Jessica Brunner

Hatch Program 2

31 Jan 2022

About

Jess is an IR and HR professional who runs her own business with her husband in Western Australia. She is an avid hobbyist beekeeper who is studying her Cert 111 in Beekeeping with the hopes of establishing a semi-commercial apiary with her unique product, the Hive Buddy.

The Hive Buddy is an all-in-one inspection and extraction solution that simplifies the honey harvesting process.

Jess has identified a gap in the market to meet the extracting and harvesting needs of hobby/ backyard beekeepers, whilst minimalising the WHS risks that cause many people (especially older ones) to give up the hobby. Needing to be lifted and transported, the average weight of a Super (hive box) is 50kg.

Coming into the Hatch program, Jess hoped to gain guidance and direction while establishing industry connections and finding a mentor.

Validating the idea

Jess completed 15 interviews and quickly discovered that there were many more customer segments to investigate and develop, requiring further exploring and different marketing tactics.
One of Jess’ key learnings was that the bee keeping market was wider than she had originally thought and with a few tweaks and multiple marketing campaigns, she will be able to reach a much wider audience.

Through her interview process, Jess found that many people had developed ‘work arounds’ to address different aspects of the problem she is trying to address. Many of these options, however, still had restrictions and flaws that would be resolved with Jess’ product.

Through her Hatch Program interviews Jess was able to identify further pain points that will help her improve her product and has identified additional customer segments that will widen her market.

Hatch showed me how to validate my dream and turn it into a tangible business concept. I am really grateful I completed the Hatch Program and am looking forward to where this will take me.

What's next

Jess has been accepted in to the Hone program where she will:

- Conduct more interviews in different customer segments,
- Fine tuning my design
- Develop my client 'capture',
- Register my Business and domain names
- Identify manufacturing - product & processing,
- Launch the marketing funnel and capture 100 earlier adopters