Instituto Tecnolgico de Estudios Superiores de

Monterrey
Campus Ciudad de Mxico
Social Entrepreneurship
Bloom Box

Laura Azul Lpez

A01210916

Adriana Gonzlez Nieto

A01210940

Manuel Guerrero Nava

A01332399

November, 2015

Index
Executive Summary............................................................................................ 3
Introduction......................................................................................................... 3
Antecedents..................................................................................................... 3
Objectives of the Project..................................................................................... 5
Project Description.............................................................................................. 5
Methodology....................................................................................................... 6
Results................................................................................................................ 7
Continuity of the Project...................................................................................... 7
Conclusions......................................................................................................... 7
References.......................................................................................................... 7

Executive Summary
Introduction
Bloom Box is a project that focuses on natural and organic products with the main purpose
of offering customers a healthy and high quality alternative of snacks. Our final objective is
to incentivize the customers that want to change their eating habits to do it in a delicious
way, we also want to focus on the customers that are already in the healthy journey in
order to offer them a high variety of products with great quality and flavors.
One of our goals is to have social impact with our project, how will we achieve this? We
will help a family of the community Santa Cruz Acalpixca by offering tutorials on how to
create their own dehydrated fruits and vegetables and also marketing positioning and
product image, in order for them to be able to sell them by their own and for them to
become our suppliers, in this way they will get profits and be sustainable. By doing this will
also beneficiate our company because we will be able to buy the products directly with the
producers which means the costs will be lower.

Antecedents
For Bloom Box is very important to understand some of the different situations that are
related with healthy habits in alimentation.
Over 58 million Mexicans live below the poverty line, and the government has defined 11.7
million as living in extreme poverty and deprivation (The Hunger Project, 2014). Mexico
has 63 different social programs. The most representative are for example AGROIN,
FOMENTO A LA AGRICULTURA, AGROINCENTIVOS which are from SAGARPA;
SEGURO POPULAR by the health department; PRONAFIM, PROGRAMA NACIONAL
DE FOMENTO AL MICROEMPRESARIO that are held by the economy department;

PROGRAMA DE COMEDORES COMUNITARIOS by the social development

department; INEA, ATENCIN A LA DEMANDA DE EDUCACIN PARA ADULTOS
this is in charge of the public education department; BRIGADA CONTRA EL HAMBRE
that supports people in extreme poverty to have daily food. This and many others are
social programs are created by the different government dependencies and seem to have
an important impact according to them. (Mexican Economic Department, MED, 2015)
Mexico exports around 85-90 % of organic productions that is why Mexican producers are
in the top 20 of organic farmers and producers. (SRE, 2015).
On the other hand as it was predicted by the study of Organic Consumer Trends
elaborated by Food Association in Mexico in 2015 and explained that people who will
prefer organic and natural products will increase 10% each year. On 2014 by different
marketing campaigns organic products were introduced and had an acceptance of 77% of
national market; moreover organic and natural products that are in supermarket and
specialized stores increased their sales in 20% and 10% (FAM, 2015).
Prices of organic products may vary, some can be accessible but others very high; this
depends on the location of the store, certification and product origin. For example, one
organic banana in Mexico can cost $9.32 MXN, and in other point of the city can cost more
than $17.50 MXN (SAGARPA, 2015)
Besides accessibility to Internet in Mxico incremented to 512%, it means 53.9 millions of
Mexicans have access to Internet by smartphones, laptops and mobile devices (Ampici,
2015). Mexicans with Internet used to check mail 97%, send e-mails 83%, chats 82%, and
social media 79% and buy in e-commerce 63% (Mexican Trade Association, MTA, 2014).
Healthier alternatives in the country are like more gyms close to office and home, new laws
that ban or restrict the amount of sugar and carbohydrates, more specialize store like
organic or nutritional healthcare, where can get products with low caloric intake
(International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association (IHRSA, 2015)
According to INEGI, in Mexico there are nutritionists 2.4 per thousand inhabitants and
related with eating disorders its a low number. According Abelardo Avila Curiel, a
researcher at the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition Salvador Zubiran,
the problem is that most of the professionals in power are not in the place where his work
is more useful, for example, public health institutions, but who they are in hospitals or
private pharmacies or engaged in promoting medicinal products or diets sponsored by
their employers.
Despite Mexican population has different sources of information about nutritional and
exercise requirements (hospitals: seguro popular, tv and radio spots), the knowledge that
is assimilated in the population is less than 1.73% so their healthy habits are not properly
balanced, first because nutritionist dont adequate properly economic and time budget for
each family for alimentation (Mexican health department, MHD, 2015)
Package and delivery companies are increasing because the demand and supply of
services and products at home, this means that the Mexican market gains more
confidence in home delivery; besides the offer is better in logistics and more efficient to get
something at a convenient place the customer decides. Currently DHL is the company that

is betting much to the Mexican market as it acquires new trends in e-commerce. (MTA,
2015)
Mexico holds a sedentary lifestyle, mainly because there is no habit of exercising and
staying active in our culture. This feature is much more present in urban areas of the
country, such as the City of Mexico, where no use at all times of the car or public transport
and an accelerated pace of life is promoted, no time to devote to exercise care or food.

Objectives of the Project

General:
We offer a healthy alternative to a rising choice of products, with a slight organic twist and
through E-commerce. Which could impact positively the way people consume packed
healthy snacks and how that benefit local producers.
Specific:
Create an economic relation with people of Santa Cruz Acalpixca, Xochimilco. That will
help us to develop a value chain with Bloom box, the consumers and the producers.
In the first phase of this project we intend to help the local producers of Santa Cruz
Acalpixca to learn and create dehydrated snacks in an effective production scheme but
without forgetting their natural and organic characteristics. Through interactive workshops
and with the philosophy of bloom box.
Work with the community even more offering classes of business skills, with a fair price, in
order to make them a sustainable micro enterprise and also encourage them to become
bloom box producers.
Make audiovisual content, such as documentaries and short videos regarding the life and
work of the local producers, that will be available in the web page with the intention of
make the consumer aware of the impact that theyll be creating with every purchase in
bloom box.

Project Description
Bloom box is perhaps only a service that will provide goods in a web platform, but Bloom
box is not only about that and we know it. The main propose for this project is to deliver
knowledge and to promote healthier lifestyle. Everything through this key notion: When
you help communities to bloom you, get so much more in return. In bloom box well be
trying to achieve a closer relationship between the producers and the people who are
interested in buying organic and healthier snacks and also are willing to pay the fair
amount of money for them, and in an E-commerce mainframe. We intend to do this by
helping the communities with knowledge regarding the production of specific goods, such
as dehydrated snacks and helping them with tutorships in marketing skills. And latter offer
them the possibility to become producers for Bloom box so they can have a steady and
well payed income for their families. Further on Bloom Box will supply the branding, selling

and distribution (possibly by third party distribution) of this dehydrated products creating a
close relationship between all parts involved.
With a closer relationship, we can ultimately achieve the customer loyalty and better
economic opportunities for the producers. Since agronomy has always been a little
undeveloped. For people that live from that kind of trade it has been always difficult to sell
their products and obtain a fair remuneration for the work they put in the soil.
Many traditional trades, particularly the traditional candy trade, had recently been less and
less successful. Perhaps the grand snack producers, such as Sabritas, Barcel, Marinela,
etc. are completely taking the market, since it is easier and cheaper to acquire such
products.
Thats why bloom box has determined that there is a clear opportunity for us to justify our
enterprise, providing the know-how to the producers that we identify to be in trouble selling
their products. Bloom boxs ultimate goal to achieve is to provide quality and health in their
products that well be offering to the consumer while we help communities to learn how to
become sustainable micro enterprises, and also our own well remunerated producers via
the fair trade standards.

Methodology
We found the problem to be solved through observation and also using different methods,
such as the tree of problems and solutions, we also took our personal experience from the
social entrepreneurship class.
First of all we designed a strategy based on the knowledge of the specialties that we had
as a team. We build a business model canvas and an executive document that contained
a plan for the first phase of this deployment. Also since our project consists in a web based
service we worked on the construction of a web page service that included a way to
connect our clients and the producers via e-commerce.
In order to establish a good development in this project we organized our schedules so we
could have meetings and communication via a group in whats app and skype
conferences.
For funding this project we contacted some of the possible angel investors that we had but
none of them seemed interested enough, so we proceeded to a different kind of funding.
With

the

government

we

tried

to

enter

their

program

fondeso

http://www.fondeso.df.gob.mx
But as we assessed the previous documents needed and the time in which our project
could be considered, it was a very long and complicated process and we didnt had that
much time to wait for a response.
Other alternative was the little brother of kickstarter, fondeadora and we analyzed the
basic necessities of our project. And perhaps one of the most important was the
acquisition of an industrial grade dehydration but since the time werent right we decided to
go for a homemade dehydration machine and decided that we will be using recycled
materials to make a DIY solar and ecologic dehydration machine.

The first encounter with the individuals in the community of Santa Marta Acalpixca in
Xochimilco area were to establish a basic analysis of the workplace and also the possible
families that we could be working. Regarding the facilities that the family that we visited
had, they were very well equipped for the crystallization processes because they have
been doing this for generations. They worked in a home based factory that could be
improved to become much more productive. Discussing the idea of learning new ways of
making healthy candies provoked a great interest in the family and the people that worked
there, most of them were relatives. So with this first contact the owners of the traditional
candy shop La hija de la morena agreed that some of the new ideas that we proposed
were acceptable to their current situation.
Once we could asses the current situation of the families that produced crystallized goods
we design the workshops in dehydrated goods and in marketing and business skills. For
this we created interactive courses with a very visual layout in the classic scheme of a
presentation.

Results
Continuity of the Project
In the event that the successful association between bloom box, the producers and the
customers will be meaning that in order to maintain the successfully value chain we will
have to design more training for the producers in order to accomplish their independency
and for them to expand their business horizons.
Other possible objective could be to search for more investors and try to get the
fondeadora going so the producers could have the industrial grade machinery in order to
get the production process refined.
Also we will have to be maintaining the web page and contracting a web hosting service,
getting all the services available, from distribution to branding and also packaging of the
product.
If our main and first producers succeeded and they would become independent, then we
will be trying to get them to be selling their products in the vending machines located in
Mexico City campus as a firs vending point.
Finally bloom box intend to become an e commerce platform that distributes healthy and
organic goods. The last step for this is to replicate the experience acquired during the work
in Santa Marta Acalpixca in other communities with the intention of generate new product
lines in the snack category, and the personal health department.

Conclusions
References