Prior to Hone, Jess had completed customer interviews discovering multiple customer segments interested in her solution. Jess had underestimated the range of hobby beekeepers in terms of demographics and so investigated further each market and their needs. Her customer interviews also enlightened Jess to more functionality that could be included to increase the value proposition.

By utilising the lean canvas introduced to Jess during Hatch she started to bed down what was required to make her business a reality and started to map out the costs and possible product pricing to bring her all-in-one inspection and extraction solution to market.

During the Hone program Jess focused on refining her early adopter market of women hobby beekeepers between 30-50 who find the extraction process particularly difficult due to the weight of the super. Her value proposition has become clearer through her customer interviews as she discovered that her solution would be used throughout the flow season at inspection not just extraction to protect the queen and deal with the frames and hive individually.

Program Achievements & Impact

Jess made significant progress in turning her idea into a tangible business proposition via:
• Further developing her prototype design including narrowing in on the transportation system of her Bee Buddy as a key feature for testing and identifying suitable components that could provide the wheelbase for her prototype
• Building a detailed business plan and initial go2market strategy
• Securing her brand name for the business and product
• Attending the 4th Australian Bee Congress where she was able to implement her business development approach
• Launching her social media strategy and new website
• Development of an e-book as a ‘pull strategy’ for engaging customers and developing a customer database