University of Westminster
Westminster Business School

BMKT 510.1: Developing Practical Entrepreneurial Ideas
Coursework 1: Opportunity Scrapbook

Student Name: Kaniel Kalarikkal
Student ID number: W15142771

Module Leader and Team Coach Name: Jane Chang

Word Count: 837
Date: 04/11/2015

As a facilitator or a middleman business between textile companies, we aim to help connect buyers and sellers of surplus or waste materials used in manufacturing their product. We would do this by first looking to get large manufacturing companies since they are most likely to have excess raw material stock. At first we would look to deal with mainly the textile industry and then would look to expand to various other materials thus expanding the scope of our target market. The objective of my company would be to help textile manufacturing companies find suitable buyers and sellers for surplus or waste textile materials. These supplies are just left in storage, disposed of, or the enterprises must themselves go out to find suitable purchasers. Instead of these manufacturers actually spending any of their time or resources, we would be helping them find buyers. The term for this sort of market is “Industrial Symbiosis”. What this means is an association between two or more industrial facilities or companies in which the wastes or by-products of one become the raw materials for another (Wrap.org.uk, 2015). The potential market we would be looking at is secondary sector companies in the textile industry in the UK. We would like to start off with small textile manufactures; hence they would be looking to buy the raw materials for cheap in order to cut down costs and would not want to spend their time and resources looking for a cheaper way to purchase the textiles. There is already a market for buying and selling of excess materials, hence this is definitely a market where growth is possible. Most firms would rather be willing to sell their excess materials rather than leave them in warehouses or dispose of them. Also, our consumers would be on both ends of the spectrum as we would be dealing with both the buyers and sellers; hence both are beginning and end users. Since we would be a firm providing services to textile manufacturers, these organisations that would be paying for our services would definitely be the ones using them too.

http://www.businesscartoonshop.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/350x350/185c2993af677842ae94e5dda12f0e6e/t/h/this_is_file_name_318.jpg http://www.businesscartoonshop.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/350x350/185c2993af677842ae94e5dda12f0e6e/t/h/this_is_file_name_318.jpg The service being proposed is one of a virtual broker or facilitator between buyers and sellers of surplus and waste textile materials that can be used by another manufacturer. We will essentially be connecting companies with left over stock or waste textile materials with other companies looking to buy those products/materials for a cheaper. So instead of storing or disposing the surplus materials, the company would come to us and we will get in touch with a buyer and help facilitate a fair deal between both companies. Sellers and Buyers register with us for a small annual fee, list the materials they wish to sell and we connect them to a buyer. We would take 5% commission fee from the sale. Our company addresses the issue of materials just being left lying in storage or wasted thus saving costs and efforts of storage or disposal.
(http://2degreeslive.com/images/uploads/NISP_logo2.jpg)
(http://2degreeslive.com/images/uploads/NISP_logo2.jpg) Currently there are no firms offering the services that my company is proposing. However there is the NISP (National Industrial Symbiosis Programme) which is a programme that promotes Industrial Symbiosis (Kenning, 2015). However they have no contact between buyers and sellers and just let companies register with them, thus companies registered with them do not have the access to services that can be provided by us. They would require the companies to get in touch with each other themselves, thus making them spend their own resources and time. Instead we are offering to look for buyers/sellers for the textile materials and even facilitate the deal between the two companies. This would make it much easier for companies to get rid of their excess materials as well as recoup some of their capital spent on the materials. We can possible even work with the NISP using the companies registered with them and help facilitate the deals thus helping both the NISP and the manufacturers. In terms of competition or future expansion, there is a company in India called XSTOK that is essentially doing the same thing as us however with one difference. They physically buy the excess materials from the manufacturers, store them and then find buyers for them (Xstok.com, 2015). Since they are planning to expand to Europe, they would definitely be a competitor. However we could also collaborate with them to get access to the Indian Textile Industry which is quite large.

(http://thelondontextilefair.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/the-london-textile-fair-the-business-design-centre.jpg)
(http://thelondontextilefair.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/the-london-textile-fair-the-business-design-centre.jpg)
The first customer we would be looking to target would be a textile manufacturing companies, preferably a large producer. The reason behind this would be because they would most certainly have excess raw textile materials left after manufacturing their own products. Hence by approaching this firm, we would be offering to facilitate the sale of their excess materials to smaller firms looking to buy raw materials on a cheaper scale than they usually would get from an original textile supplier. This would help the selling firm to recoup the capital it spent on purchasing the materials and the buying company to cut down its costs of purchasing the materials. We expect to get in touch with these companies through cold-calling- approaching the companies directly as most companies would definitely support selling their excess materials which would just be stored or disposed of. It would also be possible to approach manufactures in Textile exhibitions such as the Annual London Textile Fair that takes place every January (The London Textile Fair, 2015) or Texfusion which happens every November (Texfusion 2015). A few milestones that I would expect to achieve would be to create a successful market of the buying and selling of surplus textile materials between manufacturing companies and then to be able to expand into other surplus materials such as plastic, rubber, steel and other metals since these are one the most used materials in most products today.
References
-ABLOY, ASSA. 2015. 'Waste For Some, Raw Material For Another'. Assaabloy.Com. Available from: http://www.assaabloy.com/en/com/sustainability/cases/waste-for-some-raw-material-for-another/. [Accessed on 02 November 2015]
-Ec.europa.eu,. 2014. 'Recycling – Secondary Material Price Indicator - Statistics Explained'. Available from: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Recycling_%E2%80%93_secondary_material_price_indicator. [Accessed on 01 November 2015]
-Kenning, Tom. 2015. 'About NISP – Recover & Reuse Wasted Materials, Reduce Carbon Emissions'.Nispnetwork.Com. Available from: http://www.nispnetwork.com/about-nisp. [Accessed on 02 November 2015]
-Shulman, Jeff, Andrew Corr, and Patricio Ibanez. 2010. 'The Volatility Of Raw Materials Markets | Risk Management'. Rmmagazine.Com. Available from: http://www.rmmagazine.com/2010/06/01/the-volatility-of-raw-materials-markets/. [Accessed on 02 November 2015]
-Telegraph.co.uk,. 2008. 'Britain's Biggest Private Companies: The Raw Materials Of Everyday Life'. Available from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/utilities/2795061/Britains-biggest-private-companies-The-raw-materials-of-everyday-life.html. [Accessed on 02 November 2015]
-Texfusion,. 2015. 'About - Texfusion'. Available from: http://texfusion.co.uk/about/. [Accessed on 02 November 2015]
-The London Textile Fair,. 2015. 'About - The London Textile Fair'. Available from: http://thelondontextilefair.co.uk/about/. [Accessed on 02 November 2015]
-Waste-management-world.com,. 2011. 'Used Tyre Recycling Success For UK'. Available from: http://waste-management-world.com/a/used-tyre-recycling-success-for-uk. [Accessed on 02 November 2015]
-Wrap.org.uk,. 2015. 'What Is Industrial Symbiosis? | WRAP UK'. Available from: http://www.wrap.org.uk/content/what-industrial-symbiosis. [Accessed on 02 November 2015]
-Xstok.com,. 2015. 'XSTOK Buyer FAQ'. Available from: http://www.xstok.com/buyer-faq. [Accessed on 02 November 2015]