Cover Letter

Canan Vardal, Sayedul Hossain, Jeremias Batista Rivera

(212) 280 – 4467
The City College Of NewYork
160 Convent Avenue New York, NY
BASK
April 14, 2024
Panelists on Shark Tank
Shark Tank

Dear Sharks,

We, the founders of the app BASK, have created a platform that will shine light on small businesses. In the past, small businesses have thrived the local economy and tightened communities together, thus distinguishing themselves and providing for the culture of neighborhoods. With the monopoly of big businesses, the attention towards small businesses had significantly decreased. As the future rolls on, we view high potentiality that small businesses should come back to benefit the local culture. As a result, we created our technologically advanced app named BASK. 

This app features never seen before functions that distinguishes it from apps already on the market such as the history of the business and owners of businesses it features. The user experience will start off with the app collecting information from the user regarding their interests and what they are most likely to be interested in. This information will be used to create the user’s unique discovery page. It also includes the products based on the users interest and such that the app would use their recent wants/purchases/viewed items in order to create those “recommendations”.

As a user clicks on a business, they will be able to view the history of the business, what they offer, where they are located, and also a special link that will directly connect the user to that specific business. These small businesses can gain more viewership to their specific audience. Users may also be able to save a business to their profile which will allow them to maintain a connection with the specific business. 

You Sharks will contribute to a highly profitable app, BASK. We can assure you that this app will reach audiences all over the world and small businesses will most definitely reach out to feature themselves onto the app. This amount of attention will certainly lead to great success and profit for all of us. We believe that is in your highest interest. 

Sincerely,

Founders of BASK

BASK

App Made By the People For the People

To be presented on April 17, 2024

Canan Vardal, Sayedul Hossain, Jeremias Batista Rivera

Writing For Engineers

Corrine Shearer

Abstract

While there are numerous apps of today that are available to anyone that want to start selling products on there to gain new consumers. These apps come with many faults. These shopping apps aren’t as reliable and beneficial to both consumer and seller. Apps such as Depop which resell old clothing where it carries many faults such as the reliance/trust for the customers and the app. For example when the picture wouldn’t match with said product sent to the one who bought it. With the creation of our app, BASK, we want to be able to fix these faults and allow an easier and smoother process for both consumers and sellers. The goal is to get rid of that issue of dealing with bugs and the flaws in other apps. We want to make this app safe and reliable to our users in all the categories we offer such as selling clothing, food or even selling furniture. The way we want to approach the structure and formation of this app’s overall design is to first create the ideal layout. We want to include the products based on the users interest and such that the app would use their recent wants/purchases/viewed items in order to create those “recommendations”. We are going to work with a group of coders to allow this app to meet our expectations or go further beyond to allow these goals to come to fruition. The app will always contain links to the original businesses website if they are ever interested in said company. We want to be able to bring this app to any app store on both IOS and Android. We know that creating an app such as this is something that we should take advantage of as the world transitions into the digital age such as purchasing 1 item or multiple be placed in a BASK with a few taps.

Table Of Contents:

Cover Letter:                       1

Title Page:                       3

Abstract/Executive Summary:           4

Literature Review:                   7

Methods:                     13

Anticipated Results:                     15

Broader Impact of Research/Conclusion:         16

References:                         17

Literature Review

Local culture is preserved and promoted by small companies, particularly those involved in tourism and conservation. They frequently take part in neighborhood restoration projects, heritage architecture displays, cultural event planning, and traditional craft promotion. According to professor Mark Brennan in the University of Florida, in addition to protecting the community’s cultural character, these initiatives draw tourists, which boosts the local economy and builds communal cohesion (Brennan, 2023). In some rural areas, small companies play a major role in creating jobs. By offering jobs to locals, particularly minorities, women, and young people, businesses lower unemployment rates and improve the community’s economic stability. Local projects and activities are actively supported by small businesses. They make contributions that solve social problems and build community bonds through sponsorships, donations, and volunteer work. This engagement creates a climate of trust and encouragement for future community development initiatives. By opening businesses in these communities, entrepreneurs improve the general well-being of locals and make the community more livable by generating employment possibilities, drawing in investment, and boosting economic activity. 

However, small businesses in America fail. This is not something that is unknown but how heavily do these businesses fail? Well for instance after 5 years it’s only 50% of businesses that remain. After which in another 5 years only one third of businesses remain after 10 years. But why is it that small businesses all over America tend to fail so early on before getting to reach the full potential of their business? For most businesses the main leading cause is lack of capital, after which unsustainable growth rate and lack of market interest closely follow behind as leading reasons. Research showed that an overwhelming 81.4% of businesses reported that their primary form of marketing was word of mouth, by telling family and friends, following which most businesses tried using social media as a source to get exposure, with 49% doing this method (The Zebra, 2023). With over 500 thousand small businesses being opened every month there needs to be a more effective way for these businesses to reach out to the people so they can achieve their goal of financial freedom.  

It’s interesting to investigate the phenomenon of smaller businesses becoming more popular in the fitness industry. One successful example of this is Ekkovision. Over the course of just two years, Ekkovision has grown significantly, going from average around $100,000 sales to nearly $3 million in monthly income and grossing income, from 2022-2024. The company’s exceptional growth trajectory can be attributed to its strategic focus on manufacturing critical fitness supplements, like protein powder, creatine, and pre-workout, that cater to people who want to adopt a gym lifestyle. The key to Ekkovision’s success is its ability to build a community around its brand and create a loyal client base, as seen by the large number of recurring customers that stick with the business.  Through strategic targeting of a particular fitness market segment and prioritizing product quality, marketing tactics, and customer service, Ekkovision has successfully set itself apart from its competitors and leveraged emerging market trends. Nonetheless, as Ekkovision keeps growing, it can run into difficulties keeping up its pace and surviving the cutthroat fitness market. Still, Ekkovision’s success story provides a useful case study to comprehend the driving forces behind smaller businesses in not only the fitness industry but, with many other businesses of today as well, with important takeaways for entrepreneurs and industry participants alike.

There are currently very few existing apps that small local businesses can use to promote their business apart from social media. One specific app that promotes local small businesses is called the Slice App promoting pizza shops nearby. Following a similar concept, we hope to promote a wide variety of small businesses, not just a specific industry.  Restaurants currently also use apps like UberEats or Grubhub to have users view their business, but even that has limitations. Uber Eats is a restaurant

platform for raising exposure, reaching a wider audience, and generating more income for businesses. Restaurants may best utilize its features to maximize their efficiency. This involves talking about how to manage orders more effectively, optimize the menu, and use data analytics to make better decisions. Additionally, research highlights the significance of targeted advertising and promotion on Uber Eats. Appealing menu descriptions, stellar food photography, and satisfied customers’ testimonials all play a part in drawing and keeping users on the platform. All things considered, UberEats is a useful channel for restaurants to boost their exposure, draw in new clients, and boost sales. Restaurants could make the most of their presence on Uber Eats and take advantage of the chances it presents in the whole food delivery market by learning the operational intricacies of the platform and putting successful marketing tactics into place. However, since Ubereats features businesses who are already in booming business, it overlooks the small businesses who also wish to have that presence. Due to this, small businesses are competing with million dollar businesses such as McDonalds or Dominos for an audience.

Restaurants pay large fees to delivery apps like Grubhub and UberEats for their services. These taxes severely reduce small businesses’ already meager profit margins. For example, Giuseppe Badalamenti, owner of Chicago Pizza Boss and a restaurant consultant cites a receipt demonstrating how Grubhub’s delivery, commission, processing, and promotion costs resulted in a reduction of his restaurant’s $1,042.63 in food sales to $376.54 (Badalamenti, 2020). It is difficult for small businesses to properly compete when fees are this high. Because delivery apps demand significant commissions, small businesses frequently find it difficult to stay profitable. Small businesses therefore struggle to survive or compete with larger brands that can more readily absorb these costs. Furthermore, with greater negotiating power, big brands and chain restaurants can accept higher fees or better terms from delivery apps. Due to the unequal playing field this produces, small businesses are disadvantaged. Thus, bigger brands are given more prominence or preferred treatment on the app, further marginalizing smaller companies. Delivery apps become an excessively important source of consumer contact for small enterprises, particularly during emergencies like the epidemic. These apps provide businesses access to a larger consumer base, but they also have a lot of power over them, setting terms and prices. This reliance restricts small enterprises’ independence and makes it more difficult for them to expand on their own.

The future is in your hands, as the world tends to revolve around the internet and more specifically your smartphone. With more and more small businesses being made there needs to be something so small businesses can keep up with the evolving world. The invention of an app is needed in order for small businesses more specifically clothing brands to prosper. A benefit of opening an app is it allows for higher visibility to clients, with this being able to solve an issue that most small businesses face, with it being the ways they get exposure and the unstable or unreliable growth rate they face. With this being accessible there wouldn’t be a need to spend 7-10% of their gross revenue on marketing (Techalliance, 2023). Opening an app allows for more conveniences for clothing brands, as they can easily start mass shipping out products to their customers and showcasing new items and deals for their clothing brands without the need to spend thousands on the money needed. 

METHODS

1. Draw a layout of the design in the app and the functions each link will do and or send you to.
2. Describe app contents, what products will be promoted and how’d it reach specific audiences based on algorithms and suggest small businesses to you. 
3. Gather a group of coders, to split up the work needed to be done.

• One group does the interior design such as when a user clicks on a specific business it’ll lead them to this business personal website.  This includes what kind of face or products a small business is promoting.
• One group does exterior design. This includes a general home page, having the option to search for  businesses, having a personal profile page,  and a broad browsing page in which users can browse to explore different small businesses.
• Make the general overview of how the app’s color would be, our brand logo, where each sub feature (home page, profile page, wish list/saved business page, business category page) would go.

4. Create special links for user reference (app revenue). This includes how a user will specifically gain access to a businesses product such as ordering their things online or sending them to the businesses main website page. These special links are what will increase app revenue as the app will get paid to promote the links. 
5. Create app security with an app security team.
6. Prepare to publish the app on main app stores. This includes: Assembling App Store Information, Create a Bundle Identifier, Create a Certificate Signing Request, Create an App Store Production Certificate, Create a Production Provisioning Profile, Create an App Store Listing, Create a Release Build, Fill in the Version Information, and Submit Version for Review Release.
7. The way we would collect the data for all the businesses is to forcefully make them answer a survey in order to keep their businesses on the platform. 
8. Create special state-only promotions for small businesses or just businesses in general. 
9. How will we approach small businesses about joining/advertising on the app? We will already have quite a few small businesses in the app that we personally have connection to so we can create some kind of exposure of the app to the market. After some time, small businesses will be able to reach out and fill out an application form to promote their own businesses in the app. With this, we can put out the information according to the business and we wouldn’t have to go out of our way to scavenge for information. 

Anticipated Results

After making this app (BASK) we expect it to be the main source for small businesses to advertise themselves and their products. We believe that the app will revolutionize the standard of how people do their online shopping compared to today and help bring smaller businesses to light, as it would be a platform for the people, by the people. With the creation of the app it would be able to allow more businesses to reap the benefits of our app, as it would allow for business owners to take control of their lives, by providing them with a free to use app, in which there is a place to start up and have an equal chance to get popularized. With us giving small businesses the amount of control over their own site/setup, small businesses decide on how they want to ship out their products, as we are merely the forefront to highlight/bring light to small businesses. The app would be self-sufficient, we would receive composition from the ads, as well as a couple of cents per click on the small businesses url. It would take off the load of having to spend hundreds or even thousands on advertising and paying for huge companies to even sell their products on their site. There may be a case where a small business promoted through BASK becomes a big business. In our definition, big businesses are businesses who have more than 1 location/store for their specific business. For a business to get to that point, they must have enough exposure to branch out their business, thus not needing further promotion through the app, BASK. However, we will use that business as data and an example of why using the app BASK was able to get that business to that level of exposure. BASK has a goal of creating a free and welcoming community on our app, which would allow for anyone to join in and participate and feel as though they are giving back to their community and helping others achieve their business/life goals. We also believe there could be limiting factors to our app that being what we offer compared to other apps. This could be related to tik tok shops but, we mainly focus on the smaller businesses and boost their popularity and hopefully get that positive feedback to us, as even though some of these larger companies may have the same idea, ours is more reserved for the people. We believe people should be in control of their lives, and not in the hands of large conglomerates. 

Broader Impact of Research/Conclusion

A commonality found through extensive research is the discouragement of small businesses in the general market and small exposure towards the public. It became evident that there had to become a platform where small businesses have to separate from being in the same market as big branch businesses. With the use of the app BASK, small businesses will be encouraged to share their businesses and reach audiences they’ve prior been limited to reach. The users of the app will be in favor of small businesses and spend their money supporting the local community which will further thrive the local economy. As a result, the app will shine a light on small businesses and an era will resurface where people’s attention will be taken away from the 1% who own big businesses and more towards the small businesses who make up the culture and local economy of communities.

References:

• Brennan, M. (2023, February 2) Importance of incorporating local culture into community development. Penn State Extension. https://extension.psu.edu/importance-of-incorporating-local-culture-into-community-development 
• Qudimat, N. (2023, July 23). Ekkovision pre-workouts: Supplements worth trying?. FitFrek. https://fitfrek.com/ekkovision-pre-workouts/
• Zebra, T. (2021, March 14). Small business statistics in 2021: Reports and facts . The Zebra. https://www.thezebra.com/resources/research/small-business-statistics/ 
• Techliance. (2023, May 26). 10 best ways mobile app helps fashion brand and consumers. Techliance Blog | IT Insights | Software Development Updates. https://blog.techliance.com/10-best-ways-mobile-app-helps-fashion-brand-consumers/ 
• Starr, R. (2023, December 8). How much do small businesses spend on advertising?. Small Business Trends. https://smallbiztrends.com/2023/12/how-much-do-small-businesses-spend-on-advertising.html
• Kelly, H. (2020, May 13). To save their neighborhood small businesses, people are rebelling against delivery apps. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/13/small-business-third-party-apps
• Uber eats 101: The Essential Guide for restaurants (2024). Deliverect US . https://www.deliverect.com/en-us/blog/online-food-delivery/uber-eats-101-the-essential-guide-for-restaurants