1. Who am I?

Nothing in this part has changed, and I didn't receive any feedback regarding who I am in the first post. So just to summarize what I said last time, I'm the type of person who enjoys continuous improvement and learning, and I have a wide variety of interests, and I would like to open a 3-D Print Cafe.

2. The Unmet Needs:

The unmet need that customers will have stems from the fact that 3D printers are still quite expensive and not very easy to use. We will solve these problems by having high-quality printers in our cafe that customers can use to print their projects, and if they need help using the machine, our staff will always be there to help and teach them to use the printers. One of the people who left a feedback on my post asked about how expensive the printers are and how that might affect how many I can have in the cafe, which would affect how many people I would be able to serve at any given time. I did some research and found that some of the most high-quality printers can be purchased for $1,000-2,000 each. I believe that if we purchased 5-10 printers for around $8-15k, we could break even on this investment in a relatively short amount of time, and we would be able to serve a good amount of customers at any given time. I don't believe this is too drastic of an investment for the printers compared to some of the business costs I have witnessed firsthand. Also, if we purchase too few printers and demand is too high, I see that as a good problem because we would just have to invest in more printers since the demand is already there. 

3. The Demographic:

The demographic will include engineering and design students who are in high school, or anyone interested in 3D printing. I focused on being located in an area that is at the epicenter of 3 colleges to attract these students. Someone who commented mentioned someone they knew using it for medical purposes and that I should consider being near a hospital as well. I did some research on Google Maps and luckily there is a Florida Hospital only 10-15 minutes away from my ideal location. I would definitely attempt to schedule a meeting with someone at the hospital to see if they would be in need of our 3D printers, and I would offer the hospital a discount, of course.

4. The Value:

We will be providing value by allowing people to enjoy using 3D printers for hobbies, work or school without having to purchase such an expensive machine. Not everyone has the money to purchase one, and some people would only need to make a project here and there, so it wouldn't make sense for them to purchase one. Therefore, I am leaning towards combining a mixture of pay-per-use and membership payment models. We will also make the cafe a learning environment where people can learn more about design, engineering, and the use of the 3D printers.

5. What Separates Us?

Just like I mentioned in the first post, I believe that the open learning environment we will create will be very valuable to the customers, especially since they will all be working on similar subjects. I think this will cause people to mingle and work together, leading to synergies of communication in which people will be able to help and motivate each other to learn more.

I think that all of these elements fit very well together and build off of one another. The fact that people can work on their projects for lower costs will attract many customers. Then once they get there, they will be exposed to many additional learning opportunities. I believe this type of environment would be perfect for the demographic I am interested in. 

These are the main points I took from the feedback:
1. I must further examine the costs of the equipment.
2. I have to determine a pricing model and see how long it will take to break even.
3. I learned that I can still look into more opportunities for other unique customers in my area.
4. I need to do some more interviews and surveys with prospective customers to determine an estimate of how many customers I can expect.
5. I need to decide if I should do a pay-per-use model, a membership model, or a combination of both.

I did some research and was able to use the feedback to find some new opportunities and make the idea for the cafe more clear in my mind than before. I looked into the costs of the equipment, the pros and cons of different pricing models, additional customer opportunities. My next step should be to survey more prospective customers to see the level of interest and use this data to estimate the number of customers we will have.