Over the past five months, we have gone through a lot of ups and downs in terms of our group formation, idea generation, prototyping, promotions, and sales.
    Winning Concepts aimed to capture a market of college students who all deal with a common problem, tangled earbuds. We set out to solve this problem using resources here at JMU and the local community. The result was three prototypes being created over a four week period. We then started promoting our product and brand around campus in the form of tables in Showker, Festival, on foot, and online (via Facebook). The end result of our efforts was 17 sales to family, friends, and Kyle Houser from Apple.
    These results were not what we expected when we began this journey back in August. We were confident that we had found a common problem that we could solve. We also thought we had access to the perfect market to sell our solution (JMU).
    However, we have learned a lot throughout the process. We have learned the importance of prototyping, iterations, and the lean start-up method. The difference between what we expected and what actually happened can be attributed to a lack of product-market fit and our price points. We focused a great deal of time and energy on the JMU student population even though we were not seeing any results. We could have pivoted to a new customer segment earlier and gotten different feedback. The price points were linked to the customer segment we were pursuing. We offered the Bud Hub for $10 to JMU students and faculty and $15 to non-JMU customers. If we had pivoted to a new customer segWhile we did not see financial success, we can each take these lessons with us into our next start-up venture and have faith that they will lead to a entrepreneurial winner in the future.

    For the past three weeks we have ramped up our sales efforts. Unfortunately, these efforts have not led to any sales. The week before Thanksgiving break we set up a table in the lobby of Showker. We also walked around Showker speaking with students and professors about their interest in our product. This resulted in numerous business cards being handed out, but no sales.
    Saturday December 1st, we were able to set up a table at the Battle of the Bands in downtown Harrisonburg. As a promotion, the band Skyward provided us with their EP for free and allowed us to sell the Bud Hub and the CD as a combo pack. This                                                                                                          unfortunately did not lead to any sales.
    Following the Battle of the Bands we went to talk to the cell phone providers who have kiosks in the Valley Mall. The employee at the Sprint kiosk sent us to speak with the manager about possibly selling our product. However, while it started as a good lead, this eventually fell through when the manager decided against it.
    December 3-5 we had a table in Festival where there was a lot of foot traffic. A few students stopped by and gave us some feedback and said they would be interested in purchasing a Bud Hub. However, each of these students said they did not have any money (or cards) with them but they would stop by when they did. After three days of selling in a new location we still had no sales.
    As of December 5, our group has sold 17 Bud Hubs to family and friends.