Business Proposal

My business proposal has been completed and submitted and instead of giving a the whole game away I thought I would give a short snippet:

The goal of Expat Map and General Store is to provide expats with an easily accessible platform to socialise with other expats when they move to a new city whom normally they would not know about, as well as being able to enjoy the taste of home in their second home.

My business proposal is to set up a networking service for expats living abroad, allowing them to communicate with one and other, give tips and information, as well as meet up and meet new people. Combined with this I want to set up an online shop that allows people to purchase goods that they can only get from their home country, “A taste from home, in your second home”. This would be a shop where people would select the country they are from and then they would be able to purchase these goods and have the items shipped to whatever country they are currently living in. 

The model

The model is very nearly complete there is one tiny part to complete, however, I felt after a long hard day I would share the photos of what I had done. The desk is assembled with all the components in place and functional. These include the inclining work surface, two shelves, wrist rest and concealed raising power supply.

Veneering/Staining/Varnishing

So the desk is finally coming together, just going to share the processes I have used recently as I find them interesting, especially the veneering. 

This would is the same would that was used in my more extensive prototypes. It has just been veneered using an iron-on veneer from Vale Veneers. It has been no less than fantastic. It is extremely easy to cut, I can lasercut through it causing minimal if little damage, and it is applied using a standard household iron! It takes seconds to apply as the iron only has to be on a low setting. Since they are real wood veneers they are also extremely easy to stain. I stained the power supply and the incline desktop to highlight that they are different. In the final stages at the moment, just varnishing using a soluable varnish before assembling everything together! Will have a final picture and the final concept board up soon!

Espresso Set

 On a totally different note from what has been going on with university work, I came across this awesome espresso set.

Parisian designer Fellina Sok-Cham dreamed up this perfect espresso-serving set, with a bamboo tray that dismantles to become individual saucers for six hip-to-be-square demitasse cups. Tiny notches that act as spoon rests in the cups’ top rim is a clever and functional touch. Will try and get hold of one!

Final Prototype

The desk design is coming along, got everything cut out the other day, its obviously a smaller scale than the actual desk and has developed and changed alot from the initial submission but is a picture of the legs that were made the other day, slotting nicely together, the top of the desk has also been made, as has the inclined work surface and hinges, these pictures will be up shortly.

Expat Map

Since my last post some work has been done on my business proposal and some interesting facts have been found out.

• In 2010 nearly 400,000 people emigrated from the United Kingdom
• It is estimated that there are over 3 million British Expats - however, in an article by the BBC in 2006 it said that it was estimated that there were roughly 5.5 million Brits living abroad
• There are over 200 milion people that live abroad worldwide.

So after seeing these figures I was extremely glad that I decided on my business idea and if this niche is tapped into successfully it could be a very prosperous one.

I also found out after contacting the Foreign Office that no one keeps a record of the number of British people living abroad, I find this very hard to believe, as surely if people permanently emigrate there are going to be less people paying taxes in the UK? If anyone can shed light on this it would be very helpful.

Business Proposal

All of the NESTA toolktis worksheets have been done and its on with the first draft of the prototype. The extent of research that is going to have to be done is only just becoming apparent, looking forward to a good challenge though. More to come after some of this proposal has been started.