Web Company

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This morning, Zakaria asked me about buajjah.com. For those not familiar with buajjah.com - this was an idea we came up with in 2000 - about a website that sells books for parents. These books (text books) could be ordered online and delivered/ distributed to parents. Ok - so that was the initial form. Later on we developed more ideas and the concept became larger.

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2001

Answers

Sorry, had to answer a phone call. Where was I? OK - some clarification - Buajjah.com was meant to be like amazon.com , and it's targeted users were parents of school children. you know the story - from time to time schools will send parents the list of books to buy as part of their children's syllabus. Buajjah.com was desgined to do just that - provide the books required , with options to deliver them direct to the parents or to be collected at distribution centres. This was the underlying concept of buajjah.com. This idea is workable, although I feel it is far from ideal since there are many things to consider, namely - how the parents should pay for the books - is it via credit card, or some sort of local arrangement such as cash and carry, or through the local financial institutions arrangements such as cheque, etc. Additioally, when we mentioned direct delivery to the parents, this would involve the use of delivery persons ... or shall we engage Brunei post? These issues aside, I believe that the scope of buajjah.com must be enlarged, and be much more demographic-friendly (ie targetting a certain band of Bruneians in terms of other interests, age groups, etc). In other words, a good business must provide what people like most, and must be able to satisfy that nicely. In my next posting, I will describe briefly about the evolution of buajjah.com - that is I will describe about an alternative web business, based on buajjah.com, but on a slightly different concept.

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2001

A successful business is when you can supply what people want. Correct me if I'm wrong! But this is just one of the important factors that we must consider. The business wont take off if the product that we offer is not needed greatly by people. If you look at the infrastructure of web business such as amazon.com, it began as a book supplier - a husband and wife endeavor. It then grew into supplying other things such as videos, electronics and even toys! = things that some people need. Do understand , that I am not implying that we go into an amazon like business. But the concept is that if we offer someting,it had better be something that people need. Or we could end up like this company - dadgear.com - a company that was orginally set up for a target audience - dads or fathers. The gear in dadgear.com stands for bag or changing/carrying bag for infants/toddlers. The concept of the creator of the company is that he wanted to give fathers a bag that can be used to carry baby items such as diapers, changing mat, cleaning items, baby bottles, foods etc, without looking feminine. Let me repeat that ... without looking feminine. He had good reason to believe so, since most of the time baby bags were meant for mothers to carry. (So manufacturers had to give the bags some frills here, some sash there etc). Dadgear.com's bags were offered on line - costs about B$180 and had a machoistic look that is more backpack that maternal. The bag can be opened right down in the middle to reveal an array of smaller pockets and a changing pad. They come in classic black, ferrarri red and some other colour. The owner even went on Oprah where he demonstrated his wares. But you know this is coming .... he'd targetted only a fraction of the market - men. Sorry guys, but most men don't want to be bothered with such details like which bag to use to put the baby stuff in. I don't want to sound like a male chauvinist but some people think this is the traditional role of women. I don't agree with this though! But anyway, his company faltered, and last I went in to dadgear.com, nothing ....... no dad bags in site! .... well at least I bought one ... so my U.S made bag's probably a limited edition!

-- Anonymous, October 12, 2001

So what does this mean? Get something that people need. Look, or heck, do a market research first. I'm dying to tell you what's inside my head ... but let us do a market research first. Let us make a survey, into what people need in Brunei... not just what Internet users need or look for when the surf the web. We need to know what people require the most in Brunei. What goods they need most ... on a regular basis. I am not talking about groceries ... its much too time consuming to order from the web ... so let us get that clear. It has got to be something substantial ... that in the real world it takes time to get. If there is a delay for the consumer in the real world to obtain the goods, then if our web-service can equal that time, or even be faster than it .... we're halfway to making good business. Formula = if WebServiceTimeDelay < or = RealTimeDelay , then there is demand.

-- Anonymous, October 12, 2001

Here's something. Think about some goods/service that you need to order in advance to ensure that it is available. If you order today, you may expect to get it within the next week or so? I would like to refer to this as Consumer Permitted TimeFrame. This is a time variable which the consumer is comfortable with, and does not expect the goods or services to be available immediately. He is only concerned if the goods/services are delivered later than the COnsumer Permitted Timeframe. Additionally, this timeframe has been agreed by both us the supplier and the consumer. So it is an agreement. Think of a product in such circumstances.

-- Anonymous, October 12, 2001

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