Coker, Brewer, Clamp, Singh 1

Ryan Coker
Cameron Brewer
Justin Clamp
Balkar Singh

Professor Park
MKT 3013
TTR 4:00PM
12/12/2016
ArmUGlad: The Limbs of the Future

Here at ArmUGlad Inc, we solve the not-yet existent problems plaguing humanity.
We strive to push the boundaries of human imagination and comprehension in order to
stay on the cutting edge of technological advancement. To start our journey, we would
like to present our titular product, ArmUGlad, to jump start our ascension to the Zenith of
manmade possibility. Our lead product is guaranteed to surpass all existing
technologies and exceed all expectations put upon it by the inferior products that came
before. Since the dawn of science fiction, man has dreamed of flying cars,
hoverboards, laser swords, laser guns, and spontaneously generating images made of
light in order to complete menial daily tasks. These images, known as holograms, have
captured the imagination of countless generations and now, thanks to emerging
technologies, we can make the
whimsical machinations of mankind a
reality. We have designed and
developed an arm-based phone
peripheral that can project volumetric
holograms into occasionally thick air as
well as fully charge a phone without any
sort of wired connection. In this short
essay, we would like to present to you
the business plan for our first product in
hopes that you too will see the merit in
our intentions to conquer the world and
terrestrial bodies beyond it with our
technological prowess.

ArmUGlad may be new to the

field of phone peripherals, but we are
not without our ambition. We plan to
revolutionize telecommunications and
stretch the limits of smart-phone capabilities and current perceptions about the world
 Coker, Brewer, Clamp, Singh 2

and how those in it interact with one another. We aim to immortalize ourselves by
generating an everlasting impact on future advancements that will last until the heat-
death of the universe. Our mission statement, we feel, reflects these ideals very well:
We will burn our faces into the landscape of emerging technology markets, we shall
conquer the void of impending death and make sure that all who come after remember
the name of ArmUGlad.

We at ArmUGlad have hired the best SWOT team money can buy in order to
properly analyze our business strategies and maintain a diligent and watchful eye over
our manufacturing and distribution process in order to ensure complete and total
economic domination upon our products launch.

First, we decided to evaluate the many strengths of our product. Our product
incorporates new technology in order to display three dimensional images composed of
light into the space around the wearers arm, this technology has not been incorporated
by any other known entity in this fashion and has not been publicly mentioned or mused
upon by large tech firms in any sort of press-release or interview. This will also be the
first ever phone charging alternative fully capable of maintaining 100% power on any
given phone device without being bound to an electrical outlet or other non-mobile
charging port, this is possible because the surface area of the sleeve is great enough
that thermoelectric power generation becomes viable, whereas thermoelectric phone-
cases do not have a large enough area to harvest energy necessary to run a phone,
even in an idle state. On top of the three dimensional display, the ArmUGlad also
features a wall projector with capacities similar to that of a larger, desk or table mounted
projector, this is a feature that is not widespread in current phone-technologies and is, in
fact, a feature only possessed as an add-on to the motorola Moto-Z phone; we plan on
being able to at least match if not exceed the quality of the Moto-Z projector.
Furthermore, the size of our ArmUGlad allows us to attach large lithium batteries without
a significant increase on transportative ease, letting an owner of ArmUGlad use the full
suite of features for extended periods of time before being forced to recharge.

After evaluating our strengths, we were forced to take a hard look at our products
weaknesses. Our first and most significant weakness is that the technology required for
our holographic display is currently far too large to be easily managed by a human arm.
Beyond that, the ArmUGlads charging capabilities are heavily influenced by external air
temperatures, temperatures that are significantly different from mean body temperature
provide a much greater power output than those closer to mean body temperature. We
also fear that the high prices that we must charge in order to make a profit could deter
customers, especially during the introduction stage of our products life cycle.
 Coker, Brewer, Clamp, Singh 3

Our opportunities for success are great. As we have previously mentioned, no

other company has entered the market we are aiming for, and as the company that will
likely create the market for both arm-based phone peripherals and portable hologram
projectors, we are primed to hold a temporary natural monopoly over the market, as
Apple did for a time with their original iPhone. As we are also the only company offering
a total replacement for wall-chargers, we expect that we will be able to draw interest
from wealthier individuals who are always on the go merely for our charging capabilities.
Other relatively expensive charging alternatives and battery-life extension devices only
increase battery life by 10%-50%, and we feel that this is not sufficient for many modern
professionals who must stay connected to the internet and phone services at all times.

Our most significant threats include Microsofts Hololens and other augmented
reality devices like Google Glass. While these products do not offer three dimensional
volumetric displays, as we do, they do offer the illusion of having such a device for the
individual using them. This, coupled with their lower overall prices compared to our
projected price means that they could pose a serious impact to our potential profits.
The Moto-Zs projector peripheral could drive customers attracted specifically to that
aspect to the Moto-Z instead of the ArmUGlad. We believe, however, that our unique
mixture of features will be able to overcome the price aversion that our potential
customers feel.

In order to keep our firm on track to produce, we have outlined several objectives
that we feel must be met within the next few years. First and foremost, we need to
invest a significant amount of money into the further development of Holovects
hologram projector in order to have a unit that is small enough to be conveniently
attached to a human arm, as Holovects marginal costs decrease as a result of
increased production scale, we believe that we can have a device ready for mass
production within our price allowances by 2020, and we have based the rest of our
objectives around this goal. We plan to have acquired 80%-90% of the market in
armored phone peripheral, 95%-100% of holographic phone peripherals and 1%-5% of
phone-charging and battery-life-extending products by 2024. We expect that several
other companies may intend to copy our arm-based design for their products within four
years after launch, but due to their inability to copy our thermoelectric generator
architecture, it is unlikely that many of these copy-cat devices will be able to possess
the features that ArmUGlad does. We expect to possess a near monopoly on phone-
based portable hologram projectors, as the power consumption requirements of such a
device would be difficult to meet consistently without a reliable onboard energy
generation unit. The cost associated with our product relative to wall-chargers or
battery-extenders almost ensures that we will be unable to capture large market shares
of those markets, especially in the first four years, though we hope that this will change
going beyond our four year window.
 Coker, Brewer, Clamp, Singh 4

In order to better ensure sales, we decided to use a multisegmented targeting

approach, breaking the market up into four distinct groups: Rich Technologists, Poor
Technologists, Anti-Technologists and Independent Software Developers; we
determined that these groups were most emblematic of the market we wish to cater to
for several reasons. We separated the technologist and developer groups from the
Anti-Technologists using psychographic segmentation, deciding that Anti-Technologists
are primarily individuals who would not be interested regardless of feature depth or
variety, with this in mind, we identified this group as one that we would not-cater to
whatsoever. The independent software developers were also left out of our target
market, as we determined that our first-party compatibility software between phone
platforms and the ArmUGlad would likely be sufficient for already existent application
developers to be able to easily integrate their knowledge into designing ArmUGlad
applications, meaning that our products ubiquity would be a serious factor when
developers decide whether or not to market to us; our success with other market
segments would directly impact the developer segment. We further segmented the
technologist group into rich and poor technologists based on economic status. We
decided that the rich technologist group would be our key demographic in the early
stages of our product life cycle. Their income would be sufficient to offset price aversion
and we expect them to
make up the vast majority
of our early adopters. As
our product disseminates
into the market, we then
expect poor technologists
to follow, and this should
also cause a large influx of
software developers who
are interested in planting
their flags in the ground as
ArmUGlad devs. We have
no illusions of our final price
tag being low, so we have
decided that the most
realistic goal would be to
position ourselves as a
high-quality, moderate to high-cost luxury item.

We feel that our approach to our target market and our decisions in what market
segments we would like to specifically cater to will greatly help us in maximizing sales
and profits throughout our product life cycle; these decisions deeply inform our
 Coker, Brewer, Clamp, Singh 5

approach to our specific marketing mix. Our place is relatively inconsequential, online
retailers have reduced the need for specific retail distribution, furthermore, large phone
store chains often carry many of the peripherals that we hope to supplant as well as the
products that we hope to supplement. Utilizing their existing points of contact, we
believe that we will be unhindered by the obstacles that other market-generating
products normally face.

As mentioned previously, our price tag will not be one of our products strong
points, and leaning on it as a marketing tool would be foolhardy. Our projected final
price tag sits between $700-$800, this is, unfortunately not a matter of choice, but one
of necessity. Currently, the Holovect projector that we wish to incorporate sits at $750
on Kick-Starter. A very large portion of this $750 is undoubtedly directed toward project
funding, and also comes before Holovect has acquired a means of mass-production,
meaning that their marginal costs are extremely high. Wall-projectors, while not cheap,
are manufactured within reasonable price limits, and high-capacity batteries are in the
same boat, so-to-speak. Additionally, the charging technology we wish to incorporate is
relatively cheap to produce currently, so we do not expect a large added cost from this.
We could rely on prestige-pricing, but as we desire to achieve maximum market
saturation, this would not be ideal.

The two strongest pillars of our marketing mix are our product features and our
usage of promotional tools. Our product, specifically, is an armored sleeve, with a
magnetic phone connector with wireless charging capabilities, a three dimensional
hologram projector, a wall projector, a thermoelectric generator and extended batteries.
The armored sleeve is the core of our design, taking inspiration from 15th century gothic
armor, the sleeve completely encases the forearm of its user, providing a temperate
environment for usage in all temperatures and moderate protection in the unfortunate
event of an attack. The arm itself also serves as a rigid mount for all of the other
features, as fabric surfaces are not reliable enough to house many of our planned
features. The entire surface of the arm serves as the housing for the thermoelectric
generator we plan on using to run the system. Thermal energy moving into or out of the
arm through the sleeve should generate more than enough power to operate a phone at
as little as 25% energy efficiency; this is based off of our knowledge of phone power
consumption per hour, human thermal energy output per hour and relative surface area
of the human arm. We also plan to include a sufficiently large power bank in the form of
high-capacity lithium batteries, this will enable the projectors to run off of power stored
from the generator while not in use, as well as provide a charging alternative in the
unlikely scenario that the user enters an environment with little temperature difference
between mean human body temperature. Our two projectors are our flagship features.
A standard HD wall projector will sit on the sleeve atop the wrist, allowing users to share
videos and presentations with others at will. A Holovect three dimensional display will
 Coker, Brewer, Clamp, Singh 6

be attached to the arm at the bottom of the wrist, allowing users to interact with their
phones. The Holovect operates using a series of colored lasers that quickly trace out
images in 3D space by using another device to manipulate the refraction index in the air
with water vapor and a small fan. We plan to include a one-way semipermeable
membrane capable of harvesting and filtering sweat from the arm in order to provide
water vapor to the system, though a small external tank will be available to be filled up
manually using tap water by users. This does, however, add the need for easy internal
access by users to clean the inner lining, so each holovect has a hinged design that
allows any user to easily open the unit up, this can also allow individuals with non-
standard arm dimensions to put the unit on more easily.

Our intended promotion will be focused primarily on new media outlets,

especially the internet, rather than traditional media. As discussed earlier, our decision
to target technologist groups almost certainly guarantees that we will be able to touch
our intended segments with our advertising campaign without having to set foot in
traditional advertising space, additionally, we believe that spending money on
advertising through traditional channels will very quickly reach diminishing returns on
our investment and will not be worthwhile in the long run. This is supported by the
results of a Pew Research study from 2015 that showed that 61% of millennials get their
news from facebook, meaning that through facebook promotion alone we should be
able to easily disseminate our advertising campaigns to our target market.

In order to implement our marketing strategy, there are several goals that need to
be met. First, we need to acquire a business agreement with Holovect to use their
system on the ArmUGlad. We will also need to reach out to phone companies in order
to ensure that either they will include the necessary magnetic connection and wireless
phone charging technologies that the ArmUGlad will need to properly interface with
them, if that cannot be achieved, we would like to pursue the development of phone
cases that will allow the ArmUGlad to connect to older phones and phones that do not
already have native support necessary to function with our device. We will also need to
establish an R&D team in order to fully integrate all of our technologies together, as well
as develop an operating system and software for major smartphones to link into our
system and take advantage of our system features.

Following our product launch, we plan to closely monitor consumer reviews and
complaints in order to evaluate what changes should be made to the product in future
iterations. We are especially looking for issues regarding the power and charging
systems, as we feel that those will be the most inconsistent systems upon launch, and
our products success is dependent upon its ability to efficiently acquire and use power.
 Coker, Brewer, Clamp, Singh 7

Keeping our power generation and storage system at cutting edge levels is
further critical as we plan on patenting our thermoelectric generator design, giving us an
advantage over other developers who hope to compete with us by making it more
difficult for them to enter the market, without an onboard power generator, a system like
this would be nearly impossible to construct, so we will be able to control our market
and product image for several years without outside interference.

The pre-introductory stage of ArmUGlads product life cycle is not of

overwhelming importance. During this stage we plan on doing minor advertisement, as
well as releasing developer versions to those willing to donate larger sums of money
using a crowdfunding system like kick-starter or indiegogo. Because we are not overly
concerned with marketing to independent developers, this is not a primary focus of ours,
our first party compatibility software will allow phones to engage in rudimentary
functions by default at launch, so having a vast library of third party applications should
not impact launch sales much, especially considering that our suite of other features will
be a major draw for consumers before such applications are developed. We will
primarily focus on spreading awareness of our product to our key demographic during
this phase.

During our introductory

stage, we hope to quickly acquire
deep market penetration amongst
the rich technologist segment of our
target market, as features here are
greatly desirable and cost will not
play a significant role in adoption for
this segment. We expect the latter
half of our introductory stage to be
the period in which independent
developers start to move to our
product in greater numbers. During
this period we will rely mostly on social media advertisement and word-of-mouth to
spread interest in our product, our goals here are to continue to spread awareness, but
also interest and desire amongst our secondary demographic, poor technologists.

During out growth stage, we expect to see larger market penetration amongst the
poor technologist segment of the market. At this point, our campaign to disseminate
information will have been sufficiently successful so as to switch the focus of our
marketing campaigns; rather than informing customers, we will use our advertising to
generate desire amongst those who had already been successfully informed through
 Coker, Brewer, Clamp, Singh 8

our introductory and pre-introductory stages. It is during this stage that we expect the
greatest positive change in revenue.

Our maturity stage is the point at which we will have greatest market saturation,
we expect to experience a minor increase in profits before asymptotically approaching a
value representing our theoretical maximum revenue before gradually falling off. During
this stage we plan on releasing add-ons and expansion peripherals to ArmUGlad, as
well as announcing the next version of ArmUGlad hardware, hopefully these add-ons
will contribute to a lengthened maturity stage as others may be attracted to our
increased product line, but the promise that we will make to ensure that all of these add-
ons will be compatible with the next version of the hardware will likely lead some
percentage of our potential remaining consumer base to wait until the next version is
released.

At some point during our decline stage, we will introduce the newest version of
ArmUGlad and attempt to liquidate our remaining stock, this may lead to a temporary
spike in sales for a short period, but will quickly fall off and will likely be revenue
negative and will be done merely as an attempt to minimize losses. We will not
continue to support our product and eventually our sales will plummet to zero as the
newer model is phased in. We also expect that around this point, our patent will expire
and other firms will begin to enter the market and compete with us, meaning that future
ArmUGlad models will likely not be as successful as the original. ArmUGlad you got to
read this paper.
 Coker, Brewer, Clamp, Singh 9

Works Cited

Pew Research Study: http://college.usatoday.com/2015/07/03/facebook-main-

source-of-news-for-millennials/