TMB LLC

Welcome to the Wikia page for TMB LLC. Our team here at TMB comprosies of three unique James Madison University Seniors, majoring in Marketing and Management.

Tim Whitebread
Major: Management

Skills:


 * Go getter attitude


 * Interpersonal communication


 * Ability to understand fashion trends.
 * Sales



Manoli Geros
Major: Marketing & Management

Skills:
 * Interpersonal communication
 * Time Management
 * Passionate
 * Sales



Brandon Cox
Major: Management

Skills:
 * Desire to succeed
 * Public Speaking / Presenting
 * Goal setting
 * Sales

Our Abilities & Resources:

 * Access to numerous professional & social groups
 * Knowledge of availabilitiy of "free technologies"
 * Relationships with professionals in varying industries and enterprises

Innovation Questionstorming
What JMU organization had a need for a t-shirt to identify themselves with?

How do we differentiate ourselves from other JMU t-shirts?

How do we build a product that will allow people to drink beverages in the shower?

Big Idea Hypothesis
James Madison University students and organizations have grown tired of the "traditional" JMU shirt consisting of JMU then the name of the organization. Thus, we have taken it upon ourselves as TMB LLC to develop and design a JMU t-shirt for organizations that is unique and customizable, that breaks away from the traditional organizational shirt, utilizing specialized slogans, images, and phrases associated with the individual or entity.

In regards to the, "Shower Buddy," we believe that college aged individuals would utilize the Shower Buddy in order to hydrate themselves while in the shower. The Shower Buddy has been designed to solve the need for a convient and easy to use way of holding a beverage in the shower.

Key Innovations
Our Key Innovation for our T-shirts was that we found a "blue ocean." We found a market that was not being satisfied and were able to provide them with a T-shirt that meet thier needs. What really differentiated us from other T-shirts was that our product was the only one that genuienly meet the needs of our market.

Our Key Innovation for the Shower Buddy was that we were able to solve a problem for our customers that no one else had been able to solve yet. Its simplicity and ease of use is what really made the product desireable to our target market.

Early Adopters
There really were no early adopters of the "JMU Soccer" shirts because we gave them order forms all at the same time, and gave them a deadline to turn them back in by.

The early adopters of the "Shower Buddy" were mainly people who really wanted something that would allow them to drink while showering. We came up with the idea because one of our friends was trying to drink a beverage in the shower, and it fell off the wet surface and spilled. Early adopters of our product were typically people who drank various beverages in the shower. The widest application of our product (or so we were told), was people using it to hold coffee thermoses while they were showering in the morning. People could use our product to hold any type of beverage container including soda cans, water bottles, coffee thermoses, and solo cups. The customer profile of our early adopters were people who wanted to save time in the morning by being able to drink their coffee while in the shower.

Resources
The following is the list of resources we used: -http://www.uberprints.com/ -http://www.customink.com/ -http://sos-ads.espwebsite.com/ -Email: nahinas@dukes.jmu.edu
 * Google Drive, created an online order form and spreadsheet of orders
 * Uber Prints, used to create some t-shirt designs
 * Custom Ink, another site we utilized for shirt design
 * SOS Advertising
 * Ashley Nahin: Artist with amazing talent

Our Story
Throughout the course of the semester we have had many trying times, at other times we have had moments of great success. The key piece of advice we can offer to anyone following us is to keep moving forward, even when you dont know which way forward is. We started out not knowing which way was forward, being forced to find a product and a market to match it. We ran through idea after idea, and after we contemplated those, we came up with even more ideas, eventually finding an idea that we believed solved an issue on our campus, that being boring, lame, same-old traditional JMU t-shirts. We started going forward down this avenue with an idea for an entity named, "What's Your Major," whose products were slogan and iconic graphic style t shirts directed towards individual majors here at James Madison University. As we were working down this path, we began to realize the amount of time that it took to think out the t-shirt designs, realizing that after two weeks of work, we had only developed two maybe three different t-shirts for three different majors. With this development we realized that we had maybe taken on a bit much, for three college students taking a total of 54 credits in a semester. With this decision, we decided we needed to backtrack slightly in order to move forward again. We refocused our t-shirt designs to market specifically to Seniors (The Gold JAC Card shirt) & Alumnai (WIlson Hall shirt). Along with these designs, we also made contact with the JMU Soccer team, who had had team shirts in the past, but did not have any for this year yet. As such we developed a shirt design for them and sold to the entire team. With these designs settling into their markets and beginning to develop pre-orders, as a group we thought our job was done. After our midsemester meeting with Dr. Wales, we realized we also needed to add a truly innovative product to our repertoire. With this in mind we began to once again play the brainstorming game, bouncing ideas back and forth, again and again. As we were going through this process we had a friend sit down and join our brainstorming session. He decided to tell us the story how earlier in the day, he had tried to drink his coffee in the shower, as he was running late but didnt have a decent place to put his cup, and it ended up spilling. As we were laughing over the story, Tim asks why we dont try to solve this issue. With our group finding a new problem to solve we began brainstorming ideas and with our ideas coming togeather we came up with the, "Shower Buddy," a cup holder for the shower. Selling a few of these to our friends, this product was the last for TMB LLC for the semester.

Lessons Learned / Advice

 * 1) Keep moving forward, even if it means moving backwards
 * 2) Plan for slower production times than the expected time given by your supplier
 * 3) Get as much feedback initially as you can, it will pay off later
 * 4) You have a professor(s) with experiance and knowledge, use them
 * 5) You have to spend money (invest money), to make money
 * 6) Think outside the box

Our Photo Feeds
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/TMB-LLC/404918662985157

Tumblr: http://mgt372.tumblr.com/