Open Road Week 1: Tare, Fill, & Weigh with BYOC
What better way to kick off the week than to support our very own wolverine Emma Hess, Michigan Undergrad Class of 2020. Go Blue!
Emma is the founder of BYOC Co., a zero-waste shop aimed at reducing single-use plastic consumption, in downtown Ann Arbor. It was inspiring to learn about her journey from how the idea came to her, running pop-up shops, and now finally a physical store. In addition to refills and sales of sustainable goods, BYOC is also a great drop-off point for less common recyclables such as crayons, razors, tupperware, and much much more!
Over the week, we helped Emma build out a robust marketing strategy and a customer loyalty program.
Day 1 & 2: We brought Emma back to campus to relive her undergrad days. We then conducted design thinking workshops to zone in on where we could add the most value. We were grateful to be a sounding board for Emma and a huge shoutout to Sai and Linnet for leading the workshop! After our meetings concluded with Emma, the team debriefed. There was so much we wanted to work on but given the nature of the engagement being a week, we focused on marketing and a customer loyalty program.
Day 3: Site visits! The team felt like kids in a candy shop visiting BYOC Co. and wanted to buy everything. There we saw the products on display, experienced her store layout, and looked through the signage. We were also able to do some primary research with her customers and understand what they were looking for in their shopping experiences, which was insightful for our recommendations.
Day 4: After 3 days of scoping, researching, and formalizing the deliverables, it was time to put our heads down and deliver. We broke into different workstreams and regrouped. It was amazing to see how ideas bounced off of one another as we went through our individual findings.
Day 5: Deliverables day! We met with Emma just as her shop had closed. We walked through our recommendations, showing her where we thought store signage could improve for the customer, and went through a short-term and long-term loyalty program.
Thank you Emma for allowing us to be a part of your entrepreneurial journey this week! It was a two-way learning experience and we learned a lot. We dug deep into our core marketing and strategy classes and used design thinking principles to guide us throughout the week. Along the way, we also learned about different point of sale systems, social media analytics, and other analytics they use to track their sales and services. Sai led her first design thinking workshop, Eden and Esther ventured into their first (but definitely not their last) Canva (graphic design app) designs, and Linnet bought a shampoo bar!
The week was not without challenges as midway into the week we found out that Sai had tested positive for COVID. It was a humbling reminder that we are still in a pandemic and that we need to take safety precautions. The team was supportive and helped Sai wherever they could and Emma stayed incredibly flexible as Sai wrapped up her deliverables. Unfortunately, Sai had to stay in Ann Arbor while she recovered, but will be joining us for the next leg of our trip in…Nashville!
