Matthew Dotson, '22 | Alcea (High Traffic Vending)
Describe your company: Alcea is creating the Rosebox, a reimagined feminine product dispenser, that addresses the stress of menstruation cycles in a world that expects women to deal with them on their own. With a variety of high quality single-use feminine products, contactless payment accessibility, and inventory tracking, the Rosebox is ready to respond to the needs of women and eliminates the stress of being caught off guard.
Target Industry: High Traffic Vending
What is your role in the company, and please list team members' names and their current role in the company:
Matthew Dotson - Race to Revenue Lead / Rosebox R&D; Joseph Hirshorn - Founder & CEO; Danielle Koterbay - COO; Chris Mignano - CTO; Gian Paolo Pernicone - CFO; Lizzie Mignano - Lead Designer
Why did you apply to Race To Revenue? What are you hoping to get out of this experience? The Alcea team is hoping to grow tremendously from R2R, especially by taking the valuable business experience gained and applying it to our startup. We plan to further the beta testing stage of our first prototype over the summer to collect both quantitative and qualitative transactional data. This will allow us to improve the Rosebox design and have tangible results to gain traction with investors. We are hoping to complete the summer with an improved machine that is purposed for dispensing feminine products.
Has there been someone who has helped you with your venture so far? Alcea has been fortunate enough to have a number of mentors and partners to get us to where we are today. We are very grateful for our growing relationship with Cora in helping accelerate our initial testing and the IDEA Center Pre-Accelerator for all their advice. We are also very thankful for all of the individuals in the janitorial and vending industries that have guided Alcea along the way.
What do you want to learn more about, relating to business development in general or your own company/venture specifically? Alcea is interested in developing our own custom machine to eventually become an independent company. We would love to form relationships with mentors who are familiar with testing validation and research & development to help drive our machine design.
Entrepreneurial fun fact: Our team member Chris founded a successful shoe company that will cut down on the fashion industry’s carbon footprint.
Favorite place to get tacos and what kind? South dining hall has the best fish taco bar on this side of the Mississippi!