The Pitch

· The AH-HA moment

Hearts minds wallet

Adams heartfelt story of driving to Calgary from Prince George in wintery road conditions at night, As I was bareling down a mountain i was coming up a corner and nearly sliced the top of my car off in the back of a semi truck with no brake lights on due to the driver downshifting to slow down, and I almost crashed into him because i had no idea he was slowing down. He obiviously had his identification lights on but i had no idea he was slowing down because his brake lights weren’t on. Thats when i realized that downshifting could cause serious problems for following drivers. When i nearly lost my life bareling down a mountain.

· Twitter summary

The DBS light improves vehicle and road safety by allowing drivers to gauge how quickly the ahead vehicle is losing momentum without ever having the driver step on the brake pad.

· Problem solver

o What problem are u solving

A major cause of rear end collisions is the instance where following drivers can't gauge how quickly the vehicle in front of them is slowing down. This could be because the vehicle being followed might be downshifting, hitting a puddle, or losing speed on a steep incline. The same problem applies to all of these scenarios – a loss in speed. One of the major and most common problems we are addressing is that of commercial vehicles. These vehicles are on the road all day and although being the most trained at driving (we’d hope) pose the biggest liabilities to stakeholders – which is basically everyone on the road. When an accident happens to one of these drivers, it is money out of the pocket of the company or vehicle owner for insurance reassessment/repair costs as well as the opportunity cost that goes along with a truck not on the road – these companies are the lifelines of Canada’s transportation and freight. Insurance prices quoted from an established business owner ranged from 8 000 to 10 000 dollars a year per truck and – If an “incidence” (not even an accident) occurs, they are subject to a very steep increase in sunk costs.

o Who is it helping

We are helping insurance companies save of insurance payout, vehicle drivers be a little safer on the roads and fleet vehicles owners save time by reducing the number of incidents causing delays and keeping them off the road.

o Who’s lives are we making it easier

Our customer are the fleet owners. These owners have hundreds of tractor-trailer units and, according to our research, spare no expense when it comes to purchasing safety equipment. These owners encourage their drivers to use engine retardant braking methods to save on brake maintenance costs; however, this method of slowing the vehicle down does not turn on traditional brake lights. We will be selling our unique product to fleet services who have many trucks in one single fleet. They will purchase large numbers of taillights due to them having a large number of trucks and also because they keep a large stock of spare tail lights at their shop so they don’t need to order each individual light as their needed. We will acquire these customers by offering a superior product that has more benefits than the competitors. We will have individual sales persons who will travel from business to business selling our product. Once a customer is acquired the sales people will then be responsible for maintaining the stock of tail lights as well as maintaining customer relations.

§ (Before and after pictures)

· Business Model Canvas

o How we are selling it

Our current Business model suggests that we not sell in retail store since it would up the final sale price, but we still need to ship the product to our clients. Since dealing with shipping companies, individual delivery costs and the overhead associated with that will increase our cost of purchase, we have decided to work with companies like princess auto, Canadian tire and other auto parts suppliers to promote and sell our product. Having multiple distributors will keep them from having to much leverage over us, stopping potential disputes from affecting business.

o Our strategy

· Differentiated

o show product

o sustainable competitive edge

Our product design - for residential vehicles we have simplified our design to the point of "clip and go", and for fleet vehicles our product is simply plug and play. Making the product as simple as possible to install will be one of our key features to attracting customers.

Our multiple patents -We have looked into patents that relate to our product and have found nothing close so we believe that our idea is patentable. With a patent our competitive advantage would increase greatly as we would first movers in our market.

New Market - We are entering a already existing market, with a innovated new product that does not currently exist. This will give us competitive advantage since there are there is no competition to oppose us.

o why your better than everyone else

Because no one else has a product even close to ours.

· traction/growth

o projected growth – see table (value events)

year 1 – sales are low because new product and new market. Most promotion is done by us. Expected sales are of 2-3 companies the first 3 months and expansion into 5-6/month for the next 6 months and steady growth afterwords

year 2 – looking outside of Alberta and expanding into Canada as a whole. Sales would increase

o name the people I’ve talked to

· team

Adam Klotz

Adam is in the general BBA program at Mount Royal and has worked as a consultant for business development of an analytical laboratory in Calgary where he was in charge of acquiring, and retaining clients as well as forecasting sales. He is proficient in CRM tools and has contacts in the automotive industry, as well as the manufacturing sector in Canada.

Karan Brar

As a licensed electrician, Karan can build and complete complex electrical plans and schematics with ease. Karan first started studying mechanical engineering, later to leave that and pursue a business degree. He has the innate ability to take the teams ideas and concepts and makes them into a physical prototype in which we can tweak and compare and giving DBS much more holistic view.

Justin Eder

Justin has experience in managing his own family business that will add value to our team along with a passion for the automotive industry. Justin is on the cutting edge of what’s happening in the auto world, keeping his "finger on the pulse". He also has to take care of the logistics and upkeep that go along with a busy north western restaurant; as well as look to the future. He will add value to our venture through his research and management skills.

· the ask

o advice, partnership money

$500,000 to cover for our initial investment and the losses we expect to incur in the first 2 to 3 years, due to our evaluation matrix this will get you 12% of our company and make you a partial partner in our company.

o Partnership?

Judges:

· Brad Johns

· Terry Sydorick

· Alice Reimer