Business Plan
Our website will stock clothing from EU companies with our own designs as well as other clothing brands. Targeted at busy working women who are wanting to expand their work wear wardrobe but might not have the time, we will offer a customer specific delivery service. When ordering online, you will be able to input all your personal details for future use, saving these details will mean no need to waste time re-typing. Then with a one click system you will be able place an order. As our service is online tracking what is most popular and whether the delivery service is working should be easy to access, as the information is going straight into a database ready for us to review. In the London area only we have created a special delivery service where you can pick a date and time for delivery, which could be in your lunch hour or any time before 10pm. The personal shopper will then deliver the items with additional size options if chosen this option and wait for you try these on as well as helping you to style the outfit in your own home. The product, which is not required, will then be taken back by the employee and scanned back into the system.
Our business is a gap in the market; with new technology and delivery methods creeping up on us all the time we see that using our service will attract customers. Not only because they would like to receive their items when best suited to them but it is also offers a new personal experience through having a personal shopper come to your doorstep. The personal shopper employed would have to be bubbly and confident and very welcoming, much like the website itself. Although our special delivery service will only deliver in central London for the time being, if keen interest is presented there is a lot of potential to expand into other UK area’s promoting employment rise.
Our concept is based solely on building customer relationships, having the spotlight on them. The industry that our service would fall under would be Personal shopping and delivery platforms, as we provide customers with an online personal shopper as well as customer specific delivery.
As a starting point this service will only be available within central London, initially focusing mainly on building relationships with the busy woman. Making sure that our service is on time and recruiting professional stylists/personal shoppers to make sure that the customer has the best possible experience and advice. Feedback will be essential to constantly develop the service to meet the consumer’s specific needs. Future positions within the industry will be based upon spreading this service to more cities aiming to please more busy people as well as the possibilities of branching out to invest, sell and style for the busy man also.
The target demographic for our service will be busy women who feel like they have no time, constantly striving to work hard and investing their life in being successful within their career and personal life. We aim to make them feel as if they don’t have to waste time with us as we offer a quick, convenient and easy to use service that will fit in easily within their busy routine. Our customer profile will not have a specific age range as we feel age does not define how busy you are.
Net-a -Porter would be a direct competitor as they provide an online platform of designer clothing, in comparison to their pricing our products would be much more affordable as we would have in house designers as well as selling outside brands. Net-a-Porter offer two delivery options, Next day delivery and standard delivery that take 3 or more working days. For both services they only deliver between 9am-5pm, which is a massive disadvantage as many busy women work between these hours. This would make our service much more desirable as we let the customer decide when they are available to receive the order as well as offering them the option to have a personal shopper come to their doorstep. The only disadvantage of our service would be the extra costs of hiring personal shoppers and having people working late, this would have to reflect in the cost of delivery.
We feel our service is a gap in the market. Firstly we find work wear there are two ends of the spectrum either very high end expensive designer or high street, low quality, as well as importing designer wear we will also have part of our own collection which is high quality but under the fashion designer price tag. Secondly as our target audience is for working women (preferably living in London) it makes sense to have a delivery service that works around their business life style. After our customer survey we were very confident to go through with our ideas. The customer report also confirmed that’s customers would be happy to put in their personal details to make our stylists jobs easier. Within our business we will have highly trained friendly stylists, it is important to us that our customers feels relaxed when they come over to their house, we want this to be an experience they would look forward to. Time keeping will be a very essential to our company. Our customers are on a busy schedule and we do not aim to disappoint. All our cars that deliver will have tracking GPS’s so the customer will know what time and where exactly their delivery is. Doing research on global tailoring it came to our attention that Sri Lanka is one of the leading places for cheap tailoring manufacturing. This will mean we buy in bulk, as delivery will take from 4-6 weeks. This will not be a problem, as from our research working wear fashion does not change very often or seasonally. Our product will then be sorted in the UK somewhere in London, this way the stylists can pick up the delivery and drive to the customer, these orders will also include imported designers wear such as Nine west. Annually we will get a team of buyers to attend trade shows such as work wear exhibition in Belarus that’s held every January called Work Wear in the city of Minsk, Munich also hold a fabric trade show called ‘Performance Days’ specializing in work wear this will give us opportunities to have unique styles by experimenting with fabrics.
Our production line will begin in London where the designers will design the collection and send them to Sri Lanka, where the clothes will be manufactured. We found that these are the places where production will move the fastest. As our company is strictly business wear, the details of the designs will vary but the basic shapes will stay fairly similar, therefore the production will work at a fast pace. The stock will be shipped back to London and held in a warehouse, in which the Stylists will select appropriate garments and outfits to suggest to our customers online. Once they are selected the new collections will be marketed through means of the website, social media and emails. Our existing, and new customers will then be able to order the new styles, in a range of sizes and colours. Our website has a function which will recommend certain items to customers with a profile. Once the orders are made, we will use our special delivery service to ship the stock out to customer’s preferred location.
We want to keep our delivery service as low cost as possible to ensure the majority of the money our customers spend goes on the clothes and the stylist. There will be a charge of ÂŁ15 to cover all aspects of the delivery service, this will include the vehicle, fuel and stylist. Customers will have the option to pay extra if they require the stylist for longer.
We are aware that having such a fast delivery service will be difficult at times to stick to what we promise. To avoid this when the business first begins, our delivery service will only be available in central London. Once we have that area covered and have found a way to manage time keeping effectively, we will then branch out further to other major cities in the UK and then finally international. We will be testing how quickly we can get our stock out to customers and reviewing feedback before making our promises on our website.
We will start our business by getting a business loan. This will help us with initial start up cost such as hiring a warehouse, hiring a small team of designers and stylists, buying bulk stock from outside brands and the manufacture of our own garments. Until we manage to break-even we will be continually be pumping profits back into the company to keep it running, obviously after deducting wages.
We will aim to break even within 3 years.
Year 1 – Within the first year we will aim to launch the company online with the personal shopping option in central London only. Year 2- Working off customer feedback through surveys we will continually be developing our system to meet their demands. We would begin to employ more stylists and widen the personal shopping option to the whole of London. Year 3- On successful development of the brand we will start to build more distribution centers across the UK so we can target our brand at other big cities such as Manchester, Newcastle and Cardiff. Year 4- We aim to be working within at least 5 cities with strategic planning of the new warehouses. We will then invest our profits into men’s wear designers and buy bulk stock from men’s wear brands. Year 5- We aim to have branched out into at least 10 cities across the UK. We will begin to focus on developing our own brand more rather than focusing on concessions which will mean hiring more designers.
In conclusion our product will be aimed at the working woman with no time, in central London. Initially we will start by focusing solely on building customer relationships and developing services to meet consumer needs before aiming to branch out into other cities and cover other areas within the fashion industry.
Stage one- Chelsea Stage two- Kelsey Stage three– Sarah Stage four- Ellie Stage five-Kelsey Conclusion-Kelsey Lay out- Kelsey