Honest opinion on business idea

Hi Gateway

Welcome to Flying Start ups.

I'm glad you've come to the entrepeneurial mindset and i genuinely like your idea.

I think this kind of service could appeal to a lot of people.

I think you need to think about the following :

Location - Obviously where you do this will be critical to its success - you'll need to ensure you have plenty of catchment of your core customers and also (obviously) places to take them like supermarkets, libraries, out of town shopping centre etc

Market research - there may be other providers or local cab firms offering similar services so do your research and look for unique selling points that you can do but they don't offer

Overhead - I'm sure you'l have thought of this but make sure you factor in things like insurance and of course petrol costs (given the current climate)

Marketing - you'll need some customers so try anyone with a connection to your chosen group of customers : - local elder age groups, old peoples homes, days centres, council facilities, GP's, charities. I would imagine that many of these kinds of groups would be happy to help you market your service if it firstly offered their clients something useful at a low rate and of course if it helped get more people to them in the first place then everyone is a winner. I'd suggest producing a single page mailer/marketing handout that you can use to put in front of both your service users, organisations as I've suggested above and also if you like door to door - you can get something quite professional designed and printed for a couple of hundred pounds (I can let you have details of the printer I use if you'd like).

Legal issues - I think for your core idea you'll need very little other than the relevant driving licence and insurance for the vehicle and any public liability etc but check the legal implications of transporting your demographic customers - are there any issues around the disability dicrimination act i.e. will you need to fit a ramp on your bus or have access to wheel chair facilities. Especially if you plan to extend the range of customers you support to the young diabled for example

Scaleability

What you're suggesting seems both interesting from a social point of view as well as an entrepeneurial idea but, are you looking to create a job for yourself or a thriving growing business.

The first provides a fixed or slightly growing income for you and the second could (?) form the basis of a growing and lucrative empire. There's nothing wrong with taking either approach as the economy needs both but I worry that this idea isn't massively scaleable without the backing of say a multivehicle bus/cab company behind you - to expand the business for each target location you'll need to replicate the vehicle, driver, market research, marketing all almost from scratch and it seems quite capital and labour intensive to do so. Not an insurmountable problem I'd be quick to point out - if the first one succeeds then you could look for a larger partner firm to work with to replicate your idea or perhaps VC to inject capital to expand.

Hope this helps - if you need any feedback on specific ideas feel free to drop me an e-mail at pkn4395 [at] googlemail [dot] com

Phil

Love the idea. I wonder if you could have regular timed runs, like a bus, but smaller. Warden controlled places have day centres where you could put a notice on the noticeboard (large type!) and reach the entire small community. They'd tell others too.
Anne/

It's a great idea. I'm not elderly (yet) but I'm not a car-driver, either. There have been many times in the past when I have wished for an affordable lift for me and my weighty rucksack, not so much to the super-market, but particularly back from it. You could do worse than simply hang around your local Tesco in a livery-painted people carrier, with a bunch of leaflets to hand out, and just 'suck it and see'.

Best wishes, and hoping it works out for purely selfish reasons, 2ndRateMind.