Michelle Edwards

Ideas Program 3

31 Aug 2020

About

Michelle Edwards is a Yam Daisy (Murnong) urban farmer from Melbourne, Victoria. Michelle entered the Program with an idea for combining Indigenous Australian ingredients with solid-substrate food fermentation to create healthy, nutritious and flavoursome food products.

Michelle joined the Ideas program to understand how to convert a pilot product into a large scale market opportunity. Michelle’s idea was unique in terms of developing a fermented product using native plants as the hero to generate numerous health benefits for consumers such as improving gut health and immunity.

The idea

Using the customer value proposition map and lean canvas during the program, Michelle identified the need to narrow down on her broad customer segment of ‘health-conscious consumers’ to gain deeper insights into specific problems. From this Michelle was able to structure multiple customer interviews with different segments such as ‘cooking enthusiasts’ and individuals with food allergies or intolerances in order to refine different versions of her solution. The process resulted in Michelle having four clear customer segments in which she wants to pursue.

“Just thank you! Pat yourselves on the back for inspiring the lot of us to set forth with courage and be brave and industrious”.

F2F helped take my idea from my head to the outside world with focus, intent and confidence. Having innovative brainstorms is great but accomplishes nothing if they don’t know how to go from an idea to an actual tangible thing you can interact with. F2F catalyses that critical transition and prepares you for the journey.

Program Impact

As a result of the program, Michelle now feels confident on how to progress her idea forward and further explore her business model through new sales and marketing channels.

Michelle completed the program having established a new brand and website for her first product of ‘DaisyYam’ Seasoning and ran a number of purchase tests with different segments to get evidence on the desirability of her solution. Michelle is now organising to undertake further customer interviews with new segments, develop prototype and packaging mock ups and conduct a research study with CSIRO. She has a goal to have products in the market in 12 months, has trademarked a concept called ‘Fermentaya’ and is already receiving huge interest from retailers.