Would a Laptop be a Way to Express your Identity?

[Consolation]

I have an idea came up after reading 13 ways of finding 'fastlane' ideas in Unscripted .
(You may skim-read it.)

#8: VALUE ARBITRAGE : the direct, straightforward approach to value creation, the mechanism behind value arbitrage is simply adding value. Example, a home investor purchases and remodels a fixer-upper—adding new carpets, kitchen cabinets, paint, fresh landscaping— the value-added parts will exceed the sum.

#10: MARKETING ARBITRAGE : taking an underexposed or under-leveraged asset and using it more effectively. ...there are thousands of products out there that have the potential for profit...example, a clever marketer took a little-known household gadget and humorously advertised it to the masses...renamed it in a double entendre, repackaged and remarketed it via viral video..a scalable asset was created...the world is full of shitty marketers, bad salesmen, and poor communicators. You can create the greatest product on the planet and no one will know about it with poor marketing.

I am 23 years old, I started wearing glasses when I was 15 years old. The optometrist at that time told me that my eyes had worsened since the past 2 years. REASON: Computers!
I mentioned the story because I don't want to use the term-geek, nerd, hacker, or etc; and I am not holding any I.T related job now. Simply put my core knowledge/background is in I.T field. Now let's get to the idea.

What's the idea came up from #8: Value Arbitrage? Sell used/refurbished laptop. And #10: Marketing arbitrage? Market it (laptop) to university students.

Selling used laptop? Seriously, does the world needs another one?. I did the homework. I found out:

- most of the soon-to-be-competitors out there compromised only on one thing; price.
(Well, it's a used/refurbished laptop anyway).

- the most common USP: free software packages. You named it; Photoshop, GTA5, AutoCAD. (It's easy to get this thing for free on the Internet.)

The value I planned to offers - a customized laptop, specifically; painted hardware and software optimized like this:





Why on earth am I choosing the university students as prospects/customers? This goes back to my question. It's the psychology of the students that I found:

- that, they are growing up i.e. aspiring to be an the best engineer, the best biologist

- care about how others perceive them, externally

- they want to be associated with groups that share the same value they admire (e.g; class 1 wear self printed t-shirt A, class 2 wear self printed t-shirt B)

My idea is to bring all of these things put into the most common workstation that every university students have - their laptops.

Actually, we all possessed those pschology I mentioned of but not as prevalent as university students. I don't mean this in a bad way.

As a Fastlaner/Unscripted entrepreneur, which is an identity; a mental framework that propels you to success.

What is your thought on this? Would you code your website using this? Would this be your workstation?

 

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[Kaleb]

Why buy this from you when I can go to a skin website and upload my own image?

 

[Argue]

What need does this solve?

 

[DrunkFish]

I mean is this like a some how customized windows 10? also, as someone else mentioned, people do this with skins

 

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[Consolation]

Why buy this from you when I can go to a skin website and upload my own image?

Yeah Your're right. I thought of that too. Yes. You can do that on your own.

But, how nice it is? That's a matter of creativity. It's immeasurable. And there's also a sense of accomplishment when you do it on your own.

Second, see this process of skinning- Open browser, search inspiration, download themes, download software (hope it's free), install everything.

How about painting/spraying the laptop? Shop airbrush, pick right color. start painting, wait till dry.

That's a long way (although, you feel happy doing it) than the path of least resistance; Open browser, shop it online. Get lazy and laptop arrived.

 

[ApparentHorizon]

I don't want to use the term-geek, nerd, hacker, or etc;

Like that's a bad thing

CompSci student's aren't going to buy refurbished. We know how the general public treats their computers.

Customization is out. Maybe still prevalent in middle schools, but not above that. When new products come out...cell phones, consumer grade laptops, etc., is when they introduce customization. Then gradually move to a few options.

Ringtones? 20% use default tones now, and the rest have it on vibrate.

Remember rainmeter? It was all the rage a couple of years back. Now it's app UIs.

Here's one for you:

Stop Win 10 from auto updating and auto restarting. The hoops I had to jump through to get that fixed was ridiculous. Even as a power user. I've never considered switching to a Mac before this, but MS sure as hell make a compelling case.

 

[Argue]

Like that's a bad thing

CompSci student's aren't going to buy refurbished. We know how the general public treats their computers.

Customization is out. Maybe still prevalent in middle schools, but not above that. When new products come out...cell phones, consumer grade laptops, etc., is when they introduce customization. Then gradually move to a few options.

Ringtones? 20% use default tones now, and the rest have it on vibrate.

Remember rainmeter? It was all the rage a couple of years back. Now it's app UIs.

Here's one for you:

Stop Win 10 from auto updating and auto restarting. The hoops I had to jump through to get that fixed was ridiculous. Even as a power user. I've never considered switching to a Mac before this, but MS sure as hell make a compelling case.

Nice post. This is pretty much your market research right here, OP.

P.S. Get a Mac

 

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[NateKruse]

the most common USP: free software packages. You named it; Photoshop, GTA5, AutoCAD. (It's easy to get this thing for free on the Internet.)

Would this be pirated software? If so, please refer to the following thread.

Fake It Until You Make It - Where Is The Integrity Line?

 

[ApparentHorizon]

P.S. Get a Mac

I was about to, but then APPL made the BRILLIANT decision to use AMD gfx cards.

 

[Kaleb]

I was about to, but then APPL made the BRILLIANT decision to use AMD gfx cards.

You could build a "hackintosh" and use any Nvidia card of your choosing...that is until they decide to stop supporting Mac with drivers.

 

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[Consolation]

Would this be pirated software? If so, please refer to the following thread.

Fake It Until You Make It - Where Is The Integrity Line?

Yeah. No doubt. I'm not going to copy them.

 

[Consolation]

CompSci student's aren't going to buy refurbished.

Not my market target. Yet. This would be a problem when I start scaling/growing.

We know how the general public treats their computers.

Welcome to my country mate. Where people type 'google' on address bar browser instead of searching their desired info directly on it. Default homepage: google.com

Stop Win 10 from auto updating and auto restarting. The hoops I had to jump through to get that fixed was ridiculous. Even as a power user.

Nice post. This is pretty much your market research right here, OP.

Hell yeah.

 

[Consolation]

What need does this solve?

Are you referring to CENTS? Because the Commandment of Needs is not limited to solutions:

The Commandment of Need states that if you own a controlled and entry-barred enterprise that provides relative value, satisfying needs
or wants, you will win growth, profits, and possibly, passive income for life.

A car brings you from A to B.
A Ferrari brings you pride, ego, accomplishment, satisfaction.

You just made me refer back the book. And now I'm rereading it.

 

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[Argue]

Are you referring to CENTS? Because the Commandment of Needs is not limited to solutions:

The Commandment of Need states that if you own a controlled and entry-barred enterprise that provides relative value, satisfying needs
or wants, you will win growth, profits, and possibly, passive income for life.

A car brings you from A to B.
A Ferrari brings you pride, ego, accomplishment, satisfaction.

You just made me refer back the book. And now I'm rereading it.

In my humble opinion, I don’t think this idea fulfills relative value, satisfies needs, or provides wants.

Like @ApparentHorizon said, customization is out.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Apple and Microsoft sell laptops/tablets in multiple colors as a fashion statement. So you are right that fashionable colors are cool! With a new machine from $400, there's not much room at the bottom of the market to scrape together something for people with no money. And as others pointed out, adding pirated software adds no value to hardware.


Here's a local thrift store that does something similar to what you had in mind. They don't need to make a profit, this is just to clear out donated inventory rebuilt by their volunteers. Hard to compete with these prices, even if you can offer more fashionable colors.


Is there a way you can do something with computers, that helps people who have lots of money to spend? "I'll sell to people who have no money and no loyalty if someone else is one penny cheaper, and I'll make it up in volume and in loyalty to my brand name." That seems like a very hard way to make a little bit of money.

The second I have the funds, I'm going to buy a new high-end portable machine that's extremely powerful for software development and video editing. New hardware that nobody else has ever touched or typed on, that has a full warranty. And it will look as boring and businesslike as possible, so that it will probably still be on the table at the coffee shop when I return with my refill. A forum logo strap to hang from my briefcase might be nice. No way would I want that giant ad banner on the laptop lid. But, I'm not in your target market.

 

[lowtek]

Not sure there's a huge market for it. Look around at all the people sporting macbooks - zero customization there and indeed, they want the shiny logo on their sub par hardware. "They just work"... unless you get a crumb in the keyboard.

For me, I'm the type of person who would buy a system 76 laptop. Win10 is out the door with its intrinsic spyware (though I do have a surface book from before I knew how shitty win10 is), and mac is a non starter. I'm part of a very tiny minority market, but I would pay a markup for the testing to know that all the components in the laptop would work with Linux out of the box.

An even smaller niche market are those that value free/open source stuff with no proprietary drivers. Think the libreboot.

 

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[Xeon]

A car brings you from A to B. A Ferrari brings you pride, ego, accomplishment, satisfaction.

But here's the thing : if you're a new brand, your brand is not going to be able to provide pride, ego and accomplishment to whoever buys your product, unless you've celebrity connections and you've the $ to sustain that for a long time (a mention from Kayne West is not going to make the company last, will work short term but once the hype dies out....)

It's like, I can buy a US$250 Adidas shoe and proudly wear it on the street and feel like I'm better than everyone, but would I buy a US$250 made-in-China nameless shoe and still be proud of that? LOL no, wouldn't even spend that money unless that made-in-China brand has been celebrated and endorse by celebrities all over the world.

Like what ApparentHorizon said, customization is out. If I buy a iMac, I want everyone to see that sleek silver exterior with that posh and elite Apple logo. I wouldn't want to cover all that up!

Look at this Lambo:

No Lambo owner in his right mind would do this!

Maybe if you really want to get into this field, research custom gaming high-end laptops instead.
See these guys: www.aftershockpc.com

They do decals/skins on the side but their main business is powerful laptop customization. 7+ years back, I bought one from them and filled it up with 24 GB RAM, something many established laptop makers can't do (since during that time, I remember they max out at 16 GB).

Maybe you can provide even more value than them, at a better price? Not sure if your country has something like that, then who knows, you can try one.
Take an idea from another country and sell it locally in your own. Delivery times and support will be much better.