My team consisted of 5 members, myself (CMO), Jamie Janczak (CCO), Carson Whisenant (COO), Darius Wang (CRO), and Mathew Alban (CFO). Together we decided to pursue the idea of The Ag Bag. Our vision was a clear cross-body bag that captivated on the current Lululemon belt bag, but enabled our local community to bring their bags into football stadiums. We wanted a way to personalize our bags, so we found adhesive varsity letters as well as pearl letters (our best seller)! Reaching out to my old graphic design friend from freshman year University Honors, Dana Dang helped us create vinyl designs that we hand cut and applied to orders using Jamie's Cricut machine.
We wanted our non-profit to tie to bags, so we selected the BackPack Program of the Brazos Valley FoodBank. This program feeds over 1600 students across 6 counties, giving them bags of nutritious meals to cover holiday breaks and weekends away from school cafeterias. Together, we had a solid game plan, a solid team, and a pitch to give to Aggieland Credit Union. |
Our team pitched our business idea, The Ag Bag, to Aggieland Credit Union on the first of August. We secured a $5,000 loan wih a 9.5% APR. Excited, we thanked the bank loan officers for their time and ran to our local Mexican restaurant to celebrate. |
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From starting contacting manufacturers on Alibaba.com, to deciding what our physical market booth would look like, our team had a lot of decisions to make. Working with Dana to create our logo, choosing bag colors, and ordering letters and bags working across time zones presented its challenges. However, looking back on this time, we were excited to begin this adventure together.
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Once the time had passed for our overseas product to arrive, we quickly began fufilling pre-orders. Setting up both our website and Square payment services, we were able to take online orders and pre-orders, and that meant it was time to figure out how to apply our letters, how to make our vinyls, and how delivery would work. While it may have started out overwhelming and challenging, we soon figured out how to apply all of our designs, how to offer custom options, and how to run our small non-profit business! |
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Through the semester, we set up our booth across town at a variety of local markets and events including:
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As the CMO, I wanted our social media and online presence to attract customers and bring in revenue. I also wanted individuals in the community to see The Ag Bag and recognize the company per its name. At the time, we had a domain theagbag.shop as well as a google workspace, google business, and email suite. Using Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, we began reaching out to friends and family to build our connections and brand.
Over time we also began purchasing AdSpace. After registering our company through a Google Business Profile and checking our SEO through our website analytics, going through Meta, we were able to push and create many Facebook and Instagram ads. We also began posting into Facebook Groups that contained our target market segments. |
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We began a #TagYourAgBag hashtag to encourage our customers to send us pictures of all the wonderful places that their Ag Bag has traveled. Over time, we were able to compile an entire gallery for our website and for social media marketing purposes. This not only created a community presence, but also enabled us to show potential customers that our company was indeed real, we were students true and true, and we were a hustling student non-profit. |
At our final IBE showcase, we were able to meet with all the other teams that were running through the semester, and present one by one the fruits of our labor to the bank loan officers we had met 3 months prior.
In total, The Ag Bag was able to generate $7970.47 in sales over the course of three months. With a loan repayment with interest, our donation amount totaled $4072.07! |
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