BUSINESS MINDSETS

"The new status symbol isn't what you own, it's what you smart enough not to own."

In our Business Mindsets week we learned where our business could lead to----We learned about different business models like Circular Economy, Sharing Economy, Lean startups, among others and we realized our business could be based in several mindsets.

We came across a quote that defines our business mindset completely: "The new status symbol isn't what you own, it's what you smart enough not to own." Since our business is based in the rental culture, we have researched about the renting market. We've discovered that the renting market is growing as we speak. As we have been writing in our previous entries, people these days, especially millennials (our customers), prefer spending time in experiences rather than spending their money buying goods. With our service, we want to offer an experience. We want to make our customers feel at home and ease their transition from their home to a new city.

Our business mindset is based in the following factors:

1. Sustainability: Since we're using second-hand furniture- we want to be able to reuse, refurbish and maintain these furniture giving them a second life. We want to encourage people to be aware of the environmental impact that is affecting our planet.

2. Money-saving business: For our customers and suppliers (same students) because instead of people paying a big amount of money at once, we give them a possibility of paying a monthly fee. Furniture is expensive and they will save money in the long ride--recovering some money from the deposit we will ask for them.

3. Trust: We believe furniture is something personal so trust is needed and important in our business. Eventually, we want our business to be based in a Peer-To-Peer economy which only works by designing trust. From our meeting with John Williams, we learned that we have to build a relationship with our customer and offer them an experience, not just a service.

4. Logistic: It's the behind-the-scenes of our customer journey. This is possibly one of the most important factors in our business since the whole point is to ease the whole hassle of buying furniture, which includes delivery, pick-up and set-up. Timing is important and we have to stick to a schedule because we want to offer efficiency and a good customer service.

5. Quality: Since we want to give our furniture a second life, it is important that we offer good quality furniture. In the long ride, it will be more cost-effective and it will give us value.

This week we learned that our business can be based in The Circular Economy. We've discovered there's over 10 tonnes of million of furniture been thrown away by individuals and business all over the EU. We believe we could use our business to reduce this waste and by doing that, help our planet. We are reusing, refurbishing, maintaining and giving furniture a second life.

Given what we learned this week with The Sharing Economy, we learned that this is a business model that is really trendy right now. We're all about sharing, renting, gifting each other all over the internet and applications. We use Airbnb, where we share our homes. We use BlaBlaCar, where we share a ride with strangers. We rent bikes all over the city, we rent our apartments and our cars. By each day, this business model is becoming something normal. We want Furnit to be about sharing furniture among students. Those leaving the city can rent their furniture to someone arriving to the city and when they leave, they can do the same with those arriving. We want our business to partner up with universities where we can become trustworthy and have a well-known reputation among students. We want to become a furniture-sharing student network.

You can check out our PDF presentation here: https://www.scribd.com/document/367455995/furnit