Huy Nguyen week 4

We ended last week by visiting a skatepark as a group and spoke with a few skateboarders. We quickly found that this was a tough way to validate our product, not only due to the lack of people that wanted to talk to us but many of the skateboarders at the park did not seem like they wanted to be bothered. Being a skateboarder that is on his last year of his twenties I know how precious time on the skateboard is. The older you get, the more responsibility you have and ultimately the less time you have to skate. So when you do get to skate you try to make the most of your limited time and at least for some prefer not to be bothered, especially by some meddling graduate students. We went back to the drawing board and concluded that social media was the fastest way we could reach a target audience without them being completely random. We were able to choose our friends and contacts that are skateboarders and sent out a short questionnaire. Jackie has the compiled data and it will be posted on the blog very soon. 

Anthony and I spent our Friday afternoon in the garment district trying to source supplies, such as nylon webbing, buckles and clips. The mission itself was rather hectic and led us to some strange stores, that sold everything that you need to start a clothing company from the ground up. After 5 or 6 very narrow and crowded stores we finally found what we needed at a decent price to make a second round prototype. All in all I left the garment district with a new respect for manufacturing and a minor headache from the claustrophobic stores. 

 loops for days.

 buckles and clasps

 We hit the nylon webbing jackpot.

 I found my name.

The remainder of the week was spent preparing for the midterm presentation. We all work and are taking a full class load so finding a time for all of us to meet outside of class was nearly impossible this week. So we communicated with each other via e-mail to make sure that we are all on the same page for the presentation. All slides will be posted as soon as they are finalized.

For this coming week I want to continue to work over Spring break to establish the Kraken Company on the web. As well as finalize the design for the bag, so we can come one step closer to producing a product that will go to market.