Mission statement

Mission Statement
We at Filtra recognize the importance of drinking water, so why should you have to harm the environment or your body to consume this life necessity? Filtra provides an inexpensive alternative of drinking water on the go that does not harm the environment and is not detrimental to your health.

4th Presentation

Getting ready for our final presentation there were a bunch of things that we needed to do that will be shown in our pres today.

1) Economic Logic- Our economic logic was flawed last time. We did not really have good numbers and we also claimed we were going to outsource to China which completely negates the environmentalist factor. We plan on selling our bottle for $20. This includes 1 filter. The filter, which has between 180 and 260 refills will cost about $10-$15. We will make our profit from the filters and sell our bottles at cost.

2) Milestones- We have created a series of milestones that we would like to reach. Our first milestone is reaching the Skidmore Campus. We have a running list of students and faculty that would be willing to buy our product if it were $20 or less. Our second milestone would be then reaching out to the rest of Saratoga Springs and lastly to upstate NY. We think this is feasible because the three of us are around this area for the next seven months and the water here is not very sanitary, so we have a good market potential.

Final Stages

In order to get ready for next week, we have a long way to go.  We need to figure out the financial data and we need to solidify orders for the product.  Our survey shows that 71% of the people at Skidmore would buy this product, the next step is getting those order forms.  Over break I spoke with a a SIGG rep. who gave me more information on the stainless steal shell.  Something else that came to my attention, is Nalgene is making a BPA free plastic water bottle.  They are selling these.  Why would someone who has been drinking BPA contaminated water for so long, trust Nalgene again?  I think it is our job to capitalize on this new market.  There is an opportunity here that we can take advantage of.

Research

I sat down with my mother, a two time entrepreneur, both in design companies, over the weekend to discuss Filtra and she gave me some really good advice.

At first she did not think that there would be a market for these portable filter water bottles because there aren't that many places with bad tasting water. I explained to her, however, that water everywhere is not clean. A lot of it has some problems including sediment from rusty pipes or chlorine from the filtration process. Even living in NYC with very good water, there are still opportunities to get fresher water on the go. She did, however, understand why people would want to substitute water bottles for Filtra. She spends a lot of money on water bottles daily and would like a substitute for that.

She also looked at our design and didn't think there was any difference between that and what else is out there. I did, however, explain to her that it comes to marketing and she completely agreed that that is what is important for an industry like this. She said that differentiation is key when it comes to water bottles and people need to feel cool holding it. She did say though that she was not sure whether our design is feasible to design cheaply if we want rubber handles and a screw top but she encouraged us to keep looking for companies that will make them.