Global Entr. & Innovation - University of Massachusetts Lowell
#Business Plan By: Krin Yongvongphaiboon, Ryan Lally, XIA MIN, Shruthi Kathare, and Shriya Desai
#Executive Summary
Bisphenol A (BPA) is a molecular building block that was discovered in 1891, but wasn’t commonly used until polycarbonates were invented in 1953, in which BPA is a main ingredient. Due to the growth in popularity of polycarbonates, which are used in everything from automobiles to water bottles, BPA quickly grew in popularity as well. United States production of BPA grew from 16 million pounds in 1991 to approximately 2 billion pounds in 2004, and thus became one of the most produced chemicals in the world. It’s popularity does not come without a price, however: BPA is dangerous to both human health and the environment. Since the FDA’s ban on BPA in baby products in 2012, there have been a number of BPA replacement chemicals, many of which have been found to be as or more harmful to human health than BPA itself.
Professor Daniel Schmidt of the University of Massachusetts in Lowell has discovered a BPA replacement chemical that is safe for human health and the environment, we have designed a business plan to sell the chemical to the global polycarbonate market, with a focus in the plastic water bottle industry. This market is very large, accounting for $14.6 billion in sales in 2014, and is expected to grow larger. There is competition that we will have to face in this market due to other BPA replacement chemicals, which are harmful to human health yet have already been implemented in plastic bottles from large corporations such as Coca-Cola and Pepsico, two companies we hope to sell our chemical to.
Our product has the key advantage over our competition of being safe for humans of all ages and the environment. We are still new to the market, so we must first establish ourselves with a well-tested chemical and proof of our claims. Once we establish ourselves, however, we intend to market our chemical to plastic bottle manufacturers primarily through direct marketing, and maintain strong customer relationships to keep profits up and eventually dominate the market. Of course, we have many costs we must cover before we are able market our product to major corporations, so we plan to team up with investors so we can meet our expenses and manufacture our chemical in bulk.
The total market for BPA is huge, and we expect that our chemical will dominate approximately 80% of that market in the future with our safe replacement chemical. Our hopes is that, with this business plan as our map, we will be able to overtake BPA and it’s replacement chemicals in plastic drinking bottles in the near future. This would be a major achievement and would increase the health and safety of people of all ages all over the world, and for generations to come.