It is time for... transformation!

Walking througout city of Zagreb, I have noticed many abandoned buildings and empty places which can be transformed in something useful. From the small closed shops to the huge unfinished houses, the number of potential places is enormous. Due to economic crisis, a lot of buildings which were started before it haven't been finished, a lot of business are closed, which gives a lot of potential places for a enterpreneur to expand or start their business.

One of these days, I bumped into one small, closed Kebab place (corner of Aždijina and Jukićeva street) which is just calling you to open it again! It is on a perfect location, near to two high schools just across the street universities and tram nearby. I as a student know how hard it is to find someting new and delicious to eat during your break. Also, other thing that I know is how hard it is to find a job without any proper experience, in the time when rate of unemployement is at it highest peeks...

So, I am thinking of...

How about reopening the closed Kebab place, make it healtier, fresher, renaming it, and hiring students to run it?

It would be a perfect little place to go during the 20 minute break, with just few tables outside to sit and have quick coffe, or even to run over and grab some fruit salad, healty sandwich or freshed squized orange during the 5 minute break!

Plus, you would sure like to go there if some cute girl or boy works there who is just near your age! Success is guaranteed with that.

It is all about vision and connection which we get with a certain place or an object, it doesn't have to be right, but it has to represent ourselves and our passions.


Hope you liked it! Have a lovely day! :)

Hot sauce that isn't hot?

As I was starting to write this entry, I kinda caught myself having too many on my mind, and actually have nothing on my mind. So, as my Enterpreneurship lecturer Tina Lee Odinsky-Zec suggested, I asked my good friend Google to help me a bit.

So I googled enterpreneur trends 2013, and got a perfect page for inspiration!

Look at all varieties of hot sauces there are on the market:

It seems like hot sauce is one of the 10 fastest-growing industries in the U.S. by looking at enerpreneurial trends in 2013!

But have you ever seen your grandma or grandpa eating a hot sauce? Bet you haven't! Well, what is stopping producers to make hot sauces suitable for children and grandparents? It could expand the potential market a lot and give them a lot of additional revenues. And I'm not talking about mild versions of hot sauce! I'm talking about same intensive packining, same fulfilness of flavours, but just reducing the intensity of it a bit!

Children always want what adults want. So, it would be a great opporutnity to have a barbecue in which whole family can enjoy with variety of hot sauces. They would make grandparents feel young again by giving them something they believed they will never consume again¨!

Hope you like it! Have a lovely day! :)

source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/224977-7

Uninvited guests? Not a problem anymore!

How many times have you got phone call from some of your friends which was going something like this:
"Hi, we are in the neighbourhood, would you mind if we stop in 30 minutes to see you?" and you were like: "Sure, we would be glad to have you here!" And all that time in your head it was going like: "no, please, I don't have anything to offer to you."

You hang up your phone and immediately start to thinking what to prepare. Well, I'm sure that most certailny you have some vegetables, some cheese, ham and nuts at home. Why don't make a salad bar then?
It will look amazing, it will allow your guests to be creative and pick what they like, and they sure didn't have that already!

On the page e-how.com you can find great article about how to prepare a perfect salad bar for a party. I modified it a little bit and you got creative solution for uninvited guests. :)

E-how suggests six steps in creating a perfect salad bar, begining with choosing an ideal location for it (kitchen table, or maybe terrace if it is nice weather), decorating salad bar, preparing the metal bowls with ice in order to keep the products cold if it is cold outside. They continue by suggesting which lettuce to put into the variety of products, to have huge span of vegetables, and finally to have the dressing at the end of the salad bar.

It's perfect also if your friends are vegeterian in vegans, there is no need to do the separate dish for them, they will do it by themselves! Just have enough bowls, clean the vegetables, put everyting you think it's worth pairing up and enjoy with nice afternoon with your friends!

Hope you like it! Have a lovely day! :)

source: http://www.ehow.com/how_5763051_create-perfect-salad-bar-party.html

How far can it go?

In my seventh journal entry I will focus on how far can technology go and what is waiting for us in the future inspired by an article that I found on the Springwise.com. The title of the article is: "In Russia, supermarket checkouts will read emotions to offer personalized deals".

Every consumer is unique and a lot of things influence our consumer behaviour. Consumer's individual behaviour influences his/her buying decisions every day. Based upon emotions, people are ready to buy different products. Marketing experts are aware of that and they are alreday doing whatever is in their power to attract more consumers and to predict their behaviour.

Supermarkets throughout the world are already making personalized discounts with the help of loyalty cards, but Russian marketing tech company has gone even further. Russian company Synquera invented a device which will use emotion detection to consumers in order to offer them timely promotions.

They developed a platform which is called Simplate with a face recognition system which automatically scans facial expresions, loyalty scheme, purchasing history of a consumer in order to provide them with special offers.

"The sensors can also detect the emotions of consumers through their facial expression and can use this data when choosing to offer discounts - targeting shoppers at times when a small boost might improve their mood and help them feel more sympathetic towards the brand. The information gathered at the checkout point provides retailers with greater insight about their consumer base and can help them target ads at individuals either through their phone or digital bilboards as they're exiting the store."


Source: http://www.springwise.com/russia-supermarket-checkouts-read-emotions-offer-personalized-deals/

Ideas worth spreading!

One of my favourite TED talks is „The global food waste scandal“ prepared by Tristram Stuart.

Tristram's speach begins how he managed, when being only 15 years old, feed a few pigs in most natural and environmental friendly way and later sold them to earn some allowance. He got food for feeding his pigs from the local producers which were throwing their food because it was not suitable (wasn't in the proper form) to send it in supermarkets. It is almost unbelievable how much food is ruined in some countries just because it isn't appealing enough to be sold on supermarket's shelves.

Uper graph shows nation by nation breakdown of the likely level of food waste. He emphazies the fact that there is no statistical data to show how many food people waste per country. However, he decided to figure out his own way how he would measure how much food is actual thrown away. He took the food supply of every country and compared what is likely to be consumed in each country based on range of factors. Black line on the upper graph shows likely level of consumption with allowance for some amount of inevitable waste. Any country above the black line is wasting more food than it should be (most of U.S. and Western European countries). 

He also got to the conclusion that a lot of developed countries have 3-4 times more food than their population needs. On the interesting example with nine biscuits and how they dissapear he showed how from the nine biscuits from the begining we get to only four after throwing away them because of some uneappealing features. 

Where does all that food ends up?

The discrepancy  in how one nation percieves food and how it is percieved by other is huge nowdays. Tristram Stuart intrigued me in his speach to investigate a bit more how much food is wasted nowdays, and on the other hand, how many people didn't eat anything today.

As in this moment while you are reading, and just in the moment I was writing this, people die because of hunger. How many times have we throw away some of our food just because we weren't able to finish it, how many times have we let our food to go bad in our freezer? 

If  I make at least one person to think about this problem and start doing someting on it, I have made a lot. It doesn't mean that if people around us are acting careless, we should act the same. If each of us just saves one person, it is a huge number at the end, isn't it? 

Hope you like it! Have a lovely day! :)

Who is who?

 In my fifth idea journal entry, I will play a bit with my imagination to come up with several product for the customer I choose.

I googled random images, and pick this one that you can see below. I don't know anything about the guy on the picture bellow and this is the first time in my life that I see him! But let's try!

This is Mike, 25 year old boy from Stockholm, Sweden. He has recently obtainted it's bachelors degree and he's employed in one of the largest companies in the Stockholm. After a stressful day at work, Mike loves to relax at the gym and sometimes to go out on a drinks with his friends. He is a real hardworker, which often comes first and goes last out of the office, but his urban and stressful lifestyle does not keep him for being healty. He is kind of relaxed guy, with two completely different personalities inside and outside of the office. He is single, and has only few real friends with who he loves to hang out with.  

He lives in the appartment consisting of kitchen, living room, one room and bathroom. Mike's wardrobe is filled with casual shirts, 3-4 suits and he has special place for it's jeans and T-shirts. T-shirts are plain and in one colour, with no motives on them. His kitchen is tidy, white and looks unused, due to the fact that he rarely eats at home. In his living room, there is a huge TV and nice, white sofa to relax on. 

What products would Mike like?

1. annual membership for an exclusive gym

2. discount for the online dating site (premium one)

3. menu offers from the restaurant that delivers healthy food

4. Men's health magazine

What's wrong?

What's wrong?

I often tend to get lost in supermarket, meaning I loose to much time, buy a lot unecesary things, watch products and what's appealling me on them and what's not.

During my week shopping in Billa, I ran into product called Cokolesnik. It is a mixture of chocolate and hazelnuts powder that is combined with milk in order to get a baby food. When I was little , I adorred  (I still do) one simmilar product (Cokolino).

As I said, I love Cokolesnik's substitute product, and I still buy it sometimes. However, as I am always eagar to buy and try someting new, one day I caught myself looking for something like Cokolino and I ran into Cokolesnik.

Of course, this products are situated in the part of the supermarket where all the baby food and other baby supplies (dippers, wet tissues, etc.) are . This products span all has either baby picture on themselves, or some chereful, typicial packaging for that target group or some funny animal on their front.

Then Cokolesnik fell into my eye. With it's simple, outdated, uninnovative, plain and I could say boring packaging it truly stands out in the variety of simillar products. Packaging is brown, with just few pieces of chocolate and nuts on it, without any indications that catch your eye it is for kids. It looks like a product that could be popular 20-30 years ago.

Having that in mind , but also the personal connection that most of the citizens of Croatia who are my age have with Cokolino, Cokolesnik with a unclear and unappeling packaging lost a lot of potential customers.

As a possible solution for Cokolesnik I see changing the whole package, especially it's colour in order to get more appealing to parents and children itselfs. The new package should be colorful, with a genuine story behind the product which will encourage customers to buy it.