Team:XHD-Wuhan-Pro-China/Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship
Problems Solved by the Commercialization of SOBER UP
Alcohol has long been an irreplaceable part of Chinese social exchanges. However, in today's official and personal drinking, alcohol intake has caused various problems, especially for professional women. Not only do they need to bear the damage of alcohol to the human body, such as alcoholism, liver-related diseases, and cancer, they also are more likely to become the targets of sexual harassment and even sexual crimes in the workplace.
According to a report from China’s Disease Prevention and Control published in 2020, the drinking rate of female residents aged 15 and over in 1991, 2002, and 2016 was 2.6%, 4.5%, and 42.6% respectively, achieving an alarming increase. From 2010 to 2012, the drinking rate of women was 13.3%. The average daily alcohol intake of female drinkers was 8 grams. The rates of excessive drinking and dangerous drinking among the drinking population were, respectively, 11.7% and 4.7%.
The comparative data of general professionalization and drinking rate of women shows that most women have potential demand for an anti-alcoholic drug, whether for entertainment or work, as drinking is bound to affect their state on the next day.
Therefore, among all health-related people who drink alcohol, the target consumer group of our business plan is urban professional women. Because it is difficult to reverse the workplace culture overnight, solutions must be found on other fronts. In that sense, our oral administered anti-alcoholic drug product, SOBER UP®, can help women avoid health risks and sexual harassment occurring after drinking since it relieves burdens from the drunken liver by preventing alcohol from entering it.
SOBER UP® have the following features.
● Alcohol is metabolized for the first time in the gastrointestinal tract. It can reduce the entry of alcohol into the body, and the product plays a leading role, rather than a follow-up role after alcohol enters the body. It becomes a protective barrier to block the entry of alcohol into the body and more effectively negates alcohol damage to the liver and nerves.
● The product does not pass through the intestinal mucosal system or enter the body, thus reducing the metabolic burden of the liver and kidney caused by the product entering the body.
● NAD synthesized by the product can be absorbed into the body through the intestinal mucosal system to improve the NAD + / NADH ratio and reduce liver and nerve damage.
● According to the experience and research of industrial production of probiotics, the cost of production of probiotics is significantly lower than the current production method.
● The product plays a role in the gastrointestinal tract and directly provides key enzymes for ethanol and acetaldehyde metabolism, which is efficient and safe.
Product Usage Scenario
Our target customers are women who drink alcohol and their relatives and friends, especially women who have work or family responsibilities.
Possible usage scenarios:
For the drinker:
1. She may need to socialize and has to. The anti-alcoholic drug can improve her drinking capacity, make her not easy to get drunk, and better protect herself in the after-work drinks.
2. She may love drinking, but she still needs to go to work the next day. She buys SOBER UP® to relieve her symptoms after drinking and ensure that she still has a good state to deal with her work the next day.
3. She may need to take care of by their families and must relieve her discomfort after drinking through SOBER UP® to maintain a good state in the face of her children, and fulfill her obligations and responsibilities to the family.
Relatives and friends of the drinkers
1. When a friend sees a colleague drunk at work and wants to help, he may give her the anti-alcoholic drug to keep her relatively awake.
2. The drinker's parents may buy SOBER UP® for their child and tell her to protect herself outside.
3. When the children of drinkers see their parents drunk and feel insecure, they may persuade them to buy SOBER UP®. In this way, when parents come back from entertainment, they can also have a relatively good state to face the family.
Need Analysis
To determine whether the commercial demand of female customers for SOBER UP® drug exists, we adopted the form of field investigation for verification: We interviewed 50 female respondents in two major cities in China (Wuhan and Jinan) using random interviews in specific areas. We had an average of 4.34 minutes of conversation with each respondent and recorded 50 interview records.
Source of respondents
We selected several downtown office building areas to interview professional women whose apparent age is judged to be no more than 40 years old. Their profession and age distribution is shown in figure a below.
According to Ms. M, one of the interviewees, she is looking forward to the emergence of effective anti-alcoholic drug products. As a salesperson, she often drinks with Party A under the pressure of performance. After drinking, she is often drunk and unconscious. To drink more, she has to practice drinking wine often, which makes her very uncomfortable.
Another interviewee, Ms. L said she likes to drink wine to relieve work pressure, but it's a headache going to work the next day.
Ms. W, who is a freshman in her office, said she feels dizzy and insecure at the after-work drinks.
On whether to look forward to similar products, 81.23% of the surveyed women look forward to an effective anti-alcohol drug.
Competitor Analysis
At present, there are many anti-alcoholic drugs on the market, which can be roughly divided into the following types:
Drugs:
Product Pricing Strategy and Financial Analysis
Commercial mode
Drugs:
Year Two
● Product optimization based on customer feedback in the first year, improving the negating effects of the product towards alcohol.
● An overall product visual upgrade for product package, website, and advertisement design, with the aim to better product reception in target customers.
● Reviewing the collaboration with key sales channels and revising the sales strategy.
● The execution of a publicity campaign with the aim to increase the awareness of female professionals towards the risks of alcohol in business dinners.
Year Three
● Expanding the product line, releasing new products devised for drinkers of the other gender
● Setting up connections and relationships with offline retailers in other regions in China. Expanding into 2 more cities.
● Exploring new collaboration and investment opportunities to further strengthen company influence.
Our Entrepreneurship Team
What possible long-term benefits and risks will we bring to the local community
As far as the SOBER UP® itself is concerned, with the increase of professional women and the increasing acts of alcohol persuasion and sexual harassment after drinking, SOBER UP® gives women more choices in the workplace and provides them with safety protection. At the same time, it relieves the symptoms of drinking for working women who drink for entertainment, so that they can have a better state to face the next day's work and family. Secondly, our technology gives consumers a better understanding of the new development direction and technical inspiration of the anti-alcoholic drug market. SOBER UP® also supplies consumers with a more professional choice of anti-alcoholic drugs. As an enterprise, we will provide more job opportunities for society, reduce the unemployment rate, and increase market competition and vitality. Finally, the launch of this anti-alcoholic drug product and the existence of our enterprise will inevitably increase people's awareness of alcohol-related health.
However, there are also two aspects where the potential risks may be revealed. The first is the safety risk. The aspect of genetic engineering and its relating products suffer from public bias, as a proportion of people tend to believe genetically engineered products have a chance to damage their own genes. As a consequence, close attention and monitor of the possible safety issues of SOBER UP® is a must-do for our newborn enterprise, while we also need to publicize the true benefits of synthetic engineering. Another possible problem is that SOBER UP® does have a chance to worsen alcoholism for certain citizens, if they were to believe the product could completely negate the damage and consequently intake excessive amount of alcohol.