1_16_d_lokaleunternehmen_Jejak

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  Jejak

Inspiration

Everyone of us is now facing a limitation of everdays’ life including the possibility of shopping, limited to certain hours and also a limited availability of some goods, not online onsite but as well online. On the other hand we as consumers recognize that the local stores and restaurants are facing tremendous problems in order to keep their businesses running due to Corona. One of the most popular examples is the Hanover baker Mr. Bosselmann's moving video went viral throughout all Germany. We believe that this won’t be the only crisis people are facing in the upcoming years, not only due to health related pandemies. We wanted to develop a solution which helps us as consumers to get disruptive access to the goods of our daily lives and support the local infrastructure and save jobs and families in our surroundings. Everyone of us is currently facing limitations in some sort or another - whether it is restricted working hours, less goods available in store and online or the time we spend with family and friends. Whilst all issues are relevant, we found one cause particularly close to our heart. All of us live in different cities yet have one common denominator: Our love for going to the market, sitting in the cute café around the corner or buying from the butcher next door. We realized that the local stores and restaurants are now facing tremendous problems. Keeping their business alive in times of corona might even be impossible for some. A prominent and viral example is Mr. Bosselmann, a bakery owner from Hannover. His heartwarming video deeply moved and inspired us and we thought - this bakery owner is only one of thousands of business owners facing a crisis. We saw the need to develop a solution for now and for many years to come. This is why we put creating access to market for businesses, saving jobs and families and supporting the local infrastructure are key elements of our project.

What it does

Our platform services local stores and consumers by providing easy access to both vendors and consumers in order to sell and buy goods in a certain region (depending on availability and population) combined with an eco-friendly delivery system saving delivery costs, emissions and time. This strengthens our local dealers of all businesses (drugstore, flower store, utility store, cleaning store, shoe store,...) as they are able to sell their products to the people in close proximity, even if they can't physically visit the store. Additionally consumers are given the option to pre-order goods which ensures an optimised inventory planning and less waste at the end of the day.

Our platform is an additional value for both local stores and consumers. It ensures vendors can sell their goods online or instore even without prior online knowledge. On the other hand, consumers don't have to do without their favorite local produce in times of corona and even get easy access to new local shops they might not know yet. Combined with an eco-friendly delivery system which saves delivery costs, emission and time, we want to create a perfect ecosystem for local goods.

This platform aims to strengthen local dealers across any business (drugstore, flowers, utilities, cleaning, shoe,...) as they are able to sell their products to the people in close proximity, even if they can't physically visit the store. Additionally, consumers are given the option to pre-order goods which ensures an optimised inventory planning and less waste at the end of the day.

How we built it

We started with brainstorming in our team how we wanted to build our offering. Our team member, Marc being an entrepreneur with a lot of ideas already, had the idea of creating an eco-friendly virtual store some years ago. So we took this idea as a basis in order to develop our project. In groups we were thinking about both sides of the table, the store as well as the consumer in order to think about their challenges, needs and desires. Having combined those different aspects, we started developing our prototype of jejak.

We started a brainstorming session with all team members to understand the interests of everyone. We settled for the idea to help SME business owners. We established a business canvas to draft all ideas and combined various inputs, research and past experiences of team members to create one big business proposition. We then moved forward with describing personas such as “Till” the consumer and “Herr Bosselmann” the business owner and thought about the logistical side of it. In pairs we worked on challenges, needs and desires of those stakeholders. Finally, we added all input to a google docs, to make the progress transparent for all members. This already gave us a tangible idea of “jejak”, which we put together into a video and website.

Challenges we ran into

How can we provide access to non-digital natives, such as elderly people? How to provide access for non-digital native business owners? How do we ensure that the delivery is arriving at the customers’ house? How do we ensure the availability of goods? How do we provide payment methods for everybody? How do we pay the delivery people?

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of having developed a significant idea to face economic challenges during the Corons crisis in less than 48 hours, having developed a sustainable prototype idea in a small team consisting of only five people, which is ready to be developed and immediately help our local stores in order to survive. We are furthermore proud that our idea will not only help during Corona but is also a starting point for a longlasting change in consumer behaviour and a better world. We started our platform immediately (www.jejak.de) and are ready to go ! :)

What we learned

In times of crisis the most important thing is to think local and become self-aware of us and the people next to us. We also learned what is really important for our daily lives in extraordinary times, such as Corona. We learned that only together we can face such challenges but also get an enormous creative spirit out of these times and build something to help us now but also on a long lasting perspective.

What's next for 1_16_d_lokaleunternehmen_Jejak

We will build the website and app and start marketing our platform throughout Germany in order to get the customers engaged (stores and consumers). We need the governments’ support in order to motivate people to use this platform instead of e.g. amazon to deliver goods. We need radio and post campaigns in order to spread the information also to people without internet access. We need to set up a hotline for people calling to order. We need to set up a corporation with e.g. here in order to determine the regional radius as well as calculate optimal delivery routes. We would like to partner with existing services, such as foodora, deliveroo,... to get a higher workload and integrate their offerings into our platform.