VBM Project (BIANCO)

BIANCO. ______________________________________ Bizz Project Report

Group 14: Anna-Sofia Eve/ Branding and Marketing Management (238314) Elin de Leeuw/ Retail design and Management (237481) Mincho Minev/ Branding and Marketing Management (237552) Tamara Melline Van de Graaf/ Fashion Design (237541) Tereza Prochazkova/ Branding and Marketing Management (237544)

VIA University College – TEKO Business + Design Herning 15.01.2016

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Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................... 3 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 3 Problem statement ......................................................................................................................... 4 Research questions ......................................................................................................................... 4 Methodology ...................................................................................................................................... 5 History ................................................................................................................................................. 6 Business Model Canvas .................................................................................................................. 8 Customer Segments ........................................................................................................................ 8 Value Proposition ............................................................................................................................ 8 Channels ............................................................................................................................................. 9 Customer relationship ................................................................................................................ 10 Revenue streams .......................................................................................................................... 10 Key Activities ................................................................................................................................. 11 Key Resources ................................................................................................................................ 11 Cost Structure ................................................................................................................................ 12 SWOT analysis ............................................................................................................................... 14 Business Trends ............................................................................................................................ 15 Calculation ...................................................................................................................................... 17 Forecast ............................................................................................................................................ 19 Recommendations ....................................................................................................................... 22 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 23 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................... 24 Appendix ......................................................................................................................................... 25

Word count: 5 823 Character count (without spaces): 29 677

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Abstract This report is meant to collect information about the Bianco Denmark A/S, gather data, and understand the business model of the company, its current market position, industry tendencies and future strategies.

With the information collected during the company visit, books and online sources it has been possible to find a solution for the problem statement.

Research questions were defined in order to give a better understanding and focus on key aspects of the business model.

This report focuses on the logistics and production elements of Bianco Denmark A/S, and leaves out aspects such as design, construction of the garments and properties.

Leaving out the product development aspects, affects the knowledge about the function and ability of the garments, but gives more focus to the structure of the company, which is considered as the key to success.

The lack of financial data regarding lands and buildings has made it impossible to include this rather important aspect of Bianco A/S’s business model.

The time frame is limited from 2010 until projections in 2015/16.

Introduction Bianco Denmark A/S is a fashion shoe company.

The purpose of this report is to apply the Business Model Canvas to the shoe brand Bianco, to find out the business model of the company and to propose an improvement strategy if needed.

Products are locally designed in Denmark, but manufacturing takes place abroad. Danish fashion brand Bianco is well known in the shoe’s fashion industry as provider of premium products and good design. Rene Piper Laursen founded Bianco in 1987. In 1992 Bianco registers its new brand names, Bianco Man and Bianco Footwear instead of Bianco Sko. Bianco started of as a franchise and they kept that concept through the years. What makes Bianco unique is that they work closely with artists and designers.

They have 90 stores in different countries like Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Germany.

While the corporate mission at Bianco is based on unchanging values, the IT-services supporting that mission adapts to the ever-changing business climate. The relevance of this study is to apply different models in order to understand a company’s structure. The Business Model Canvas is the center of the company analysis, because it provides an overview of common knowledge of industry, company, trends, financial crisis, supply, management and values. The goal of this project is to analyse Bianco’s business model and compare Bianco with its competitors, and the industry, in order to be able to offer suggestions for improvement. In the end of this analysis propositions for improvement are made, and put into a new Business Model Canvas model to provide a better overview of the recommendations.

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Problem statement The purpose of this study is to analyse the business model of Bianco A/S, this being able to offer recommendations to improvements to their current business model. Through a broader analysis the aim is to find areas in Bianco’s business model where they could improve, and hold an external point of view. Here after the intention is to offer potential solutions.

Thus, the problem statement of this thesis:

What is Bianco’s current business model and what can be done to make it more efficient?

Research questions 1. "What is the current Market Position of Bianco A/S?" The Market Position reveals how efficient and well-functioning a business is.

2. "How is Bianco A/S different from their competitors?"

There are other players on the European workwear market, but Bianco A/S is award winning and successful.

3. ‘’Could Bianco A/S improve their production and supply chain ?"

The geographical and cultural aspect of production is in a constant movement, and deciding where to place a factory, involves many aspects.

4. "What are the future strategies of Bianco A/S?" The workwear market is in constant movement, and so should Bianco A/S be, to keep growing.

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Methodology The purpose of the project is to understand the business strategies, different business methods and to analyse the shoe company Bianco by using distinctive business models.

These analyses draw conclusions and gives recommendations to Bianco A/S, on how to improve their strategy and how to make their company more profitable. Deep research, critical approach and actual data, reached from variety of direct and indirect sources, make this report an informative source, for one who is not a part of the company.

Models which will be used in this report are BMC, SWOT and Business Trends analysis.

Business Model Canvas

BMC, The Business Model Canvas, is an analytical tool to company’s strategic management and marketing plan. It includes describes of nine blocks of business model, such as customer segments, customer relationship, channels, value proposition, key activities, key resources, key partners, cost structure and revenue streams. This BMC model is the main business model in this Bianco business model report. A business model describes the rationale of how and organization creates, delivers, and captures a value and that’s helps us to understand the company’s main segments and business model.

Swot

Another tool we are using is a SWOT analysis. This analysis helps the company to focus on their strengths, minimize threats, take the greatest possible advantage of opportunities available to them and to be aware of threats. And if the company's position is essentially healthy or unhealthy. In company strategy making efforts must aim at producing a good fit between company’s resource capability (strength and weaknesses) and its external situation, (opportunities and threats). The value of making this SWOT analysis is in specifying what story the four lists tell about the company, its environmental situation and what actions are needed. The analysis answers the questions like; “what is the company’s story and what actions are needed? Are there resource gaps that needs to be filled? What factors are important now and in the future?

What new types of capabilities company needs to achieve?”

Business Trends The third tool that we are using is finding company new business trends.

Business trends is separated in four sectors, financial trends, market trends, industry trends and technological trends.

Analysing trends requires looking into the statistical analysis of historical data during a specific time period and graphing the movement. Trends provide a vision of the direction an industry or business is heading in.

Financial trends are those that are usually the key concern of businesses. Information regarding revenue increases/decreases, expenses, margins and profits are the vital points to most companies.

Other analysis Bianco could use

Furthermore, Bianco could use Ansoff’s Matrix tool, that helps the business decide their product and market growth strategy and the growth priorities. The Matrix tool includes four main categories: product development, diversification, market development and market penetration.

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Bianco could also use PEST analysis. It is a systematic approach to identifying the factors likely to influence the competitive conditions within the industry. It includes the political, social, economic and technological elements. Bianco could also use NPR (Net Profit Ratio) analysis, it is a percentage of the sales price turned into profit. Or ATR measures the company’s efficiency, on how it uses assets to generate turnover.

History

Bianco was founded in 1987 by Rene Piper Laursen in Denmark. In 1992 Bianco registers its new brand names Bianco Man and instead of Bianco Sko the name of the brand became Bianco footwear. Four years later in 1996 Bianco Footwear became a countrywide chain and the first national advertising took place. In 1997 Bianco Footwear opens a shop in Oslo, Norway with more to follow. In 1999 there is a total of 64 shops. 43 in Denmark and 21 in Norway. There also opens a shop in Poland and two in Sweden. In 2006 Bianco Footwear decided to launch an accessories line called Bianco Gear. Five years later Bianco Footwear changed their name into Bianco. In 2014 Bianco started launching artists takeovers. A concept that appears twice a year.

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Business Model Canvas Fig. 1 appendix – Business Model Canvas

Customer Segments Bianco footwear designs shoes for both women and men, but their main focus is on women who are living in a culture of big cities with a busy lifestyle.

The primary target group of Bianco footwear is Ms. Bianco. This woman is between 18 and 28 years old. She is an early adopter of fashion and as you would expect her focus is on fashion & trends. Because there are not a lot of woman who can name herself Ms. Bianco, this target group is too small to actually keep this brand alive, the company has a secondary target group.

The secondary target group of Bianco has a wider range. They reach more people, and because that is exactly what they want to, you can say their secondary target group is for who Bianco is actually designing. This group of women is between 15 and 44 years old, is fashion oriented, and have early and late majority regarding fashion & trends.

To define the customer segment, Bianco is inspired of designing their shoes by 4 moods.

The first mood is Ms. Bianco which is, as mentioned before, a small group of people that have fashion followers (secondary target) who are inspired by Ms. Bianco and adopt their style. The small group can be for example bloggers. This mood is cool, fashionable and feminine.

The other 3 moods are Everyday shoes (young people and comfortable style), Feminine outdoor (fashionable feminine outdoor shoes for each weather type) and Feminine classics (office girl, not sensitive for trends).

Except shoes, Bianco footwear also sell accessories and footwear care products, which make their company complete for the customer.

The company is well aware of the customer’s requirement which are high quality for a good price and fashionable shoes That means that the consumer strives for trendy shoes that will last for a longer period of time and are available for a good price.

Value Proposition All segments and products of Bianco have in common that their value is fashionable, and made of high quality. They aim to supply a weekly small collection to their franchise shops.

Bianco’s high skilled craftsmanship and suppliers is the result of long term relationships between company and manufacturers. Bianco is using a code of conduct which protects the products not only of child labour and bad circumstances for employees, also ecofriendly products became important.

In order to achieve good quality shoes that can last longer than just one season, the company uses high quality materials such as leather. To keep the price low, they can’t

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afford it to use leather of crocodiles or similar, so Bianco is using leather of cheaper animals as cows. Still Bianco can ensure good quality which can last longer than a season, for an affordable price.

To ensure the shoes can last longer than just one season, Bianco cooperate with another manufacturer who make shoe care products for them.

By designing the 4 different moods, Bianco is trying to keep their customers close to them. The customer can be loyal to Bianco, regardless which mood they are looking for.

Channels

Bianco A/S has two kinds of customers, for whom they have different channels. Firstly they have the private consumers as customers. Bianco has an owned and direct channel to these customers through their online shop. Here they sell their shoes, and provide customers the chance to get help through customer service. Furthermore, they ship the purchase for free fig.2 appendix. They work close in a closed cooperation with distributors. Bianco sells B2B and B2C. Bianco are active on the social media sites Facebook and Instagram; (Pinterest, Twitter, Youtube). Based on the followers on social media, we can see that they have a lot of followers. Also their webshop sale is growing, and because of their wholesale at web shops nelly, sells their products in other online multi-brand stores, such as: Zalando and boost they are easier to reach.

Through these means they give the customer an opportunity to evaluate the product, and make the customer feel like a part of the brand. Another channel to reach customers is by advertising.

Bianco painstakingly research their different channel alternatives available to distribute their products. The greater number of distribution channels, the greater the company’s reach into the market: online stores, shops, social media (Facebook, Instagram) campaigns, they have club membership, that u can get news letter, invitations to the events (inspirations to the newest trends, invitations for VIP events, exclusive offers and discounts) online- store (they deliver to Denmark Bianco.dk (except Greenland and Faroe Islands), Sweden Bianco.se, Norway Bianco.no, Finland-Bianco.fi ja Germany Bianco.de.) shoe, (Denmark, Germany, Egypt, Iceland, Norway, Sweden) The online shop works the best. You don’t have to pay rent of shops, which is cheaper and in the same time you can reach more people because they don’t have to travel to the shop. Normal shop is the most cost efficient, but in the future Bianco hopes that they will grow online. Time is one of the most important things in life. Because of using a lot of online sales we try to fit in the daily busy schedule of our customers.

The brand has to prefer to establish partnerships with certain online retailers and find a long-term relationship business approach. Such collaboration starts either from Bianco Company or from the retailers. Bianco has to start choosing their retailers by taking in consideration their reputation and international locations in order to create a wider network and to expand in other countries. As an example, Scandinavia and Europe is now a target to the company’s expansion. The brand is planning to expand in other European countries.

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The distribution to the point of sale is made from the company location, in Kolding, Denmark.

Customer relationship

The growing diffusion of products and competitors means that there is not a shortage of products; there is a shortage of customers. This makes the customer king. The most important customer as mentioned before is “Ms. Bianco”. Bianco is a fashion brand so they are mainly focused on customers who are passionate about fashion and the current and upcoming trends. They are creating value for Ms. Bianco who is a young woman between the age of 18 and 28. Ms. Bianco is highly focused on fashion and following the current trends.

She is their primary target and their ambition. The secondary target group is fashionoriented women from the age of 15 until 44.

Bianco have focused on the problem of attracting new customers from all Scandinavia and Europe. The sales departments of Bianco were rewarded more for finding a new customer than for paying attention to existing customers. Now the companies are paying more attention to the art of keeping customers.

So, before Bianco starts to worry about acquiring new customers, it must develop a strategy to satisfy its existing customers. The key is to continuously invent new benefits for loyal customers; these might take the form of discounts, special invitations, special services or special membership. So they make strategy with using membership, newsletters and social media for that reason. ‘’My Bianco’’ is a special club for customers. They have pre-sale, events, and newsletters if you are a member. Bianco is also using social media to build customer relationships. Before the co-operation with the bloggers, they had ‘Fashion army.’ They are inviting all customers to shop and involve them to their campaigns and marketing.

The major challenge today is getting people’s attention. Consumers are pressed by time, and the brand Bianco work hard to avoid advertising messages. The main challenge is to find new ways to capture attention and position a brand in the consumer's’ mind. Public relations and word of mouth marketing are playing a growing role within the marketing mix to build and maintain brand as Bianco.

Revenue streams Bianco A/S has different kinds of revenue streams, one being from the retail stores where the products can be bought, the customers can pay either with cash or credit cards. In today’s global society, online shopping is a necessity. Bianco's garments are available on the official website, where the payment is possible with individual bank cards (VISA, MasterCard, DKK). Their garments are also available on some of the retailer’s websites. In order of being eligible for fast delivery to both online customers and the retailers, Bianco are expanding their stock facilities. They are focusing on keeping a broader selection of stock, making sure that the previously produced designs also are available. This in case they get a special consumer request.

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Key Activities In order to maintain a firm’s stability and competitiveness in the market, the firm must perform core activities that are known as Key Activities. Because of Bianco has long term relationships with their manufacturers, they can control their production process.

Bianco’s manufacture in Asia as well as in Europe. Both Asia as Europe are aware of Bianco’s code of conduct. To be more specific about Asian countries, it is especially China, Vietnam and India where Bianco produce their shoes. For Europe it is Portugal, Spain and Romania. With 1 collection a month (only presenting 4 times a year) Bianco keep their company and relationship with suppliers active. Supply-management and Sales-management is the main key activities of Bianco.

Key Resources Key resources are the resources that are necessary to create value to the customer. They are considered an asset to the company, which are needed in order to sustain and support the business. These resources are divided into human, financial, physical and intellectual.

For Bianco, human resources are based on the employees as well as the franchisees since franchising is a very important value of this company. Franchises should be responsible for themselves, they choose which shoes from the collection they want to sell in the shops and they also decide which style should the shops have although they usually stick to Bianco’s original merchandise.

Bianco depends on the experiences and abilities of its employees. Very important human resource is found in the marketing department where all the company’s promotion begins, the campaigns themselves are created with the help of an advertising company.

Bianco also has its own training centre, which they call a “Bianco University”. This is a place where the employees are able to get a professional training and bring more values to the company. The sales assistants are trained to be polite and friendly to the customers. Since the target group; Miss Bianco is a young woman, the sales assistants should be like friends to the customers and give them advices on which shoes would suit the customer the most.

Physical resources of Bianco are found mostly in the production, which takes place in different countries in Asia and Europe such as China, India, Vietnam, Romania and Portugal. Small part of the production is also found in Italy and Spain. The place of the production depends on the needs, availability and also the specialization of the manufacturer since Bianco is selling many different types of footwear.

Three years ago, after the crisis hit the company, Bianco decided to focus on the right suppliers so they narrowed down the manufacturers. One of the important values in the production process is to completely ban child labor.

The intellectual resources of Bianco is centralized in its headquarters in Kolding where all the marketing, purchasing employees and the designers work. Bianco has almost 30 years of experience and knowledge in the footwear industry. Therefore the company has an established network within the field as well as reliable partnerships with wholesalers and suppliers.

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Cost Structure The company’s principal activities consist in designing and developing shoes and accessories of high fashion. The products are marketed and sold through franchised businesses, Bianco’s own shops and through online sale. Bianco is strongly positioned in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland. Apart from Nordic countries- where the group is leading, Bianco is also established on the German market.

In 2014 the company’s profit before tax improved by DKK 56.7 million and is realized with DKK -5.8 million. Compared to the last year’s negative result of DKK -62.5 million before tax it is a huge improvement, although the company itself doesn’t find this improvement fully satisfactory.

Bianco has two different types of cost: capital and operating. Capital costs consist of onetime expenses on the purchase of land/buildings, construction and equipment used it the production of goods. Bianco doesn’t own any manufactories and in the last 5 years didn’t purchase any land/buildings.

Operating costs of Bianco consist of energy, labour payment, other company’s services like accounting etc, materials, advertising and maintenance. These costs are necessary for everyday operation of the company. Operating costs are divided into fixed and variable. The fixed costs are those which are not independent of the company’s incomes.

The payments consist of rent, staff costs, utilities and insurance. Staff costs include wages and salaries, including compensated absence and pensions, as well as other social security contributions etc. made to the entity‘s employees. Rent includes the company’s headquarters in Kolding, their own; non-franchise stores and warehouses. Variable costs depend on company’s production volume; the materials, delivery costs etc.

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SWOT analysis Strength - Well-known in Scandinavia - Good online store - Quality of the products and materials - Collaborations, artist takeover, and using bloggers - Price that provides good quality shoes, but with reasonable price - Strong values (code of conduct) - Selling to: Business-to-business and also business-to-customer - Selling a fashion lifestyle, providing products that really passionately emphasises the lifestyle the brand promotes, which automatically convinces the customer to buy the products.

- Shoe-care company (collaboration), which helps the customer maintain the quality of the shoes and make them last longer Weaknesses - The Bianco brand is not fashionable enough, so it does not reach to their target group well enough - Lack of advertising awareness - Lack of brand awareness - Lack of control of the production Opportunity - Leading shoe company in Scandinavia, maybe in future in Europe - Build customer loyalty - Marketing more in social medias - Marketing more the artist takeover - Marketing more the artist takeover - Finding more designers and bloggers closer to the target group, good way of them to promote the brand to the target groups - Create the better brand image for customers - Product development (more fashionable shoes for the target group) Threat - Competitors, (for example: Zara, Aldo, Bestseller) - Quality can suffer what comes to being a fashion brand and “fast fashion� brand - Franchising companies maybe don’t follow other stores, can bring down the brand identity

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Business Trends Business trends are separated in four sectors, financial trends, market trends, industry trends and technological trends.

Analysing trends requires looking into the statistical analysis of historical data during a specific time period and graphing the movement. Trends provide a vision of the direction an industry or business is heading in.

Financial trends are those that are usually the key concern of businesses. Information regarding revenue increases/decreases, expenses, margins and profits are the vital points to most companies.

’’My Bianco’’ is a special club for customers.

Most loyalty programs operate using a point system. Customers buy products, and then they earn points for their purchases that can later be redeemed for perks and freebies.

Bianco can have a more fashionable approach to their loyalty program. They can let their members earn points whenever they attend their fashion events, and more. ‘’You want to become more fashionable – attend our fashion events and earn more points/discounts on our collections’’ This way they encourage their customers to look more trendy and therefore make more use of the products that they have. When the life of the product (ex.: high heels) ends they come back to the store to buy a new one. They are constantly motivated to come back to the Bianco shop because of the discount they would get in exchange for their sporting activities. They would also feel that Bianco as a brand is a good motivational partner for their lifestyle shoes, ergo the store will earn psychological value.

Apps

To improve the business of Bianco more in the future they can use the trend ‘rise of digital’. The company can actually improve to design and launch an app made for smartphones. The target of Bianco are well known with smartphones, and you will build on your customer relationship to make it easier for them to search on information about Bianco, as well as online shopping.

Bianco needs to permanently expand its technological borders.

Snapchat is a very useful trend today, it started in 2014 to curate what it was first called Our Story and is now in 2015 called Live Stories. The format is an amalgamation of snaps, submitted mostly by users and assembled by Snapchat staff. The stitched-together photos and videos—a messy, shaky camera version of live tweeting—holds true storytelling potential.

A new way for Bianco to use Snapchat channel or “story” is from the staff working in Bianco. The customer will be able to follow online what's going on live in the shop, in a new and interactive way, which would be a pretty good and innovate PR strategy. The idea is to give the customers an insight to what is happening in the “backstage” of the shop, covering the conversations from the shop staff doing the new stocking or doing the retailing of the shop, and showing the new arrivals doing the short videos and images via snapchatting videos or images.

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Bloggers- Promoting channels Bianco is using customer demand as a business trend for a couple of years now. Since 2014 they have collection especially ‘designed’ by famous Scandinavian bloggers. The bloggers and the designers of Bianco are working together to create their own collection. For campaigns and launching the blogger will be the face of the collection.

They also need to write a blog about it to get more attention.

Improve their production and supply chain.

One big business trend model is to improve the production and supply chain. That way Bianco could change the production from Asia to Europe into countries like Romania, Turkey, Estonia, or Hungary. Those countries have low-cost manufacturing, but production values are better and easier to control than of those in Asia. There is however a negative stigma when it comes to the discussion of manufacturing in Asia, and how the factories there are not working that well in the sense of value conducts.

Other reason to change the producing into Europe are geographical and financial. For example manufacturing closer to the head quarters makes it easier to control production and working conditions as well as it lowers the costs in transportation fees which is also good for the environment.

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Calculation The reports of the past years (2010-2014) can tell what Bianco did to become a good company. Around 2011 till 2013 there is a visible low point in the company's profit.

2012 was a bad year for a lot of companies in different areas because of the financial crisis. There is a big drop for Bianco in 2013 (figure 1 appendix). Figure 1 in appendix describes the EBITDA, which means Revenue - Expenses (excluding tax, interest, depreciation and amortization).

The numbers in the annual report of the year from Bianco, 2014 show a big drop of DKK in 2013.

Figure 1, Annual report of Bianco International A/S, 2015.

The turnover was not reported in the annual report of Bianco 2014. The average turnover of the year 2013 is from the Statistikbanken Denmark. Under manufacture of leather and footwear the number 306 million DKK was found as the average turnover.

The average gross profit for 2013 was 34,1%.

The ROI & PMR ratios weren’t able to find because the profit before interest was not listed in the annual report, 2014, Bianco. The ROI ratio could state the return of investment. This would be an interesting figure because Bianco had to close so many shops in 2012-1013. That meant that the investment Bianco did was lost. The PMR ratio shows the percentage of the the sales that are left over after all expenses are paid by the business. The PMR ratio can be used to see if a company effectively a company convert sales into net income. Using the PMR ratio would have been interesting because it shows to outsiders how efficient the company Bianco is running. An extreme low PMR ratio would mean the expenses are too high and the management needs to budget and cut expenses.

The ROE shows the amount of net income returned as a percentage of the owners equity. The ROE ratio measures a corporation’s profitability by revealing how much

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profit a company makes with the money the owner invested. In figure 2 the ROE is very low and almost never has been above 0%. Which means Bianco had a big problem in 2013 when the company was at an absolute low point. The ROE ratio could be seen as the piggy bank of a company. The equity is not needed to keep the company going unless the company is making loss instead of profit. After the low point in 2013, Bianco is climbing back up and in 2016 they probably will be above zero again.

Figure 2, ROE ratio calculated out of annual report Bianco, 2014 1. 2010 2. 2011

3. 2012 4. 2013

5. 2014

The financial history of Bianco is very interesting. Bianco was a smaller company in 2010 but they made profit. As they grew bigger the profit they made was getting lower.

This was because of the investments they did. In 2011, when Bianco was an international company, the European economy was getting worse. This affected Bianco a lot. The numbers show that Bianco had a really though time in 2012-2013 on every economical aspect. Now (2015/2016) that the whole economic crisis is over and companies on average are started to grow again, Bianco is also getting back on track.

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Forecast

Figure 3, estimated growth based on revenue.

In figure 3 there is the growth over 2010 till 2014. From 2014 till 2018 it is a forecast.

The growth rate would be 1,07.

Seen from figure 3 is that after being at a very low point in 2013 Bianco will slowly become a more profitable company.

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Figure 4, decline based on the index numbers over the past years.

The other forecast (Figure 4) is based on Bianco’s Index numbers. It shows a decline of 0,35 each year.

This is not very reasonable. The economy was really bad in general around 2010 till 2013. It is not fair to make a forecast based on Bianco’s financial numbers in 2010 till 2013. If the economy was getting worse, instead of better, this would be a good forecast.

The most likely forecast would be Figure 3. Bianco keeps growing as long as the economy is growing. It depends on how much they expand to other countries and if they are successful among their customers. But from Bianco’s low point in 2013 they're only starting to grow again.

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Recommendations Bianco struggled over the past 5 years due to crisis and wants to get back on its feet within the next few years. Their financial situation made them close many stores and focus mainly on Scandinavian market. The future goal of the brand is to keep the primary focus on Scandinavia, expand in Sweden and develop the brand’s DNA so when you see their products it is clear that they were created by Bianco. These goals are very important in our opinion due to the fact that today, Bianco doesn’t have a clear DNA. Most shoes are inspired by high-end brands like Acne etc and this makes it difficult for the customer to recognize Bianco as a brand.

Next recommendation for this brand is to work on their social media more because their primary target group are basically the Millennials. People at this age group are using social media on everyday basis and the brand could be discovered by more people through this channel. This recommendation can be also applied to their website which we were told they are working on. The website/e-shop is not up to date and some information are not relevant today. This is quite misleading and confusing for the future customers who want to know more about this brand.

Collaboration with bloggers is a trend today which Bianco successfully uses mainly on the Norwegian market with Camilla Pihl’s collection. The collaboration with the Danish blogger Trine’s Wardrobe did not bring a lot of success on the Danish market, therefore they should find a different way to approach their target group “Miss Bianco” in Denmark. Other than that, if the success in Norway was quite big, they should continue these blogger shoe lines in the future.

As for their retail stores, we find the collaboration with artists very interesting but we are doubting the overall connection with the brand’s DNA. Bianco seems as a very down to earth brand that doesn’t necessarily sell shoes or accessories that would shock the customers but the artists completely change this view and create something totally different that is expected to be seen in the Bianco stores. It has been explained to us that this collaboration is used to attract more people to visit the store. It is possible that it brings success but it would be more interesting to make the products and the design of the store in harmony so the customer knows what he/she is buying.

In conclusion Bianco has many things to work on to really become as successful as their competition on the Scandinavian market. Our recommendation is to work on the brand’s DNA and make it as a priority and then try to expand or create new projects and collaborations. We believe that Bianco can reach their goals and become the leading brand on the Scandinavian market but it will take a lot of effort from the Brand’s perspective.

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Conclusion Using the different models shows that Bianco is a good and successful shoe company.

The Business Model Canvas has especially been useful in mapping the company’s structure. It shows that Bianco has a strong idea of their target group and does not compromise with their design even though fashion trends might lead in another direction. Bianco have with great success used their website as their only direct channel to their customers and otherwise relied on the retailers. These retailers are very important in their way of communicating to their customers throughout the world. One of their strong preferences is that they stay with the same suppliers for a long period, so they establishing good and solid relationships.

Bianco is in a niche with many competitors where it can be difficult to stand out and differentiate themselves from others. One of the things they do in order of standing out is by not straying from the traditional ways. However, there is room for development.

The place which needs the most improvement is advertising, and being more visible online. Doing this, while still keeping the traditional values, will be the way to a more efficient Bianco.

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Bibliography -Business Model Canvas files on Studienet:

-Business Model Generation- chapter 1

-Business Model Canvas Poster

-Business Model Generation Preview, Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur

-presentation from BIANCO -BIANCO [ONLINE] http://www.bianco.dk

-What you should know about branding and marketing, Dr Paul McElheron -FAQs on marketing, Philip Kotler 2008 [BOOK] -Forbes. Forbes Magazine, n.d. Web. 14 Jan. 2016. [ONLINE] -Entrepreneur. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Jan. 2016. [ONLINE] -Levy Weitz, Levy - Retailing Management, McGraw-Hill International 7th Edition, New York, 2009. [BOOK]

-Business Model Canvas, Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 14 Jan. 2016.

[ONLINE]

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Visual Business Model

Group 14

Appendix

Fig.1 – Business Model Canvas

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Visual Business Model

Group 14

Fig. 2 - Channels Very important for Bianco A/S are their sales partners. They take care of their distributors, as well as customers; setting up personalized online store.

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