A Team Yellowstone Project
A hackathon project - an attempt to help local bookstores survive and thrive during the trying times of COVID19 by connecting consumers to local stores that need the help. Team Yellowstone comprises of a combination of graduate students, undergraduate students, and a recent graduate. We met each other at the Hackathon and instantly connected as we felt that it is our moral responsibility to help local businesses by leveraging our skills.
Since the rise of COVID-19 in America, there has been a strong effort towards buying local and helping local businesses that are struggling due to the virus. A JP Morgan Chase study discovered that the median local business in America can only last 27 days without cashflow. We, at team Yellowstone, resonate with the goal of helping local businesses and wanted to make an impact on businesses that have not been helped yet. For the purposes of this 48 hour hackathon, we decided to focus on just one industry that requires help. Since our group comprises of avid readers and independent bookstore enthusiasts, we decided to build our platform for local businesses.
At the start of the Hackathon, we sent out a survey asking people about their book-buying behavior. The results of the survey provided us with the validation we needed - 78% of respondants got their books from Amazon/ Barnes&Noble/ other large retailers 85% of the subgroup that buys from Amazon responded saying their reason for going to larger retailers is convenience and greater variety 86% of the respondants said they would be happy to pay a surcharge that helps local bookstores stay afloat in order to help local stores
We knew what we had to do when the survey results were out and we dedicated our weekend to create a consolidated platform that helps local bookstores bring their operations online. Our platform serves the consumer as it makes the process of buying from local stores more convenient and serves the local bookstores by increasing their sales.