Business 100 the Telfer Case Study

Michael Konczal

Bus 100

6/12/17

Unit 2 Case Study

There are many important aspects of small businesses in the United States. The most important though is that they are responsible for nearly 75 percent of all jobs in the United States. And even to start a large corporation you must start as some type of small business. Also, small businesses generate nearly 50 percent of the United States GDP annually.

The Telfer’s financed their startup by using 50,000 dollars from credit cards to create Pillow Pets.

It difficult for budding entrepreneurs to secure bank financing or venture capital because there is a huge risk for both the small business and the banks that the business may fail. That is why the banks charge high interest rates because of the high amount of risk.

An intrapreneur is someone within a company who encourages product development and marketing. This is different than an entrepreneur because an entrepreneur does not promote development or marketing within a company but rather creates a company or business based on their product.

The notion of taking an existing idea and making it better relates to the successful launch of Pillow Pets because the Telfer’s already saw that there was a market for pillows and stuffed animals. But they saw that there could be a market for not only children but also teens and even the elderly for these Pillow Pets. And even though this product started by only selling stuffed animal pillows it expanded to including sports teams and even Disney products.

My friends and I developed a product for our engineering class last semester. It was a GPS device that one could implement into their car that would warn the driver of different rules or laws that must be implemented in different states.