It's Who You Know, Not What You Know

Person 1

1) Who they are and what their background is.
Shannon Richardson who is a manager at the Target back where I live at home.

2) Which 'slot' you are filling with each person (i.e., domain expert, market expert, supplier), and how the person fills the spot.
She would be the domain expert since a retail outlet such as target is where I would plan to sell my product to the public.

3) A description of how you found the person and contacted the person.
My aunt knows her through work and gave me her number which allowed me to come in contact with her.

4) The nature of the exchange you have with the person -- what favor did they do for you? What is the return expectation? 
I called her and asked her about the basic stuff such as how many typical hangers they have to go through and how many a typical person would buy at a single time.

5) How will including this person in your network enhance your ability to exploit an opportunity?
It would help give me a contact who is involved at Target which is a retailer that I could see my product being sold at.

Person 2

1) Who they are and what their background is.
Bill Springs

2) Which 'slot' you are filling with each person (i.e., domain expert, market expert, supplier), and how the person fills the spot.
Bill would fill the slot of market expert since he works at Amazon in the Finance department and would bring knowledge to me about customer research for the majority of my market.

3) A description of how you found the person and contacted the person.
I called Amazon and asked if there was any way they could get me in contact with anyone who knew something about hangers and they politely gave me Bill's email address which allowed me to make contact with him.

4) The nature of the exchange you have with the person -- what favor did they do for you? What is the return expectation? 
I emailed Bill asking him about the sales generated from selling shorts hangers and the average amount of shorts hangers sold per customer to allow me to see if the people need a sturdier shorts hanger.

5) How will including this person in your network enhance your ability to exploit an opportunity?
Having a big contact at Amazon is always great to have since Amazon is one of the fastest growing companies and has recently dominated the market.

Person 3

1) Who they are and what their background is.
Sasha Ibrahem and she is the account manager over at storesupply which is a major shorts hanger supplier.

2) Which 'slot' you are filling with each person (i.e., domain expert, market expert, supplier), and how the person fills the spot.
Sasha definitely fills the slot of supplier since she is the account manager at a major supplier for shorts hangers.

3) A description of how you found the person and contacted the person.
I found the person by researching the web for people involved with the supply of shorts hangers and I found her email address listed on her websites page.

4) The nature of the exchange you have with the person -- what favor did they do for you? What is the return expectation? 
I emailed her asking about how well she thinks the new product would do in the market and she said she was doubtful since there are just so many different people who produce clothing hangers but there was an off chance that the product could work.

5) How will including this person in your network enhance your ability to exploit an opportunity?
This gives me a clear contact to a person involved with shorts hangers which is a big boon for my business plan.

This experience requires you to do a little 'targeted networking.' How will this experience shape how you participate in any future networking events? Did this experience differ from your networking experiences in the past? How?
This experience gave me some valuable contacts and some courage I needed to be able to spread myself out and make new and valuable contacts. It differed a lot since I had no prior connections to the majority of the people I interviewed so it felt pretty strange going into open waters with no knowledge of what was gonna happen.