Exploring a Business Idea: Creating Affordable Bird Houses for the Chinese Bird's Nest Market

Unique Aspects of Thanaphol's Idea

Thanaphol Virasa is a salesperson for a large Thai company. He has a bachelor’s degree in marketing and is one of the company’s best salespeople. It is likely that Thanaphol will one day become a sales manager if he stays with the company. However, he secretly hopes to start his own business.  Since he was hired seven years ago. Thanaphol has managed to build a nest egg of 5 million Thai bhat (about $170 000 Australian dollars). He is now looking for a business that would require no more than $2 million Thai bhat to get started. The rest would be used for operating capital and to keep him going until the company turns profitable. In the past, Thanaphol has gathered ideas by reading magazines that reports new types of business.  Last week, Thanaphol read a story that intrigued him. A man on the e Malaysian border has been building ‘bird houses’ so that anyone can get into the lucrative Chinese Bird’s Nest business. Bird’s Nest is centuries-old Chinese medication yan wo or ‘swiftlet’s nest’ ( yan= swiftlet, wi = nest). Swiftlets weave their nests from long, gooey saliva strands that come from glands under their tongues. The birds coil the threads of saliva into nests shaped like half a teacup. They attach them high off the ground against the walls of caves, abandoned apartments and now even small custom-built concrete bird’s nest factories that can be run by a peasant. Although the benefits of edible bird’s nests are still scientifically disputed, Bird’s Nest has been used for thousands of years in traditional Chinese medicine and cooking. Bird’s Nest is one of the most valued commodities on the market today, typically costing about $AUD4000 per kilogram. Currently these Bird’s Nest ‘factories’ sell for 3000 000 Thai bhat each.  Thanaphol knows that few people can afford to pay this much for a bird house. He believes a market may exist for cheaper bird houses. He believes a market may exist for cheaper bird houses, in the range of 20 000 Thai bhat each. Thanaphol has done the research and believes it would not be too difficult to differentiate his product from the standard bird house with all the same functionality. The two biggest obstacles will be marketing and production; that is, getting people to order bird houses from him rather than copying the design and building it themselves. Thanaphol believes that, with his background, he can handle the marketing and it should not be too difficult to find someone to handle the marketing and it should not be too difficult to find someone to handle the construction. Moreover, until the business take off, he believes he can continue with his sales job.      
QUESTIONS :  
1. Is anything unique about Thanaphol’s idea? Explain. 2. What is the first thing Thanaphol should do to follow up on his idea? Explain. 3. When this is done, what else should Thanaphol do? Outline a general course of action for him.