- Università: Bocconi
- Docenti:
Fabrizio Zerbini
- Studenti:
Alessandra Melillo, Sara Fierro, Kayla Billings, Matteo De Rienzo, Nathaniel Joshua Karunairasah, Henrik Opheim
AURA is defined as a spiritual belief where your body produces energy that allows you to achieve mental tranquility. Many individuals suffer from mental illness through their jobs and especially during COVID-19 isolation periods. Mental well-being is a key focus of AURA. Before COVID-19, workers struggled to fulfill the need for a work-life balance. The COVID-19 pandemic forced a shift towards remote working and isolation periods.
During these isolation periods, people found that they missed human interaction and the change of scenery. Although working remotely gave them benefits like work-life balance, time to enjoy activities through no commute, and the love for freshly made healthy meals for lunch. AURA’s value proposition leverages these trends and needs by offering a mentally tranquil co-working environment with healthy, ready-made meals.
Our target consumer who will use AURA is millennials, specifically ones who are co-working as freelancers and at start-ups as they make up over 50% of the co-working population. Through primary and secondary research, we found that millennials have innovative tendencies to try new things, that AURA will offer. Millennials have their own income to spend and are willing to spend higher dollar value on activities for mental health, organic meals and an overall sustainable business. We plan to promote AURA through social media channels such as LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok as these are the most used platforms by our target group. We will also host an open day event with events and a discount flyer of 10% off their first visit back to allow people to see and fall in love with AURA’s space. AURA’s layout will have two defined retail spaces, co-working and food.
The co-working area will offer individual working stations, conference rooms, relaxation room, and a meditation area. The food sector will comprise of open refrigerators and hot counters filled with healthy and sustainable ready-made meals and self-service payment devices. Ready-made meals will offer a wide selection of food to meet dietary needs. All the ingredients used in the ready-made meals are going to be organic and produced in a way to limit CO2 emissions. This appeals to the needs of our target consumers, millennials who have a higher willingness to pay for these goods. The location of AURA’s first store will be in the north of Milano Piazzale Loreto, in the Nolo district. This area is in the center of
office building locations so workers can easily come and get a ready-made meal to satisfy their various cravings. This location is well connected to the rest of the city by subway and tram.
AURA has two distinct retail revenue streams, the food and the co-working space. The food retail revenues will be made from people coming and buying ready-made meals from off the street and people working in the working space. Through primary research, we found that people are willing to spend 10 € per meal for organic options that meet the standards of their daily nutrition intake. Through primary research, we also found that people who are working in the co-working area are more likely to buy more than one meal as they would be spending the day. We estimated revenue from the food sector of; year 1 (857,569€), year 2 (871,156€), year 3 (884,744€). The retail revenues from the co-working space will be based on subscription plans. AURA will offer two plans: daily and monthly.
Both plans will offer you access to the co-working space and receive a 10% discount on all food purchases. In addition, the monthly subscription model offers the possibility to join masterclasses in yoga and other practices oriented to mental and physical health. Through this information we estimated revenue from the co-working sector of; year 1 (58,608€), year 2 (70,329€), year 3 (82,501€). The rental of the conference rooms is an additional fee and an added revenue stream for the co-working space. Our operating income for both sectors are; year 1 (10,881€), year 2 (8133€), year 3 (27,247€). Year 3 will have a large increase because we have an established and loyal customer base.
In the future, we plan to expand our services to offer more mental health activities such as yoga, meditation, mental well-being talks and crystal workshops. AURA will also offer catering services for an additional cost if individuals rent one of the conference rooms. AURA also wants to make sure they are meeting the needs of consumers so new variations of subscription plans will become available. Lastly, AURA plans to expand to two more locations, Bologna and Florence. These two locations were chosen as both cities are the next highest cities in Italy that have our target demographic of millennials, specifically ones who are co-working as freelancers and at start-ups as they make up over 50% of the co-working population. Neither city currently offers a space with the deliverable's AURA has.
