Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Have you considered sitting down with the Small Business Adminstration (SBA) and perhaps some advisors from SCORE?

You`re a woman, and you have a steady job, so it seems to me you`d be an excellent candidate for grants to build your business. That would likely get you some capital you could use to do various things. One option would be to sell a quantity to a university, then imprint logos.

On the other hand, I`m liking the idea of a blank white spacer, where anyone can put whatever they want on the "canvas." One of your eBay pictures shows an artistically painted spacer, and I`m guessing it was done by the student who owned the product.

Either way, having some startup capital and a business plan would perhaps make it easier for you to set up a strategy of getting a national distributor. Maybe no Wal-Mart, but perhaps someone who caters to college students.

Another option is to focus on college towns, then find their main suppliers for all products. For example, in Ithaca NY, there`s a superstore food place called Wegman`s, where they sell not only food, but also things like coffee makers, blankets, hot plates, and so forth. They might be easier to convince than a university bookstore, and could carry your product.

Walking away from the grants and startup capital, it looks to me as though you should definitely have your own Web site. We have some excellent developers here on SuN (check the Marketplace), and they would likely provide a site without breaking the bank.

From there, with your own site and shopping cart, you`d better connect with students who, as you say, don`t seem to read newspapers much. :-) Then you could advertise your site through blogs, Squidoo, Merchant Circle, and other places Kathy`s mentioned. But you`ll want to point people somewhere that isn`t as limited as eBay.

My thoughts, anyway....  :-) Cool product, and something that meets what I consider to be the main criteria for success: Simple, inexpensive, configurable, and in large supply.

And let`s not forget that very interesting story about the post-Katrina application of these inexpensive screens for field hospitals. There`s a market that`s entirely different from college dorms, but meets the same criteria: temporary, very crowded, requiring privacy, and moving around a lot.

You might try some query letters to the military and federal or local emergency services departments, perhaps addressed to their procurement offices. You`d sell the product as some sort of emergency screening wall to allow privacy in disaster recovery situations.