(gentle upbeat music) - [Narrator] This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

(gentle upbeat music) (bright music) - Hello, everyone.

My name is Adam Butler.

I'm electrical and computer engineering student here at Tennessee Tech, and Eclipse Hydroponic is my idea to help feed a growing world, clean, healthy, and affordable produce all year round.

- Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

My name is Leah Brandon, and in the past four years I've been working with small farmers across Middle Tennessee and Upper Cumberland areas, and I've realized that people are just not connected to their food at all.

I mean, how many of us can truly say that we're receiving enough nutrients every single day to maintain a healthy life?

- I'm Jonas and I'm here to present the Compudex.

It's called the Compudex.

It's clean, it's repairable, it's fast, and in addition to that, it's desktop parts in a much smaller volume.

So the repairable desktop parts can be taken with you on the go.

(bright music) - Hello, everyone.

I'm Wade Naygoti.

Today I'm introducing to the PregaBelt.

A innovative, one of a kind solution for pregnant women sitting in the car, right?

Let's dive in what is a PregaBelt?

Just imagine you're driving with your family in a bright, sunny day at 20 miles per hour, and you see a vehicle in front of you just stop.

What do you do?

You have to stop your vehicle, you hit the brake, right?

The kinetic energy of your vehicle stop, but your own body also traveling with some kinetic energy, so you're forced to move in the forward direction.

This is happen if you don't put your seat belts on, right?

The seat belts are invented in 1959, almost 80 years back, right?

So how does three-point seat belt works, that we generally use around 95% seat belt you're used today is three-point seat belt, right?

So first point goes to your shoulder, taking almost 30% of the force.

Then second point goes to your chest, almost taking 30% of the force, and your lower abdomen taking a 40% of impact.

Guys, imagine the same scenario if a pregnant woman is just sitting beside you.

What is going to happen?

This is a sled test perform at 20 miles per hour, and you can see what is happening to that dummy.

Imagine the same scenario happening if you're traveling in an intent of 70 miles per hour, right?

So this is a image, I got it from gynecologist.

So the first image, you can see the baby in a nine-week pregnancy period and then 12 weeks, right?

At early stage, you have your pelvic bone to support that impact.

But after 12 week your pelvic bone go beyond the baby and your baby is imposed to the force coming out from the seat belt, right?

So these stats showing very vast picture.

In the USA, there is 170,000 accidents are happening every year, and almost 3,000 pregnancy deaths are happening.

That's six... Recall, that's as eight day per.

Okay?

Now to go in-depth, I have done the seat belt anatomy also so we can see how the impact is going to happen.

So I have a position, a seat belt in location one, two, three, and a speed of 20, 40 and 60 miles per hour.

Guys, no impact is good for pregnant women, not 20 miles per hour also.

So what's the solution?

Here comes our PregaBelt.

A innovative, one of a kind solution, right?

So what are the points we have?

We have P1, P2, P3, S1 and S2, right?

P1 is a point going to a left shoulder.

P2 is going to a right shoulder.

P3 is nothing but your point above your chest.

S1 is a point going to the lower abdomen and S2 going to the back pain, right?

So all of you know that a pregnant women sustain the back pains, right?

In the late stage of the pregnancy.

So we have implement that also.

So this is a actual pregnant lady where we done the research.

We have done the research almost with the 20 pregnant women, and we found that this PregaBelt, it's quite easy to use.

Why?

Because there is no stress on lower abdomen.

Resting belt and lower back support is provided.

Easy to plug and removable accessories.

So you can see the plug C1, so in case of emergency, just hold the C1 the whole seat belt will come up out and you can easily go in and out to the vehicle.

Comfortable shoulder and chest soft foam support is provided.

This is the cost of PregaBelt.

So generally, the manufacturing cost of PregaBelt is around $14.5 The sale price is $55, and the property are getting its $14.5 with each PregaBelt use.

Now, let's talk about the marketing strategy.

So we are going to use the four marketing strategy.

First, visiting the clinic, second digital marketing, then third visiting the workshop and fourth, the collaboration with the already established brands, okay?

So talk about first gynecologists.

So we are going to go towards each and every clinic, and we are going to talk about the advantage of our seat belt, right?

Over our three-point seat belt that we're going to do, so the gynecologist can take their opinion and can give to the patients, right?

In this design process, we have used help for gynecologists.

So this design is gynecologist proof.

Digital marketing, we are going to sell our product in Amazon, Flipkart, AliExpress, where there is actually available, and we have our... We are going to develop our own websites also, right?

So we are going to display some videos about PregaBelt, why it is important to the public.

Then we talked about this workshop is going to happen next month.

We call it baby and bumps in the Nashville.

So these kinds of workshop happen in each and every state along the US, right?

So we are going to go there, we are going to establish what's the safety of PregaBelt that we're going to display there.

Then we are going to do the collaboration with the FirstCry or Posh Baby.

These are the already established brands, right?

So in the safety segment we are going to introduce our product.

So the upcoming or new maternity women can take this product with the safety categories.

Now, what are the sales projection?

So fiscal year one, two, three, so we have the revenue quite there.

Now, the most important factor about this is survey.

So we've taken the survey, 83% people say that yes, we need to have the new kind of seat belt in the cars, right?

I have taken the survey with the price points also.

So people say that around $30 to $60 they are going to pay for the seat belt.

Now what is the future of PregaBelt?

First, licensing and establishing company.

So we're going to license the company in Tennessee.

Why Tennessee?

Because it's the second largest medical support system.

So we are going to use the supply chain of Tennessee so that we're going to implement our product there.

Then we're going to go for the US patent because it's covered a lots of sector, one US patent can take over the whole market, we can say.

Then we're going for the low cost manufacturing.

So looking forward, what are the future of PregaBelt?

About 14.7 million vehicles sold in USA.

Global automobile sector cost around 14.8 billion, that's a huge market.

Total number of newborn in 2023 is 3.8, that's our customer market that we're going to target on.

The accident involving a pregnant women is 0.17 million, that we already know.

The deaths are 3,000.

We haven't considered the fatalities that can go around 8,000 also.

That's a huge number to go by.

So as we talked about the PregaBelt, the tagline suggest, "Secure two future in one click, safeguard both mother and child with the PregaBelt."

Go for safety, guys.

Go for the PregaBelt.

(hands clapping) - With respect to the sales price, if I understood that correct, it's $48.50 cents to manufacture and then estimated to sell for $55?

- [Wade] $55, yes.

- What data went into determining that sales price?

Given the social impact and the benefit of the actual product, and the fact that it's targeted towards future mothers and health and safety?

It seems like that might be something that could be considered to be higher.

So was there any data used to determine the sales price at this point?

- Yeah, so we are taking the survey.

About 62 surveys we're taken with the gynecologist clinic and in the campus also.

So the price range they decide that they can pay up to $30 to $60 with the PregaBelt.

So we have a three unit in a PregaBelt.

First one is a chest belt.

Second we have a lower abdomen support and back support.

And third is your lumbar support, right?

These three units, when you combine it together, the manufacturing cost go around 40.5.

If you (indistinct) that product, that cost can be reduced up to 30% also.

So yes, within using that survey, and we have also taken one case study with the five-point seat belt that you use in the safety of your sports car, right?

So we had taken that into consideration as a case study, and we are almost done with the each and every seat belt manufacturing cost, and then we come across this final cost of $55.

- Okay, and one follow up question.

- [Wade] Yeah.

- So with respect to my understanding of what it is doing, it's transferring the energy of... That kinetic energy to other parts of the body for the mother, correct?

- [Wade] Yes.

- So what's the differential between not wearing it and wearing it as far as... How is that affecting the mother?

- That's a great question.

So we have taken the survey and we have found that when the pregnant women wear the seat belt, generally they go for the lap belt only and go for the shoulder belt only, because there's lots of pressures happening in the lower abdomen, right?

So with our seat belt, all the pressure point is shifted to the this bone here, at the shoulder point.

That's we...

Which can take a larger force, and the upper part of a chest where you're actually baby womb start, right?

So all the force goes to the upper part of the chest.

We have taken the analysis also, and we have found that 40% of the force is reduced by only 7%.

So almost 33% of the force were transferred to the upper part of the chest.

So lower abdomen and the womb is quite safe there.

(bright music) - Ready.

Hello, my name is Caden Holmes.

I'm a Mechanical Engineering student here at Tennessee Tech, and my idea is for an adjustable bagging rack.

So problem I've identified, I used to work for Kroger whenever I was younger.

Every day getting off work, my back would hurt pretty bad.

I figured that's because bagging racks are just too low.

I've got the figure they're two feet off the ground that's at Kroger.

Other grocery stores are similarly height, and my model here, you can see this is the actual height of the bagging rack.

It's below my fingertips, so me trying to bag at that height I have to bend over for 40 hours a week over and over again.

Somebody taller than me, they're gonna have an even worse time trying to do that.

What does this lead to?

Well, it's very uncomfortable for workers.

It also leads to poor posture, breathing, as well as poor mood.

The posture point's pretty key.

Prolonged periods of hunching over will actually weaken slow twitch muscle fibers, those are the ones deeper in your body, that's gonna worsen your posture even outside the workplace.

Current solutions are non-existent.

There's no products out there that are gonna let you adjust the height of the bagging rack.

There's a sort of a temporary solution.

Baggers will place their bagging rack one notch higher than it should be.

That's gonna give you a 3.3 inch gain, but it also is gonna leave that top broad not supporting any weight.

It's gonna bend and break the bagging racks over time and cost the store money.

And it's something I saw whenever I was working there.

My solution is an adjustable bagging rack.

Starting with installation.

It's built on what's already there.

It's very easy to install.

So your bagging rack...

I got a picture of the frame right there on the cashier checkout lane.

You're gonna pull your bagging rack up and then off, set the attachment on and then put the bagging rack on top of that.

No tools or anything.

Anybody could install it and take it off as needed.

Looking at the functionality, I've got a good picture of it there outside of the stand that I created so you can really see it.

The two rods there on the left would go onto that frame I had shown earlier, and then the wooden piece is gonna slide up and down with a pin that locks it into place.

Just to give a quick demo of that right here.

I can see that this is a little bit too low for me.

So I'm gonna pull my pin out.

Increase the height to where I want it to be.

And then set the pin back in.

This particular prototype gives an advantage of eight inches, but in testing that could be made to maybe even up to 12 or 13 inches, maybe even more.

Design's very small, it's not gonna be in the way of anything and it can be made smaller.

It's also very cheap and lightweight.

Currently, this one's made out of wood and aluminum.

The aluminum would probably stay, it's a lightweight metal, the wood would be replaced with some sort of injection, mold plastic, something like that that's also lighter and cheaper than wood is.

Some design changes I'd like to make.

I think with these design changes it would be fully ready to implement.

First would be in that first picture, you can see my finger pointing to where I'd like a spring to be.

That way when you pull that back pin out, it's gonna support the weight of the bagging rack, and instead of falling down it might be pushed to the top or pushed halfway up a little bit.

Then there'd be a spring pull pin on the backside.

(bagging rack clangs) So if this pull pin was attached to a spring with one hand, I could pull a lever and that pull pin would come out.

When I release the lever, pull pin would go back in, and the final design change would be magnets on the lock holes.

This would make it so when you're sliding the mechanism up and down, it's sort of just gonna click into place to where it should go, and that support pin's gonna find its place without wiggling it around.

The main customer here is gonna be major grocery stores.

This includes places like Kroger, Publix, Food Lion.

They all have very similar setups with their bagging racks too low to the ground.

These three companies alone have over 5,400 locations and there's potential for other customers.

This includes smaller grocery chains or individually owned places.

Walmart's a big one I'd like to have a model for.

They have 4,600 locations just on their own.

Building this, it costs less than $5 for materials for this prototype, less than $5 to manufacture I think is reasonable.

And with the design changes I mentioned earlier, I think $15 is a reasonable amount selling it.

I wrote $20 there.

Scratch that.

I talked to Taya and she's given me the confidence to say $50 is a good figure.

And then I've got, with those three companies mentioned earlier, in a conservative average of seven lanes, that'd be 64,000 units just right there.

This would be a total solution for hunching over at work for some 48,000 baggers across the US.

They're gonna be much more comfortable and much happier doing their job.

In the future, I'd like to make other models maybe for self-checkout.

I'd also like to look into how other country checkout lanes are set up, see what's going on there.

And then also potentially a model for Walmart.

You can see a picture of me right there next to a Walmart bagging rack.

They're quite low so I think if I got a model for them and have them as a customer, that'd be huge as well.

I appreciate it.

Thank you for listening.

I'm ready for any questions from the judge.

(hands clapping) - As a physical therapist, I love the ergonomic impact, first of all.

Just on the marketing, like I love that there's a ton of grocery stores and chains.

Have you thought about how you would get into one of them?

- Right, that's where I need help the most, I would say resource wise.

But once I have a preliminary patent, the one year patent, I think that's when I could go pitch to stores individually, maybe start with smaller stores and have them implement it.

That would also help with the testing phase as well.

- And have you done any discussion with local grocery stores, maybe smaller chains that are willing to just pilot it for you to see if there's kind of work out the kinks of it?

- [Caden] No, ma'am, I have not.

- Oh, but I love the idea.

Thanks.

- Thank you.

- Anyone else?

- With respect to the final design, 'cause this is a prototype with the plywood and the aluminum assembly, and I believe you said that it would be aluminum and injected multi-plastic?

- [Caden] Some type of plastic, yes.

- Do you have any idea what the useful life on an individual assembly would be?

As far as how long it's expected to last and how that- - I don't, but it should last much longer than the bagging racks themselves do.

The bagging racks are made out of also aluminum and plastic, and those are more expensive than my design would be.

- [Judge 1] Okay, thank you.

- Mm-hmm.

- So with the additional height in the picture with the original...

The way that it is in most grocery stores now, if you added additional height to the rack, would it potentially cause an additional issue with having to kind of reach over the rack and pull something heavier, like maybe a gallon of milk up and over?

Do you foresee any issues with that?

- I don't think so.

I can go back to that.

Let me see if I can go back.

Right.

So the picture, you can sort of see right there at the bottom, there is a space between the racks and that's usually where you stand.

So if this were in practice, I would be standing somewhat like this, with both racks on the side of me, and then being able to place them like that.

- [Hope] Okay.

Thank you.

- Mm-hmm.

- [Judge 1] Thank you.

- Thank you guys very much for your time.

I appreciate it.

(hands clapping) (bright music) - Good afternoon.

I'm Porter Davidson.

- I'm Addison Doris.

- And I'm Riley Bishop.

- And today, we are thrilled to introduce to you Sunshine Empire, a board game that is exciting, fun, and will impact children everywhere.

Sunshine Empire goes beyond just numbers and finances as it introduces communication, critical thinking skills and strategic decision making to children all across America.

- And today's digital age is paramount for parents to teach their children some practical life skills.

Sunshine Empire does just that by teaching kids at a young age resource management and entrepreneurship, all through the immersive experience of running their own farm.

- Imagine a world where kids not only understand financial literacy, but also learn to appreciate and love the farmers, and how their impacts and choices make impacts on our society.

So let's dive into how Sunshine Empire plans to change the world one board game at a time.

- So the problem that we face today is there is a rapid decline in agriculture in the United States.

From 2012 to 2022, there was almost a 10% drop in the number of farmers and number of farms in the United States.

Children are quite frankly unaware of what goes into farming or in agriculture.

And financial literacy courses are only optional up until the high school level of education.

With that being said, we created a fully immersive farming agriculture game called Sunshine Empire, where it's gonna spark curiosity about financial literacy and agriculture, and most importantly, there is nothing like it on the market.

If you do a Google search about farming, agriculture, farming literacy games, nothing really pops up.

Farm Monopoly is probably the biggest, but nothing with financial literacy.

- So for our customer segment, we really wanted to reach children ages eight and up.

As you can see on the last slide, our board is quite simple and the game is very easy to learn and very easy to play.

And so children eight and up are just a great customer segment to reach, to start talking about financial literacy.

But we also understand to reach the kids you have to market to the parents.

And so in the store and on ads, we wanna make sure the parents understand it's teaching essential financial literacy skills.

We wanna make sure the parents understand that this board game is of great value to them and to their kids.

And to start...

The perfect geographic segment to start would be the Southeast United States.

Just 'cause, first of all, we're here and so it's easy to start here.

And also kids here have more of a grasp of agriculture than in maybe other parts of the country.

So it'd be a perfect place to start our business.

- Alright, so for our market size and our go-to market strategy, there are 16.22 million estimated to be in the southeast market of the United States.

These children are aged five to 14, as some children may be able to play a little younger than eight, and children above eight as well will find interest in the game.

These two got to play in the game the other night and found it a lot of fun.

So it's good for everybody.

With a penetration rate, a conservative estimate of 6.2%, we are looking at about 1 million people to start with playing the game.

74% of parents have reported that they play a board game or do a puzzle with their child on a weekly basis.

So we foresee this being a huge interest.

There should be interest within the market there.

Our go-to-market strategy starts with market validation.

So once we get some funding, we really wanna get a focus group of parents, families, children together within this five to 14 age range, and see where the interest lies and also find improvements to the game to make it more engaging.

Once we do that and we have our final prototype model, we'd love to send it to some family influencers, as well as family blogs and get them to play it, show it to their following, start attracting interest there.

Take it to educational opportunities, utilize 4-H, FFA, some other educational, get it into schools with that financial literacy component, as well as taking it to board game events and conventions.

Those happen all across the United States.

Those are great opportunities to try to get your game on shelves and stores.

When it comes to building market interest in driving demand, like we said, we would love to wholesale the game as well as sell it online.

So that includes creating interactive gameplay videos, putting teaser trailers out there, having that social media presence, as well as just overall marketing presence.

To the volume of production, we're looking at at least for our first production run for that early adopter stage would be to create about 6,000 games.

So a thousand cases we feel like that will be enough to get it in the hands of early adopters, to get it into the hands of those influencers and people that we really wanna see take it to the next level.

When we're looking at our revenue, our cost to produce we've estimated to be $10 a unit.

And then marketing and overhead costs included, as we said, we'll be giving a lot of free games away to try to start getting that market buzz.

So that would bring our profit to $10 per unit at a sales price of $25 per unit.

We think it's important that this game is produced domestically as it's promoting agriculture within the US.

So that's why our cost to produce is a little bit higher.

And then assuming a market penetration rate of 6.2%, our total estimated revenue for that first run would be 10 million.

- So now let's talk social impact.

We want this game to sell well and create a profit, but we also wanna impact the world and change the world with our game.

So first of all, it fosters growth and strategic thinking and teamwork.

When Porter and I played the other night, it very much requires strategic thinking of do I wanna stay in the board longer and have more opportunities?

Do I wanna finish and make sure I can dodge all those negative opportunities?

And then it also teaches financial literacy.

The game has an aspect of a stock market where animals can sell for higher or lower prices, which teaches do I need to save my money and spend it?

Do I wanna buy low and sell high?

And also offers lessons in success and failure and sportsmanship.

In this game it's very possible to fail, and kids today need to learn that failure will happen and it's reality, but it's okay, you gotta pick yourself up and walk again.

And also just educates and deepens appreciation for agriculture.

If kids can appreciate agriculture, it is honestly a building block for society.

They can learn to appreciate that and we can support the agriculture business in the United States.

- In conclusion, Sunshine Empire aims to empower children to understand those basic financial literacy skills, as well as having an understanding for owning their own business and learning resource management.

With Sunshine Empire, we are creating the next generation of agricultural and entrepreneurs in this generation.

Thank you.

(hands clapping) - Love the idea.

Could you briefly tell us how the game is played?

- Absolutely.

- You open the box, what's in it?

- Absolutely.

- How does it work?

- We would've brought it in here.

It's totally laid out in the trade show room, so I believe some of you saw it, but so you have the board, it's a very simple board.

I'll go back to the slide that has the picture on it, maybe.

Okay, maybe not.

But that's okay.

So it has the board and you start at a start space and then you go to the finished space, which is a skyscraper.

It's very simple.

You either land on a farm space, an action space, or a sunshine space.

On a farm card space, you are buying or selling animals.

Those prices vary, and the child/parent who's playing, has to decide whether it's a good deal or not, whether they want to sell the animals or buy animals at that rate that is on the card.

The action cards are the external factors that you can't control when you're running a business or running a farm.

So for example, a predator attacks your herd or your chickens lay eggs.

So good or bad outcomes that may occur from those action cards.

And then a sunshine space, if you land on one of those, you get to pick whether you wanna draw an action or a farm card.

So very simple, a little bit of strategy to it, but really wanna make sure they're looking at those prices and seeing if it's a good deal or not, and then also having the fun and the luck of a board game with the action cards.

- First of all, I love that you mentioned that you wanna manufacture domestically.

That was gonna be a question, you already answered that one.

But flowing right off of what you said about customization.

Since you're targeting southeast, the southeastern United States in the beginning, is there any ability or any thought about customizing the board game for maybe a Tennessee version or a Upper Cumberland version, that sort of thing?

- [Addison] Yeah, go for it.

- Yeah, definitely.

I think it would be awesome to have customization in board games.

Similar board games like Monopoly, as we've seen there's like a million different versions, there's even a Cook Monopoly.

I think it'd be awesome if we could have a Tennessee version of Sunshine Empire, maybe you taking through different farm towns in Tennessee and maybe ending in Nashville, the Metropolitan Center of, you know, Tennessee.

I think there's just lots of room for expansion, you can make it very customizable and then market it to those... Each different segments.

And you can have Tennessee version, you could have a Texas version, you name it, it could be there.

So yeah.

- I'll add onto that with just a couple seconds left.

We also thought about expanding it to an older audience once we have the game developed, making the board longer, making...

There be a loan aspect to it with some interest to make it maybe like a 15 and up demographic.

So that's another expansion that we could foresee in the future.

- I kind of touched on this from the trade show 'cause I love the idea, too.

I thought it was great, I've not...

Didn't grow up in ag, and I think it's, you know, I think it's important, but yeah, we talked about...

I love your marketing strategy.

You went really into detail how you're gonna do that.

There are a lot of costs associated with marketing, so make sure you put that into your financial things.

You know, it's not as simple as $25 times, you know, 6 million people or whatever.

And then same thing as a parent of three children that we all grew playing games, make sure on the marketing that you put on that cover, that cover that the differentiator between me buying a monopoly or a Payday or all the other games that I already know about, that I grew up with as a kid.

So if I'm gonna deviate from my children and not get the things that I nostalgically played with my parents, then I wanna make sure there's a clear differentiator on that.

But I think it's a great concept.

Nice job.

- Absolutely.

And that is something we plan to improve with the packaging is adding a tagline here related to financial literacy and agriculture, because of that call out.

It's such a great call out.

- [Shehla] Yeah.

Good.

I like it.

- Yeah, thank you.

- [Shehla] Yeah.

- Thank you.

(hands clapping) - Please join me one more time in thanking all of our student teams competing today, our guest speakers, generous donors, and amazing judges.

Congratulations and great work.

(hands clapping) (audience cheering) This is officially the end of Eagle Works 2024.

Thank you for your continued support of Tennessee Tech University and its students.

Have a great Saturday evening and we'll see you next year.

(hands clapping) Yeah.

(bright music) (playful music) (gentle upbeat music) - [Narrator] This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

(gentle upbeat music)