Once upon a time, I had a vision of finding a technology company. Entrepreneurship is the key stimulant that brings economic growth to the country and to the individuals, with sense of accomplishments. My expertise straddle over telecommunications, data networks, transaction processing, and information technology. My core competency lie in telecom and datacom networks, but it is hard to realize as an entrepreneur in this arena due to requiring significant capital investments. With an explosive growth in Internet, I've shift my interest to the e-commerce arena where capital requirement is relatively small. With dot com companies crumbling down in recent months, I'm bit receded about kicking off my very own e-business at the moment. However, I still believe that this is something that I'll pursue in the future. Here are some of the opportunities that went through my mind in recent years, and I'm sharing them with you to solicit input and to lure partnership. If you're an enthusiastic and highly motivated person, and wishes to add value to the opportunities please drop me a line at * scott@seong.org. Anyone interested including former partners are encouraged to reply.

The following is an abstract that I wrote in the business plan.

1. The Company

With proliferation of Internet, people are increasingly changing their lifestyle to take advantage of the new tool available at their fingertips. People buy merchandises, read news, trade stocks, exchange emails, chat, listen to music, and even watch video on the Internet. The 1hourcleaners.com will take advantage of this new communication media, and will offer dry cleaning services by receiving pickup and delivery orders online. The customers will enjoy 1hourcleaners value-added services of bringing cleaners to the customers at a time convenient to them at no additional cost.

The target customers of 1hourcleaners will likely be white-collar workers whom already have Internet accesses. It is believed that the customers will also likely bring additional garments upon delivery of order, which will result in better than two trip to order ratio. The drycleaning services offered by 1hourcleaners.com will be provided at a price comparable to bricks-and-mortar stores.

2. Mission Statement

The mission of 1HourCleaners.com is to become a market leader in e-commerce dry cleaning business by offering quality workmanship and on-time pickup and delivery services. The 1hourcleaners will benefit from higher return on investment than the bricks-and-mortar model, and potentially become a multi-million dollar company with relatively small capital investments.

3. The Services

The 1hourcleaners will provide three distinctive services to three different sets of customers. The core of 1hourcleaners business is to provide dry and laundry cleaning services to business and residential customers. The customers will place pickup and delivery service orders on the web (or on the phone), with or without the detailed description. It is up to the customer to provide detailed information such as number of garments, type/color, and special instructions on orders they place. For casual customers, only required information is identification of the user and time/date of pickup/delivery. Unlike bricks-and-mortar cleaners, the 1hourcleaners will pickup and deliver garments at a time convenient to customers including evenings as well as normal business hours (typically 7AM to 7PM). This will add significant value to customers who have difficulty making 7PM deadline. In addition to free pickup/delivery services, the 1hourcleaners will also provide status of active and previous orders, spending statistics, and other value added services. The 1HourCleaners.com will provide a user-friendly, intuitive and highly interactive web interface so that the customers can make quick or detailed e-commerce transactions. The 1hourcleaners.com will offer convenient and best-in-class services, so that customers can’t resist coming back to 1hourcleaners.com for dry and laundry services. The 1hourcleaners.com will also offer all services available at the in-store cleaners such as inventory system, customer service, credit card transactions and alterations. As an added value, the 1hourcleaners may also offer free email and web hosting to valued customers.

A second class of customers is franchise owners and business partners of 1hourcleaners. The 1hourcleaners will offer pickup/delivery franchises to individual entrepreneurs at a very affordable price. The 1hourcleaners will provide the entrepreneurs pickup/delivery orders, and entrepreneurs will cover the territory assigned to them and operate mobile cleaners independently. The retail or wholesale cleaners who partner with 1hourcleaners will also become customers and suppliers of 1hourcleaners. The 1hourcleaners will provide online transaction systems to the cleaners for service orders. This will allow their customers to view previous transactions, as well as verifying readiness of active service orders. The 1hourcleaners will provide email and web hosting services to business partners.

A third class of customers is equipment manufacturers, chemical distributors, and other amenity suppliers. These customers will place advertisement banners at the 1hourcleaners web site where our business partners have accesses. The 1hourcleaners may also attract non-drycleaning advertisements from other industries.

4. In the Works

Here are some of the initiatives I have undertaken, including attracting some of the very best people. The team has dissolved since, but I'm hoping to retract them for the future initiatives.

Initial Meeting Minutes - Our very first meeting.

Development Environment Assessment

Dedicated Line - Research Summary.

Agenda for 9/18/00 Meeting

Meeting minutes for 9/18/00 Meeting

Business Alternative #1

Vodaod.com

The vodaod.com stands for video-on-demand/ audio-on-demand business venture, that will allow residential customers to subscribe to movies and music to their home much like today's pay-per-view channel, but over the Internet. I foresee this to take off sometime in the future, perhaps 5 to 10 years down the road when fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) is realized. The blockbuster.com and other big players are currently undertaking the initiatives to build the infrastructure to deliver bandwidth-on-demand services. At today's rate, it's virtually impractical to deliver 2-hour long movie consuming 1Mbps (or more) constant bit-rate over the Internet at $3/movie. The current cable modem and DSL technology will simply not cut it. This entertainment business opportunity will be sitting in the queue for possible exploitation in the future.

EverythingDollar.com

The only reason why I hold this domain name is because of it's name. I don't know if I'll ever conduct a business over this domain name, but for the sake of availability -- I bought it. Whether to renew this name is something that I'll have to contemplate in coming months.