having a garage, a way to care for their car
without caring, and best of all, a time saving solution to one of the most aggravating
commuter problems of the last 25 years. A tiered monthly pricing scheme should
prove effective. Under this scheme, low-demand users would pay $99, medium - $199,
high - $299, and unlimited - $399 with allotments of 10, 20, 31, and unlimited uses
respectively. Additionally, non-members will be charged $14.99 per use plus garage
time and businesses utilizing the service will be charged a usage fee to maintain
exclusive valets.
The marketing philosophy of our firm will revolve around three simple
concepts: convenience, quality of service, and reliability. Marketing our product as a
"green garage" of sorts lends itself to being accepted by many San Francisco residents
and city officials who take an active role in reducing their impact on the environment.
Our firm not only works to minimize needless pollution from the search for parking
but it also runs on the manpower of our valet cyclists. Our firm will create a number
of employment opportunities for local San Francisco residents and there is no sign of
off shoring in site for these jobs. Secondarily, as we develop service partners, those
firms will also need to hire for the added clientele that our service will bring them.
The first step in determining the structure of the enterprise is to design a test of
the service that will ideally be conducted within a twelve-month period in San
Francisco’s Richmond district at a cost of $10,000 to the shareholder(s). The test will
involve parking cars for customers on the weekends of three consecutive months
(May-July) with an estimated 490 customers per month. These customers will pay a
price of $15 for the service plus one hour of garage time at $5. This revenue model
may be changed after the test market depending on real expenses and the feasibility of
a monthly membership system. A membership model may also be used in addition to
the pay per park model.
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