Venture Concept No. 1

Metropolis

When deciding what my venture concept would be, I decided to pursue something that I, myself, saw as a big need in Gainesville, but I needed confirmation and validation from friends, family, and even random citizens around the town. I’m a city guy – my interests are a bit different from the typical Gainesville resident. About the only commonality that I have with most of the people in this area is my love for sports, as I’m a Sport Management graduate student. However, in terms of entertainment and leisure, I’m of the opinion that malls provide plenty of those options to the citizens of any town. I’m from South Florida, and the malls in that area aren’t just for shopping – they’re also for dining, date nights, movie-going, and nightlife. Gainesville does not have attractive mall options – the only mall in the area is Oaks Mall, and it’s just incredibly lackluster. This is what led me to my idea – to open a new mall in the city of Gainesville that can provide shopping, entertainment, and leisure options for the constituents of the town.

Opportunity

            Aside from my own opportunity belief, I had to run a series of tests to find my aforementioned validations. These tests mostly consisted of interviewing an array of people around the city of Gainesville. This included long-time residents, students, friends, and market experts. Based off of these interviews, which gave me a ton of valuable insight and information into the minds of Gainesville consumers, I learned two critical things – Gainesvillians are in agreement that Oaks Mall is an inadequate mall, and Gainesville consumers are willing but disgruntled about having to drive over two hours away to do get their shopping done. The Gainesville forces creating this opportunity is the fact that, so far, no one has stepped up to the plate in building a new mall. Make no mistake, Gainesville is growing, and the Butler Plaza developments are proof. However, they’re currently not solving the issue at hand – there’s no mall that has high-end shops and entertainment and leisure options. Demographically, this market is defined as a large college population, which include both undergraduate and professional students. There’s also a melting pot in Gainesville, as the area is incredibly diverse with people of many different ethnic backgrounds. Customers are currently satisfying this need by driving hours out of their way to get their shopping and entertainment fixes. In my interviews, customers indicated that they drive to larger cities like Jacksonville, Orlando, and Saint Augustine to do this. They’re loyal to those cities, but only because of a lack of options here in town, which is why the size of this opportunity for this venture is massive. The window might be closing soon, however, due to the fact that the new Butler Plaza developments might be indicative of new shopping centers opening up around town.

Innovation

            Metropolis will have designer-brand shops, luxurious dining options, an IMAX Regal Movie Theater, a Dave and Busters, and a bowling/laser tag arena. There will be nightlife options, too, which will include high-end bars and a nightclub. Additionally, it will also have a parking garage, valet parking, electric-car charging areas, and a car-cleaning service that will wash the cars for patrons while they go inside Metropolis. Specifically, my services aren’t rationally the same as the average entrepreneur. Starting a mall is certainly lucrative, but the revenue streams aren’t conventional. While regular customers doing their shopping and going to Metropolis for movie-going, nightlife, or leisure options might appear to be my customers, they’re actually the customers of my customers. What this means is that I charge rental fees to stores and brands that want to be a part of Metropolis. I need to quantify this, so after doing much research, I’ve decided to charge tenants around $300 per square foot for space in Metropolis. This applies to rental kiosks, as well. Revenue streams won’t stop there, either – there will be marketing/advertising revenue opportunities, which include tenants paying for sponsorships, posters, floor decals, free-standing scrollers, cars in the mall, and promotional giveaways. There will be weekend events, as well, which will include concerts in the courtyard, brand-promotion events, art shows, holiday events, movie-watching in the courtyard, and movie-premiere events.

Venture Concept  

            I believe that my venture concept, or Metropolis, will solve and address this specific opportunity because there’s nothing like it in Gainesville currently. Customers are sorely in need of a new mall in Gainesville, and vendors should be confident to rent space in Metropolis because the marketing opportunities are there for the taking. Unlike opening a new mall in a large city like Miami, this market isn’t saturated. People will flock to Metropolis if only because of the lack of options in Gainesville. I don’t believe it will be particularly hard to convince customers to make the switch because, again, there isn’t anything like Metropolis currently in town, and there will be something for anyone and everyone there for people to visit. The biggest competitor is Oaks Mall, and their top weakness is that they have uninspiring shopping and dining options. I believe the customer experience will be the biggest defining trait for Metropolis. Mall-going is and should be an experience, and the ambiance is something we’re looking to capitalize on. In order to organize a business to support the production of Metropolis, it is going to need several employees, but there isn’t an exact number because of its sheer size. To start, it will need a Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Compliance Officer, and a sales team.

Minor Elements

            I believe Metropolis’ unfair advantage is our market opportunity – as mentioned before, there’s nothing like Metropolis in Gainesville currently, and the lack of competitive options makes it unfair for anyone that tries to establish or build another mall in Gainesville once Metropolis is built. It will be hard to emulate the ambiance and atmosphere that Metropolis will establish. The next opportunity that we wish to establish is online marketing and ecommerce opportunities. We want to establish an online delivery service that delivers goods and items within one hour of purchase to customers without needing to visit the mall. As for me, in the next five years, I’d like to stick around to see Metropolis blossom. In the next decade, I’d like to possibly build another mall somewhere else in Florida where the opportunity is as ripe as it is here in Gainesville.