Smart Propane Solutions

Smart Propane Solutions focuses on streamlining the retail engagement of propane sales at every retail location and more. Anyone who has gone through the process to buy or exchange a bottle knows it can be tedious. Either the customer has to wait until someone can help them, or a store like a gas station is left vulnerable to theft by possibly being left unattended. Smart Propane Solutions fills the gap by implementing a vending solution that allows customers to purchase propane without the need to engage the retailer. With the power in the customers' hands, each location that utilizes our solution gains a powerful tool that gives them and the vendor a cloud-based dashboard to view each transaction, margin, inventory flow, and other supporting data points. Growth with our software can scale by incorporating A.I to manage inventory, route management, and even monitor the weather to coordinate location needs per the season trends. 

Competitors - one competitor is Amerigas, which has taken on an in-house solution that meets only some of the criteria and requires the retailer to fill or exchange bottles. The Menards solution comes out of Russia, which has seized on both fronts of import and support. 

Noting Amerigas, they are the largest propane distributor, followed by blue rhino. While being the largest comes with its pain points.  Speaking with large accounts, a struggle they have a lot of the time is getting service in rural areas. Our solution can benefit their business by diversifying suppliers who better support their local or regional market. 

Our business model is not to sell anything; customers will pay a “License fee” per locker system upfront. Our target price is $5,000 per locker column. On the backend, we intend to collect 5 dollars per bottle sold. We are not diving into their profits; this is an additional cost passed onto the customer for the “convenience” of having 24/7 service without going into the store. As consumers, we accept this, and any pushback will be overcome by the new way of purchasing. There are roughly 77.5 million transactions of retail propane a year across 360,217 locations. This accounts for 310 million gallons sold in this space, an average of 860 gallons per location. That comes to 4,300 bottles per year at $5 a bottle; granted this big picture but multiplied by 360,217 locations, it comes to $1,548,933,100. At 25% market share, this is $387,233,275. Once we recoup the cost of the customers' dashboard setup, which is mainly the upfront UX design. We begin to spend less time on each customer's dashboard once they are set up. For example, $5,000 per license at 360,217 locations comes to 1,801,085,000 dollars, 25% market share is $450,271,250.

What is being sold

I, Jonathan, have over ten years of manufacturing experience, from selling nuts and bolts at Fastenal, Atlas Copco Assembly solutions focused on industry 4.0, and fabrication equipment spanning press brakes to lasers and much more. I am a combat vet and proudly look to establish as much of our manufacturing/support as possible in the USA.

Peter has over ten years of IoT integration within aerospace manufacturing, focusing on Industry 4.0. Peter has a well-rounded understanding of different coding languages and will oversee the implementation of our vending solutions and work with our customer's IT department to ensure we can collect the data necessary for our dashboard to gain full functionality. 

While there is much more to our company's growth plan, this is where we have started as it pioneers our solution into parks, campgrounds, and more.