Danielle Young
EEE-2083
September 9, 2022
Joy Discussion Paper
“Joy” is a movie that is based around a female character trying to break into the business world with her invention. It demonstrates the ins and outs of what getting a patent and trying to sell an item to the public entails. Joy first came across this idea when her and some of her family were on her dad's friend's sailboat. They were sailing across the water and came across a few bumps, which then lead to one of the glasses of wine to drop and break. While Joy was cleaning up the mess, she kept cutting up her hands while wringing the mop out because of the broken glass. That’s when the idea came to her of the self-wringing and super absorbent mop. That following day she was talking to her mom about how she needed to patent this idea. Which means you own this idea, and the people that copy it can get in major trouble. She then built it and showed her family how it works, and then in that moment you can tell that her sister doesn’t want her to succeed at all. She doesn’t want her to be more successful than her. Her sister clearly has some resentment towards Joy. It is unknown the exact specifics of why her sister has so many negative feelings towards her. So, all while Joy is trying to patent her idea and sell it to consumers, her sister is constantly telling Joy that it is stupid and a waste of time. This type of negative influence can be very detrimental when trying to make it in the business world. There was even a point in the movie where the cops took her product because she was selling it in the Kmart Parking lot. This showed also how no one was really willing to listen to her side and always seemed to give her the short end of the stick. This movie brought an insight to how the inner workings of the business world work and some of the hardships entrepreneural's face.
In the beginning Neil Walker thought her product was useless and a waste of product. But then Joy ended up selling him on this idea. She told him it has 300 feet of woven cotton so it is super absorbent as well. It also self-wrings and when the mopping is done you can detach the head of the mop and wash it in the washer. When Joy got the okay from QVC that she can sell her idea on the tv the salesperson botched selling the product. She felt very betrayed by the company for this, for messing up her only shot. She then showed up in the office to prove to the boss that her product was good.
The outside world kind of looks down on entrepreneurals. There are so many hardships they have to face, such as finding funds to start out with the clientele and just the resources. I think one of the main reasons Joy struggled so much is because she took advice from everyone, and it ended up hurting her a lot in the long run. She also entered the business world with no past experience, which then lead her to getting taken advantage of. Entrepreneurship is a hard business to get into because no one wants to see you succeed. Especially if you try in today's day and age. There is also a lot of bargaining in this world. Just like in this movie Joy set a price for her mops because she knew that’s what people valued it at. And if she were to raise the price at all she would lose a lot of money. During one point in the movie Joy had to stand up the guys producing her parts because they wanted to raise her products to make the mop two more dollars, which in the long run Joy would lose a lot of money. This also happened because her sister went behind her back and paid the manufacturing guys the extra money, they needed for the mess ups they made. Which Joy said numerous times she wasn’t going to pay because she thought it was stupid that she has to pay for the guys mistakes. Since her sister paid the guys, that gave them the power to steal the patent from Joy. Hence creating a lot of problems.
It also helped that in the story Joy knew quite a few people that could benefit her in the ways she needed. Her ex-husband helped set her up with QVC which then helped her sale her product because it was on the informercial. As I stated above the spokesperson that was trying to sell this product absolutely botched it, so Joy then stepped in the next time the commercial aired and did her best to sell her product on live TV with no past experience besides selling it to the boss. Joy did a superb job at selling this product besides her little rough start she had. But she ended up selling thousands of her self-wringing mop. Then when she appeared on tv for the third time she sold over fifty thousand of her products. Later on, in life when she was more successful in her business, she expanded it and then proceeded to help women trying to enter the same field as her. So, they did not have to do the same things as she did.
Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this movie and I think it did a fantastic job at displaying some of the inner workings of business and how family can turn on you when they don’t want you to be more successful then them. I would recommend this movie to some of my friends of they want to know more about how some business run and the inner workings of them.