William Sircin
Nick Sprinkel
Steve Williams
Sep. 21, 2012
The Story
Unibike Theories, Inc. was conceived in 2010 at Sky Tree Artpocalypse, the infamous weeklong experimental art festival that convenes every September in the middle of the Mojave
Desert. Website designer Nick Sprinkel, a first time Sky Tree attendee, and Steve Williams, a
brilliant but unpredictable Kettering dropout, met while standing in line for absinthe snow
cones and immediately hit it off. They were soon wandering the festival grounds together in
one hundred degree heat, taking in a panoply of hallucinatory sights and sounds.
But Sprinkel and Williams’ Sky Tree sojourn, and their newly forged friendship, took an
unexpected turn a few days later. One evening they came across a crowd that was cheering
on a wild-looking character as he jumped the gap between a pair of ten-foot-high dirt ramps
while astride what appeared to be a homemade motorized unicycle. Again and again he flew
through the empty air on his contraption, executing head over foot cartwheels and three
hundred sixty degree pirouettes, as a girl in a bikini, fur boots, and waistlength dreadlocks
stood directly beneath him and blew bright orange fireballs in his direction.
Williams and Sprinkel were both immediately captivated by the demonstration. Williams,
who had been nicknamed “Dr. Frankenstein” by his Kettering classmates, fell in love with this
beautifully absurd bit of engineering genius. Sprinkel, on the other hand, could not help but
notice the number of onlookers who exclaimed that they wanted a motorized unicylce of
their own.
After the last jump had been completed and the crowd had dispersed, Sprinkel and Williams
approached the performer and introduced themselves. Thus they made the acquaintance of
William Sircin, circus acrobat and self-proclaimed “stunt wizard.” He showed them his
unicycle, which he had built himself on a dare from another professional stunt performer.
Williams and Sprinkel, without having discussed it beforehand, then simultaneously asked if
he would be interested in manufacturing and selling them. Sircin intitially scoffed at the
proposal, but Sprinkel proved a convincing pitchman, and by the end of the week the three of
them had formed a loose preliminary business plan.
They then spent the next six months searching in vain for a source of funding. During that
time they continued to modify and perfect the vehicle’s design, and built up a list of friends
and acquaintances—mostly other stunt performers—who expressed serious interest in
owning one. Finally, in Spring 2011, they met Marcario Tatopolous, the twenty-one year-old
son of an expatriate Greek billionaire. An aficionado of sky diving, hang gliding and other
thrill-seeking pursuits, he instantly understood the appeal of the “unicycle dirt bike,” and
agreed to provide seed capital for the venture. With it they purchased an old auto body
repair shop in Portland, Oregon, converted it into a factory/showroom, and produced their
first two Unibikes, which were sold to a couple of married stunt riders in Miami.
The Team
CEO: Stephen Williams. Although Nick Sprinkel initially assumed the leading role at Unibike
Theories, Williams very quickly demonstrated a preternatural talent for business
organization. He was also instrumental in selecting the half-dozen technicians and designers
who make up the company’s “floor team.”
CTO: Nick Sprinkle. Sprinkel’s experience as a web developer made him an ideal choice for the
role of Unibike’s “Information Czar.” He directs the company’s internal information
management systems, as well as overseeing its online presence.
CFO: Marcario Tatopolous. Marc was given the role of Chief Financial Officer as a condition of his
agreement to provide funding. He was clearly motivated by a desire to prove his maturity and
sense of responsibility in the eyes of his father. Nonetheless, he has acquitted himself very
well in this role. He also has many contacts in the world of wealthy, bored young people who
enjoy doing dangerous things.
COO: Williams Sircin. Sircin is the nominal Chief Operating Officer of the company, as well as its
public face. He spends much of his time traveling and giving demonstrations of the product.
Most of the company’s first customers were his peers in the acrobatic performance world.
The Products
The major product of Unibike Theories is, of course, the Unibike, a motorized unicycle designed
for dirtbike-style stunt riding and racing. Each Unibike is a custom-built product, created from
scratch according to the client’s specifications. They have become something of a prestige
item, and usually cost $12,000-$15,000 per unit. Each unit takes about a week to assemble.
Parts are machined onsite. Initial inquiries are made ONLINE, with clients then being invited
for one on one consultations to finalize the order.
Also for sale is a range of merchandise—t-shirts, helmets, bumper stickers, water bottles, etc.—
bearing the company’s logo. This merchandise is available ONLINE only, at the company’s
website.
Unibike Theories also provides an indoor track in a warehouse space adjacent to the factory.
Unibike riding lessons are available here to the general public. It is also home to special
Unibike stunt demos and races. This is, in reality, the company’s only “STOREFRONT”
operation.
Customer Demographics
The majority of people who actually purchase Unibikes belong to one of two groups:
1. Professional stunt riders or acrobats
2. Young rich people
Unibikes are rather expensive and potentially quite dangerous, and they are not legal forms of
street transportation in most states. As a result, they are not logical choices for the general
population. They sell not more than a few dozen each year.
However, Unibike Theories offers basic Unibike riding lessons at their indoor track in Portland.
These lessons are safe, relatively inexpensive, and make the Unibike experience available to
anyone over the age of 18. This service provides Unibike Theories with a fairly large portion
of its overall income.
Marketing
Storefront/ Physical:
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Promotional stunt demonstrations - Organize local demonstrations as well as traveling to various states to
promote product.
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Print ads (newspaper/magazine) – Not only will we be using advertisements in the following magazines
and newspaper, but we may possibly be able to get some journalists interested in writing about our
invention. Stunt demonstrations, online games and viral videos should directly help with this.
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MotoCross Mag(http://www.motocrossactionmag.com/Main/Home.aspx)
DirtRider Mag(http://www.dirtrider.com/)
Popular Mechanics Mag(http://www.popularmechanics.com/)
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Newspapers (Seattle Times, The Oregonian)
Television commercials:
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These commercials would start out local to build a base, then move throughout the states depending on how
successful our business becomes. They should target our customer demographics.
Online:
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Viral videos – In order to make the most appealing videos, our company might want to invest in some action-sport video
cameras that mount on a riders helmet. A short, well-organized, documentary posted on YouTube could attract a strong
customer base.
Online/App (for Andriod/Apple) games (Unibike Stunt Master)- Our CFO could invest in a companies that could design
addictive games that users could play during their free time
Banner ads – UniBike Theories, Inc. Could utilize banner adds within websites that are popular among our customer base.
Consider the magazine websites above in addition to social media sites such as Facebook.
A Spoonful of Alphabet Soup: CRM vs. ERP
Our decision to choose a customer relationship management system over an
enterprise resource planning system was based on two major considerations.
As Laudon and Laudon (2012) explain, the purpose of an ERP system is to
combine business processes within and even across organizations:
“Information that was previously fragmented in many different systems is
stored in a single comprehensive data repository where it can be used by many
different parts of the business” (p. 51). We immediately concluded that such a
system would be better suited to a very large organization with many
employees and discrete departments. Since our business has only a handful of
employees and a minimum amount of hierarchical organization, an ERP would
be of little use to us.
What we do have is a relatively small customer base, for whom we provide a
custom built product. Maintaining our niche, and expanding it whenever we
can, is of utmost importance, and so we decided that we would be wise to
adopt a customer relationship management system.
And the Winner is…
We have decided to give Salesforce.com: Professional Edition a try as our customer
relationship management system. We are integrating this CRM into our business
after several months of operation. Before that we were building our base by
making bikes for friends and friends of friends, and relying on a very informal
word-of-mouth system. We are now beginning to gain a bit of momentum,
however, and have decided to experiment with an information system. This is
particularly helpful when it comes to our “side business” offering riding lessons on
our in-house dirt track. These lessons are our gateway to the “real world,” offering
people outside of the limited demographic of circus performers and stunt
professionals to whom we were initially catering.
We will certainly be in good company. Salesforce.com is hugely popular among
enterprises both large and small; motor vehicle-centric businesses ranging from
the independent vehicle sharing service wheelz.com to motorcycle manufacturing
giant Honda claim to be highly satisfied with this particular CRM.
A (Slightly) Closer Look
We admit that we were initially attracted to Salesforce because of its status as the
elder statesman of CRM providers. Also, they offer a 30 day free trial, so we didn’t
feel like we had too much to lose. This particular product does, however, have a
number of additional attractive features. It boasts a highly detailed “dashboard”
interface that organizes important sales and marketing figures for easy analysis.
This may not have been important at the outset of our venture but as our in-house
business grows and our Unibikes begin selling to more and more clients
throughout the country and around the world, it will pay to have these numbers in
graph form.
Another potentially helpful feature of the salesforce.com online CRM is Chatter, a sort
of internal online network for members of the enterprise. Much of our marketing
strategy at this point involves staging demonstration shows both locally and
around the country, so any communication tool that we can find will be helpful to
us. If one of us is on the West Coast, for example, coordinating a stunt show, we
can provide immediate feedback on turnout, etc., using this tool. Chatter also lets
us follow customers, but we’ll have to see just how receptive our clients are to
using it (Lendino).
A More Slightly Closer Look
One of the nicest features of the salesforce.com product is the accompanying access
to AppExchange, “an online marketplace of integrated third party applications built for
the Salesforce.com community, managed by Salesforce.com and delivered by partners
or third-party developers” (crmsearch.com). AppExcahnge provides salesforce.com
users with the opportunity to modify their CRM more or less on the fly as new
features become available. There are some 17,000 apps currently available through
AppExchange, and Salesforce is planning to provide more based upon customer
requests.
Finally, we plan to take advantage of salesforce.com’s mass email campaign feature.
This Professional Edition only allows a client to send 250 mass emails in a 24-hour
period, however, we should be able to work around that. Any mass email campaigns
will be centered on bringing in customers to participate in riding lessons on our inhouse dirt track. We can use the mass email option to keep previous customers aware
of new events and offers, while using social media and print ads in local magazines
and newspapers to appeal to new customers.
Pros of SalesForce
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SalesForce is an established, professional, and solidly built software as a service (SaaS) company. They
have been in operation since the 1990s and have proven themselves within the field.
SalesForce contains AppEchange, which offers many applications that will allow our company to create a
tailor made CRM system.
SalesForce continually offers new ‘innovative’ services such as Apex, ContentExchange and SuccessForce.
Each of these applications can further streamline our business. Apex is an object-oriented (like C++ or
Java) development platform. ContentExchange manages content within the CRM system, while
SuccessForce establishes an effective user community within the CRM system
The user interface that SalesForce offers is simple to use with little or no training required. Therefore, this
system is ideal for a company like ours that is just starting out with little or no CRM experience.
Perhaps most importantly for our company, SalesForce offers cloud computing . Though we have a large
sum of money to pull from, the affordability of SalesForce allows us to invest our money in other areas of
the company in order to improve upon our product.
Cons of SalesForce
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Although SalesForce does offer tailor-made software, there are over five-hundred million people using the
software. This limits how tailored their SaaS can be per each company.
If SalesForce does not have the appropriate solution for a business, Online-Crm.com notes that they
suggest the company build it using their Apex development software rather than build a solution for the
user.
Downtime is always an issue when using a cloud-based CRM system. Online-Crm.com has pointed out
that SalesForce has had several outages over the past couple of years.
Small Businesses can be left out of a service level agreement. SalesForce “selects” who they wish to make
agreements with.
The Damages
A subscription to the Professional Edition of Salesforce will cost us $65 per month per
user following the end of the 30 day trial period. The only users for the time being will
be William Sircin, Nicholas Sprinkel, Stephen Williams, and Marcario; the total cost
will, then, be $260 per month. Considering the fact that we have unlimited funds, this
seems like a reasonable amount to expend on what is essentially an experiment.
(Salesforce.com)
Revenue Models
Sales Revenue Model: This is of course our primary, and currently
our only, revenue model. Revenue is derived from two main
sources: Sales of our custom made motorized stunt unicycles, and
riding lessons/unibike rentals. We also generate some revenue from
sales of merchandise such as T-shirts but that is definitely not our
main revenue stream. Any of these things may be purchased
online; requests for actual unibikes are generally made by email or
phone, and after that we arrange a consultation, either in person or
by teleconference, to negotiate details.
Subscription Revenue: This is an experimental concept that we have
not yet implemented. We are considering setting up a subscription
based “Uniriders Club.” This would entitle members to a year’s
worth of riding lessons, rentals, and track time. We still have not
decided on a pricing scheme.
Curdbee
Curdbee is an online billing application, designed to
consolidate numerous facets of the invoicing process. It
supports an number of online payment gateways—such as
Paypal, Google Checkout, and the like—and automatically
calculates taxes, shipping costs, and discounts. Additionally, it
features time tracking, expense reporting capabilities, and
other organizational tools designed to make billing as simple
as possible.
When we began our venture and were constructing
Unibikes one at a time for friends, we had little need for billing
software, and even now that we are fielding requests from
around the world, we don’t usually have more than half a
dozen requests in process at any given time. Nonetheless, it
helps to have a little structure in our invoicing process. We are
currently using the free version, but may upgrade if we decide
to start using CurdBee to track billable hours.
Eventwax
This is an event organization application. It allows you to create
special web pages for events, sell tickets online, create and manage attendee
lists, and organize email marketing campaigns.
Events are not really a major source of income for us, although
occasionally we will pair up with a sponsor to finance something.
Nonetheless, exhibition shows are a major part of our marketing strategy.
These shows are designed to show off the product’s capability as a “stunt
unicycle.” Individuals who have purchased a Unibike and achieved some level
of mastery of it are often invited to participate as performers in the shows.
However, we do not expect a huge number of people to invest in one of our
admittedly expensive and potentially dangerous products. Our main goal is to
increase visibility of the product for individuals who might then be
encouraged to take riding lessons in the safe and controlled environment of
our in-house track. Also, we have the opportunity to sell a bit of peripheral
merchandise, such as T shirts, DVDs, and posters at these events.
EveryTrail.com
Every Trail is a unique web2.0 platform that allows users to plan
traveling/adventure trips using geo-tagging. It is also a type of
social networking site that allows users with similar interests to
interact with one another and share details about their outdoor
travel experiences. The platform can also be accessed via android
or apple devices, which allows users to be able to
communicate/map travel routes while away from a keyboard.
We plan on using the technologies offered in EveryTrail allow our
customers to map journeys/trips together. The interactive website
will allow our customers to share their experiences using our
unique unicycle technology, and in turn, this will promote our
product by allowing others to see what our customers are doing
with the unicycle. It is important to note that use of this website is
free for anyone, which will help our company invest funds
elsewhere to improve our product line.
JustinTV.com
Justin TV is another interactive website utilizing web2.0 technologies. The site
allows users to create a live broadcast via a “channel” which displays activities
they would like to share. The web 2.0 plaform primarily uses Adobe Flash to
view videos. In addition, QuickTime Broadcaster, Camtwist, Wirecast and other
third party software are used to add effects to user videos (Wikipedia, 2012).
The Justin TV website states that “live video can help[…]motivate a crowd to
tell their friends what’s happening […] (JustinTV,n.d.).
We plan on using the features within this website to offer our customers
tips/techniques while riding our unicycle motorbike. We also plan on using
JustinTV to broadcast live racing events, simple repair tutorials, and to
introduce other product models to the community. Justin TV offers our
company the ability to locate a community of people that are interested in the
sport of motor-unicycling by allowing customers to interact with one another
socially with the web platfom. Similar to Every Trail, costomers who follow us
on JustinTV can help us promote our product by sharing their experiences on
our channel. Use of Justin TV is free, which again allows our company to
invest earned revenue into more essential parts of our company.
QuoteBase
• Quote Base is web2.0 platform that allows business’ to create quotes for
customers.It not only helps create quotes it is used to delegate the duties
of who would actually create the quote. Those assigned to the quote will
receive e-mail. Quote Base can be altered by the industry and company
size, in the case of growth or any changes of our company.
• Quote Base allows you to add items that are going to be required on the
quote including labor hours, parts, price incorporated with it. It can add
description, tax, and even discounts the quote. It can also give receipt and
even send an copy of the receipt.
• For our company we would use this Web 2.0 technology to collaborate as
a business in creating quote breakdowns for customers.
References
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Every Trail. (n.d.). In Every Trail. Retrieved November 3, 2012, from http://www.everytrail.com/
Justin TV. (2007). In JustinTV. Retrieved November 3, 2012, from http://www.justin.tv/
King, R. Salesforce.com reveals brief roadmap for AppExchange through 2013 (2012, September 18). Retrieved October 30, 2012 from
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Laudon, K.C., and Laudon, J.P. (2012). Management Information Systems: Managing the Digital Firm. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
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Wheelz Offers Customers a Smooth Ride (n.d.) Retrieved October, 2012 from http://www.salesforce.com/customers/stories/wheelz.jsp