8 November 2018
How to start a business in an unknown industry
Starting a business in an industry unknown to you? Our founder, Katy Alexander, sat down with Anna Jordan from smallbusiness.co.uk to explore how to make the transition.
Katy Alexander moved into educational card games inspired by, and to inspire, her daughter. She talks to Anna Jordan about launching The Remarkablz.
There were a number of challenges that I had to overcome when making the move from scientific publishing to educational card games. These included product development, user testing and thinking through potential customer segments.
A huge challenge was the content of the cards. The stories of female scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs are simply not as well understood. The info available through desk-based research was limited, making the underlying research very challenging.
There were a number of challenges that I had to overcome when making the move from scientific publishing to educational card games. These included product development, user testing and thinking through potential customer segments.
A huge challenge was the content of the cards. The stories of female scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs are simply not as well understood. The info available through desk-based research was limited, making the underlying research very challenging.
I have learned about the underlying issues that prevent young girls, in particular, from going into more technical disciplines.
I used existing science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) networks that I have to find talented people and really build credible content that includes diverse role models from across the globe.
I also had to ensure I understood not just the STEM sectors (which was my background) but I needed to understand the educational entertainment space. I needed to understand the market and the competition within the market.
Helped by previous experience
I have worked in STEM publishing and technology for 15+ years now and have had exposure to some amazing people, technology and problems.
This experience has helped me to learn about many of the superheroes that feature in Top Quarkz, the first game under The Remarkablz brand. I had contact with an international network of scientists and technologists who helped me with exciting ideas for characters.
I have also been fortunate that some of the work I have done with digital science has enabled me to highlight knowledge about talented female scientists or scientists from diverse ethnic backgrounds through Wikipedia hackathons – we held one last month.
Another valuable aspect of my day job is that I have learned about the underlying issues that prevent young girls, in particular, from going into more technical disciplines.
There is a lot of good work happening to address university choices about fields of study and corporate recruitment issues. However, I've also seen that the way STEM subjects are taught to children. The role models they see from the age of three show them what society says is possible for different genders.
Creating The Remarkablz with my daughter was a wonderful experience
Crafting the characters
Creating The Remarkablz with my daughter was a wonderful experience: encouraging her to engage with the content, hiding visual clues about their life and discoveries in the drawings and experimenting with the gameplay made it memorable.
As my experiment evolved, I started to receive positive feedback and interest in the game. Coming fresh to a product or industry can be liberating in some ways: I had no preconceived notions of how I should approach the idea much less the product design, production process or go-to market.
Early on in the process of designing the first prototype, I was fortunate to hear an anecdote from someone in the games industry. He had shared a considerable amount of insight into the game design process as he had experienced it through his decades of work. He followed with a caveat, 'Just keep in mind that most games that become big are not from the game industry so understand your market and what drives them.'
Coming fresh to the problem that we're looking to solve means we can contribute an offering that enables us to have an outsized impact.
Creating The Remarkablz with my daughter was a wonderful experience: encouraging her to engage with the content, hiding visual clues about their life and discoveries in the drawings and experimenting with the gameplay made it memorable.
As my experiment evolved, I started to receive positive feedback and interest in the game. Coming fresh to a product or industry can be liberating in some ways: I had no preconceived notions of how I should approach the idea much less the product design, production process or go-to market.
Early on in the process of designing the first prototype, I was fortunate to hear an anecdote from someone in the games industry. He had shared a considerable amount of insight into the game design process as he had experienced it through his decades of work. He followed with a caveat, 'Just keep in mind that most games that become big are not from the game industry so understand your market and what drives them.'
Coming fresh to the problem that we're looking to solve means we can contribute an offering that enables us to have an outsized impact.
I needed to understand the educational entertainment space. I needed to understand the market and the competition within the market.
Learning about the industry
I am fortunate that many of my friends work in the retail, games and legal fields. The main areas of advice they had were around setting up and managing a direct-to-consumer retail product, learning about how retailers approach stocking decisions and the negotiations that sit around that decision and relationship. I also learned about how to protect the intellectual property that I have been creating and understanding the unique nature of the educational entertainment space, which is a combination of two complex consumers: children and their parents.
I have focused primarily on two different sets of goals – near-term, measurable goals related to different parts of the business and long-term, aspirational goals.
For the near-term goals I focused on what I considered to be the basics of firming up the product, determining how to produce it and experimenting with how we could reach customers.
As an example, I spent a lot of time testing the product to ensure I was creating something that children enjoyed playing with and that parents would view as valuable. While the sample set wasn't as large as I would have liked, the user testing gave me confidence that I was on the right track to satisfy that goal.
The next focus was nailing down the production process and ensuring I could manage the supply chain – identifying potential suppliers, learning how they work, determining costs and figuring out how best to start producing as I was starting to build the brand.
From a goal perspective, it was very simple: find producers we could trust, narrow that down to one supplier we would run with, ensure delivery of a high quality product and be able to adjust quickly as feedback came in.
This article was first published on smallbusiness.co.uk
I am fortunate that many of my friends work in the retail, games and legal fields. The main areas of advice they had were around setting up and managing a direct-to-consumer retail product, learning about how retailers approach stocking decisions and the negotiations that sit around that decision and relationship. I also learned about how to protect the intellectual property that I have been creating and understanding the unique nature of the educational entertainment space, which is a combination of two complex consumers: children and their parents.
I have focused primarily on two different sets of goals – near-term, measurable goals related to different parts of the business and long-term, aspirational goals.
For the near-term goals I focused on what I considered to be the basics of firming up the product, determining how to produce it and experimenting with how we could reach customers.
As an example, I spent a lot of time testing the product to ensure I was creating something that children enjoyed playing with and that parents would view as valuable. While the sample set wasn't as large as I would have liked, the user testing gave me confidence that I was on the right track to satisfy that goal.
The next focus was nailing down the production process and ensuring I could manage the supply chain – identifying potential suppliers, learning how they work, determining costs and figuring out how best to start producing as I was starting to build the brand.
From a goal perspective, it was very simple: find producers we could trust, narrow that down to one supplier we would run with, ensure delivery of a high quality product and be able to adjust quickly as feedback came in.
This article was first published on smallbusiness.co.uk