Hello all, this is my first post!
Joy is a comedy-drama film created in 2015. The movie stars several well-known actors including, but not limited to, Jennifer Lawrence (Joy Mangano), Robert De Niro (Rudy Mangano), and Bradley Cooper (Neil Walker). The movie is about Joy, an inventor and entrepreneur, fighting to make her dreams come true. If you have never seen the movie, I would definitely recommend watching it, as it's very interesting when it comes to business and based off of a true story.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Joy includes several important ideologies in business. Entrepreneurship, obtaining patents, promotion, marketing, manufacturing, embezzlement, and enterprise are all themes I was able to point out in the movie. Also, the universal business movie theme, never give up, is present. Even though it can be corny, it's pretty vital to the journey that Joy takes.
Promotion and marketing are the points that stood out the most to me. Lawrence's character Joy has always had a knack for thinking up new inventions. In the movie she creates a new kind of mop that is greater than your standard mop. The mop holds a few revolutionary features: removable and machine washable head, self wringing, and super absorbable. The idea itself is genius and sounds like it would be an easy purchase for consumers. However, it's hard to show a consumer these features without being face to face with them. This is Joy's greatest struggle when trying to kickstart her product. Joy first tried to sell her product in the parking lot of a K-Mart by demonstrating the product to people coming in and out of the store. Besides the fact that this is illegal, people were skeptical of a lady outside selling mops. Joy even tried to sell mops to local stores to put on their shelves but they weren't interested in it either.
After failed promotion and marketing attempts, Joy and her team decided to try and sell the design of the product to a large mop manufacturer and distributer. This attempt failed as well. Joy's mop cost $19.95. This is a high price for a mop. Joy's counter to this was that you would never have to buy another mop because her product was high quality. The problem is, the heavy hitters in the mop market would rather have customers buy 20 $5 mops, then them only have to buy 1 $20 mop. These turn of events lead Joy desperate to find a solution. Joy was left wondering what to do. She needed to find a way to market her product, promote the features, and sell directly to a customer.
Lone behold, just as Joy was sinking, a lifejacket was thrown into the water. A very fortunate friend of her ex-husband was able to get her into a meeting with a man named Neil Walker. Walker happens to be an executive of Quality, Value, and Convenience. Also known as QVC, the most famous shopping TV channel of all time. After this, Joy was really able to shine as an entrepreneur. She was able to promote her product through QVC and sell a numerous amounts of mops. Call the timing lucky, but at the end of the day Joy had to sell herself just as much as the product. Joy was able to create a relationship with society in order to be successful. This is a great lesson to all entrepreneurs. Just because you have a valuable product, doesn't mean it will be an overnight success. You have to go down every alley way and fight out of every corner to be successful. This experience allowed Joy to begin building an enterprise, creating her own new products and promoting other aspiring entrepreneurs and inventors.
The interactions and relationship between Joy and society highlighted above is the most important part of this whole story. Therefore, I would like to elaborate on it more. It's like a game of tug of war in this situation. Every time Joy would see some progress, society would pull back again. As a whole though, society isn't just the consumer, which brings me to my next point. The rules, regulations, and process of bringing a new product are part of society. That includes trying to obtain a patent and finding someone to manufacture the product. Also part of society is Joy's team. Unfortunately, Joy put trust into the wrong people. Joy went to her dad's girlfriend Trudy for the money to start producing the product. This in turn forced her to use Trudy's lawyers when trying to obtain a patent on her revolutionary mop. Also, Joy was convince to use a manufacturer out of California to make her products because they were the cheapest. Joy went through constant struggles with this manufacturer when trying to produce her product. To make it short, the manufacturers lied about any previous patents on similar products in order to screw Joy over and take the design. Had Joy went with her gut, she could have hired a lawyer who specialized in patents and she never would have been threatened with losing pretty much everything other than her family.
There is a very important lesson to be learned here. Most of society does not care about you. People are greedy and will do anything in order to benefit themselves. We saw an example of this when the manufacturers tried to steal the mop deign from Joy. As an entrepreneur, it's important to pay attention to every detail and read all the fine print, especially when your business is in a vulnerable state. It's important to note that as an entrepreneur you don't get to choose your relationship with society. Everything that you do from choosing a lawyer to how you demonstrate your product to consumers affects your relationship with society. Not only is society affected by you though, you are affected by society. That's why it's so important for entrepreneurs to choose their team and who they work with carefully. And finally, to make sure you always research what the rules and regulations are of your industry.