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Vintage World Sustainable Luxury Fashion E-Commerce
Executive Summary
Vintage World is a small start-up that sells vintage clothing and advocates sustainable value in Singapore. The vision of Vintage World is to spread the beauty and sustainability of vintage clothes in Singapore. Its mission is to offer desirable vintage clothes to Singaporean young consumers. It has the plan of developing customer relationship and gaining competitive advantages. The brand identity of Vintage World allows customers to enjoy the self-satisfaction of making contributions to sustainability understandings and gives its target audiences an opportunity to express themselves.
Based on PEST analysis, the business identified the opportunities of developing a sustainable brand and using big data as well as AI. Also, economic recession makes consumers more price sensitive. However, the SWOT analysis found that the business lacked capital and experience. Therefore, Vintage World adopts focused cost leadership. Its business objectives focus on to develop a sustainable and responsible brand that partners with customers, to engage in social media including Instagram and Weibo for better customer relationship and online brand community and to offer the sustainable, desirable and low-priced vintage products. Vintage World mainly targets at those female Singaporean and Chinese who are between 16 and 24 years old, who concern sustainability, have interest in vintage clothes and strong desire to demonstrate their own personality, and are price sensitive. To reach its business objectives, Vintage World used Instagram for social media marketing, designed a website to direct marketing and employed crowdfunding platform. The website of Vintage World was well designed in accordance with the preference of the target audiences. The design of the website pages focuses on the vision expression, which is suitable to attract target audiences and for the core of the business.
Moreover, the business implemented a marketing campaign. The objectives of the marketing campaign are consistent with the busines objectives with the purpose of building an online brand community by social media, developing brand awareness and image and pushing e-commerce. Furthermore, the marketing mix of Vintage World was well designed to reach its objectives.
However, the results of the business project were not very successful. Thus, the founder conducted deep self-reflection. The unexpected result of Vintage World reminded the founder the difficulty of entrepreneurship. The founder has recognised that there are huge gaps between plan and implementation as well as between theory and practice. She has recognised that she as an entrepreneur must have multiple skills and competencies to control over all issues related with my business. She found that She was impatient and lacked self-motivation. Another issue leaded to the unexpected result was that the founder did found any venture capitalist. This business project has developed the founder’s competencies and helped me enrich me knowledge. She has determined to develop my capabilities and experience of my next business venture.
5.0 The Use of Marketing Tools
6.2.2 Consumers Behavior and Customer Relationship
Appendix I – The Website of Vintage World
Appendix II – Instagram and Weibo
1.0 Introduction
Vintage World is a small start-up focusing on vintage clothing and advocating sustainable value in Singapore. The business idea is to grasp the increasing ethical purchase and rising demands for sustainability in fashion industry by using e-commerce to develop an online community, sell vintage clothes and cultivate own brand culture. The entrepreneur of the business was inspired by the relationship marketing of the Body Shop which has proficiency in developing customer relationship and gaining competitive advantages. Also, the entrepreneur loves vintage products who can use her passion and enthusiasm in vintage to develop this business.
Vintage fashion is strongly associated with sustainability because it focuses on recycling and the use of refurbishment to replace manufacturing of new products. Therefore, it can reduce wastes, energy consumption, pollutions and emission of Green House Gas (GHG). More importantly, refurbishment work can create economic value that creates jobs for society.
The vision of Vintage World is to spread the beauty and sustainability of vintage clothes in Singapore. Meanwhile, its mission is to offer desirable vintage clothes to Singaporean young consumers. The business’s philosophy is to use real ethical and sustainable business and take advantage of customer relationship to gain competitive advantages. Such business philosophy and idea have real successful cases such as The Body Shop which focuses on sustainability and relationship marketing.
Asker (1996) illustrates that brand identity needs to build a relationship between a brand and its customers through creating a value proposition covering functional, emotional and self-expressive benefits. In other words, an effective brand identity makes customers perceive functional, emotional and self-expressive benefits. In accordance with the argument of Aaker (1996), the brand identity of Vintage World focuses on emotional benefits and self-expressive benefits. To be begin with emotional benefits, the brand identity allows customers to enjoy the self-satisfaction of making contributions to sustainability understandings. For self-expressive benefits, the brand gives its target audiences an opportunity to express themselves. These customers can use vintage products to express their strong and unique personality. Furthermore, the brand acts as person that develops proper relationship with customers. The brand identity makes customers consider as Vintage World as a partner who flight for sustainability with them. Asker (1996) highlights that a brand can be viewed as a symbol. Thus, Vintage World expects to develop its brand identity as a symbol of sustainable fashion vintage in Singapore.
In terms of the brand story, the brand was built by a young and independent female entrepreneur who devotes to sustainable fashion cause for influencing Singapore, China and then the world. The brand story starts with a young graduate who build her business on her own with the ambition to make the world a better place with sustainability fashion. More importantly, the young female graduate is sensitive fashion trend and has passion to sustainable vintage. Vintage World is a sustainable business because it practices the idea of recycling. It insists on sustainability management in the process of collecting, refreshing and renovating old fashion products.
The brand represents real sustainable fashion and a strong partnership with customers to devote to the cause of sustainability fashion. This brand identity and store fit in market trend as discussed in PEST analysis.
2.0 Business Objectives
2.1 PEST
2.1.1 Political
Singapore has a great political environment for business. In 190 economies, Singapore was the second east economy of doing business around the world in 2019 and it has been the east economy between 2010 and 2014 (Trading Economics, 2020). Meanwhile, in 2019, Singapore was ranked the 4th least country globally (CPID. Gov, 2020). This means that entrepreneurs can enjoy a high transparent and honest government to do business.
2.1.2 Economic
The burst of Covid-19 has strong impacts on Singaporean economy. As figure 1 shows, the GDP annual growth rate was -0.3% in the first quarter and dropped to -13.2% in the second quarter of 2020. The significant decline shows the serious economic recession in the country.
Figure 1: Singapore GDP Annual Growth Rate
(Source from: Trading Economics, 2020c)
According to IMF (2020), Singaporean real GDP is estimated to drop 3.5% in 2020, with 0.2% decrease in estimated consumer price (inflation rate). The unemployment rate reached 2.9% in July 2020 (Trading Economics, 2020b). According to the Global Economy (2020), Singapore consumption confidence dropped sharply in the first quarter of 2020 (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Consumer confidence Survey in Singapore
(Source from: Global Economy, 2020)
Ganong and Noel (2015) find that there is a strongly negative relationship between unemployment and consumer spending. In other words, consumers tend to purchase less when unemployment rate is higher. For those unemployed consumers, their consumption is largely weakened. Those consumers who still hold their job also tend to reduce their consumption because they worry their job as well as economic environment and high unemployment rate weakens their consumption confidence. According to United States Congress (2015), economic impact on fashion industry is significant. Consumers tend to purchase less fashion product when economic recession emerges. Economic recession strongly frustrates consumption confidence in fashion industry (United States Congress, 2015). The decline in Singaporean economy may encourage consumers to reduce their fashion consumption and shift to vintage which is more cost effective. This is because fashion consumption is not necessary products for living and Vintage World focuses on low price vintage products.
2.1.3 Social
The awareness of sustainability has been rising in Singapore especially among millennials. The survey collected primary data from 1,000 Singaporean (older than 15) shows that 90% are concerned about environmental issues (Straitstimes, 2019). Another survey indicates that 50% of Singaporeans demand sustainable brands and support eco-friendly supply chain (Koh, 2018).
Vintage products are related with the recycling which is sustainable. Vintage fashion business renovates old products rather than manufactures new products so as to reduce energy consumption, wastes and pollutions. To grasp this trend, Vintage World is committed to develop a sustainable brand image. It focuses on sustainability in its supply chain. To be specific, the business only works with those suppliers which comply with sustainability standards in the process of renovating fashion products. Meanwhile, feminism has been continuously rising and the society desires gender equity and women’s rights. Under such context, female entrepreneurs receive more supports from the society and customers (SCWO, 2016). This trend supports the brand story of Vintage World because the business is developed by an independent female entrepreneur.
2.1.4 Technological
With incoming the age of Industry 4.0, the concept of new retailing has been rising that combines online and offline stores and focuses on personalisation based on AI and big data (Cannella, 2018). The two technologies have been widely used in retailing industry. By AI and big data analytics, marketers can build a customer profile for each customer, covering their preferences, search history, consumption records, etc. (Grand View Research, 2020). Marketers can use the customer profile to provide personalised services. Also, social media also uses AI and big data to understand users. They offer similar analytics tools allowing marketers to improve accuracy of their targeting market and track the responses of their target customers in real time (Hall, 2019). This trend motivates Vintage World to focus on e-commerce and social media marketing which can offer big data and AI analytics.
2.2 SWOT
Even though Vintage World faces some weaknesses, it can use its strengths to grasp opportunities by developing a great brand image. It can use AI and big data analytics offered by Instagram to enhance the effectiveness of its marketing activities. More importantly, the business idea is strongly related with sustainability, which is consistent with the trend that consumers’ demand for sustainable fashion is rising. The business idea also supports the business objective of building a sustainable brand image.
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Strengths · Strong entrepreneurship passion · Fashion intuition · Sustainable business idea |
Opportunities · The rising demands for sustainable brands · Economic turndown may encourage vintage consumption · Great political environment for start-ups · The use of AI and big data to improve effectiveness of marketing activities |
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Weaknesses · Less funding · Less experience · Fewer business networks |
Threats · Competitors · Market giants |
Table 1
2.3 Business Objectives
Based on PEST analysis, the business identified the opportunities of developing a sustainable brand and using big data as well as AI. The business takes advantage of AI and big data offered by Instagram. Meanwhile, the economic recession makes consumers more price sensitive. However, the SWOT analysis found that the business lacked capital and experience. Based on Porter’s generic competitive strategy, focused strategy is suitable for a new start-up with less capital and experience (Porter, 1985). Therefore, Vintage World adopts focused cost leadership and has the following business objectives:
1) To develop a real sustainable and responsible brand that partners with customers to make contributions to sustainable cause in Singapore
2) To engage in social media including Instagram and Weibo to maintain proper relationship with customers and develop an active brand community
3) To offer the sustainable, desirable and low-priced vintages to target audiences
3.0 Target Audience
Vintage World mainly targets at those female Singaporean and Chinese who are between 16 and 24 years old, who concern sustainability, have interest in vintage clothes and strong desire to demonstrate their own personality, and are price sensitive. It targets at a niche market to those target audiences who love pink and the cute style.
To be noticed, the business focuses on Singaporean market and pay slight attention to Chinese market. Its major marketing activities emphases on Singapore while it only uses Weibo to reach mainland China market. This is niche market which accords with the focused cost leadership strategy (Porter, 1985).
Wolf (1997) explains that target audiences can be categorised by four factors: their behaviour, lifestyle and shopping trends and behaviour. Thus, this report adopts above four factors to develop the target audiences.
In terms of behaviours of target audiences, they purchase vintage clothes in regular and festival occasion. Also, they seek economy benefits because of the lower prices of vintage clothes. Meanwhile, they seek economy benefits: 1) the satisfaction of dressing uniquely and 2) the satisfaction of making contributions to sustainability. Target customers are price sensitive. This is consistent with the sustainable brand image of Vintage World.
Furthermore, they can be first-time users, regular users and heavy users. Those heavy users may join in a partnership with the brand for the cause of sustainability. These target audiences can be loyal and switchers. More importantly, they are price conscious because the business adopts focused cost leadership strategy. Furthermore, the target audiences spend 3 to 4 hours in social media and they are interested in fashion trends, which is consistent with the business objective of developing online community and using social media marketing.
For target audiences’ lifestyle, they have a simple lifestyle and are less inclined to luxury lifestyle. They prefer old things and are nostalgic. They tend to live a slow lifestyle, enjoy nature environment and concern environmental issues. They can be households, students, or semi-professionals. According to Cassidy and Bennett (2012), the consumers of vintage clothes are reminiscent and appreciate beauty of old things, who pay less attention to the fact that vintage has been used by others. Instead, they believe that vintage fashion products are timeless, classic, rare, valuable and perpetual.
For target audiences’ shopping trends and habits, they have a strong preference to ethical consumption. This means that they concern ethical conducts and sustainability management of sellers when they make purchase decisions. They take social and sustainable responsibility for their consumptions who therefore pay attention to the seller’s transparency. They believe in the cause of sustainability. Therefore, the shopping trends of the target audiences are consistent with the sustainability of the business objective. Furthermore, the target audiences have the habit of using the internet to purchase clothes who enjoy the benefits of online purchase. They may have the habits of purchasing second-hand products to be eco-friendly and save living costs.
4.0 Marketing Tools
Vintage World used Instagram for social media marketing, designed a website to direct marketing and employed crowdfunding platform. These tools helped Vintage World to reach its business objectives.
To begin with Instagram, the business can reach its target audiences and take advantage of big data and AI analytics. In Singapore, there are 1.9 million active users of Instagram including 54% of female, 11.5% of users are female who are 16 to 24 years old and 21.5% of users are those female between 25 and 24 years old (Media One, 2020). Thus, the business can directly communicate with a large number of target audiences in Instagram.
Furthermore, the business uses the big data analytics and AI offered by Instagram. Instagram offers advanced analytical tools including Instagram Insights and Brandwatch Consumer Research (Brandwatch, 2020). By Instagram Insights, Vintage World measured its market campaign and activities in terms of reach, engagement, likes, profile visits, calls, comments, shares, website clicks and product opens. This analytics tool allowed the business to measure the performance and effectiveness of its marketing activities in real time. Brandwatch Consumer Research allows users to conduct specific customer research to understand target audiences’ response to the marketing campaign, track their behaviour and traffic. Also, the analytics allows customers to track and analyse social media accounts of consumers to identify the marketing performance of competitors and Vintage World itself (Brandwatch, 2020). Thus, by Instagram, the brand can take advantage of big data and AI analytics to improve the effectiveness of its marketing activities. Furthermore, by Instagram, Vintage World can develop a brand community and directly communicate with those target audiences. It can directly communicate with its target audiences to build close and ‘friendly’ relationship with them. Meanwhile, Instagram also can be used as an effective platform for collaboration between the brand and its customers making contributions to the cause of sustainability.
Vintage World also adopted Weibo to reach target customers in mainland China. Weibo has a large number of target customers by age and gender. According to Thomala (2020), 6% of Weibo users are 16 to 17 years old and 35% of the users are 18-to-22-year-olds. Meanwhile, 49.10% of the users are female (Thomala, 2020). Furthermore, Weibo current is one of the most popular social media in China, which has over 500 million users and 313 monthly active users (DMR, 2020). Moreover, Weibo offers marketing analytical tools empowered by its AI and big data technologies. Vintage World is allowed to access their performance of their marketing message by these analytical tools. It also can use these tools to deliver marketing message to exactly target customers in a precise way.
Secondly, Vintage World adopted Indiegogo as its crowdfunding platform to raise funds. There are many entrepreneurs who are raising funds. More importantly, by crowdfunding, the business can find loyal customers and build long-term relationship with them. Meanwhile, the crowdfunding strategy allows the business to find investors who may bring business opportunities and offer business network and resources. By Indiegogo, the business was expected to find venture capitalists. This is a great platform for entrepreneurs to find investors because it allows entrepreneurs to elaborate their business ideas, vision and model. More importantly, venture capital is a beneficial approach for raising funds. Venture capitalists offers financial supports and other important supports including government relations, business network, experience, consultancy etc. because they tend to have wide business connections and invest in multiple industries and businesses (Kaplan and Stromberg, 2003). These supports help entrepreneurs to solve the challenges including lack of supports, experience and business network (Gottschalg and Phalippou, 2009).
5.0 The Use of Marketing Tools
The website of Vintage World was well designed in accordance with the preference of the target audiences. Its front page focuses on its brand image and the self-image of the target audiences. It shows a young female who is in a pink underwear and pink house. Then, the target audiences can access the ‘collection’ webpage that sells vintage bags which are all pink. These products are sold at attractive prices for luxury vintage bags. Then, the front page moves to ‘Inspirations’ which shows pink and vintage style. More importantly, the website is linked with its Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. Thus, the website page can link social media marketing strategy of the business and help achieve the business objective of developing an online brand community.
The design of the website pages focuses on the vision expression, which is suitable to attract target audiences and for the core of the business. The business is focused on fashion which uses vision to deliver ideas and message in the first place. The website pages use many attractive images to express the brand’s identity and personality. Secondly, this business targets at those consumers who love sweet style and lovely style. Therefore, the website design focuses on pink colour.
6.0 Marketing Campaign
6.1 Marketing objectives
The objectives of the marketing campaign are consistent with the busines objectives with the purpose of building an online brand community by social media, developing brand awareness and image and pushing e-commerce and online presence of the business. Therefore, there three marketing objectives in the below.
1) To develop brand image and awareness of Vintage World in Instagram and Weibo
2) To gain 200 ‘Likes’ and 100 comments from Instagram and Weibo
3) To reach SG$ 3,000 revenue
4) To raise SG$ 1,000 funds from investors
6.2 Action Plan of 60 Days
The 60 days action plan was developed in accordance with the marketing objectives with the purposes to develop brand image, facilitate promotion activities, build online brand community and increase sales revenue. The action plan started with collection of marketing materials from the internet, to development of marketing messages, to adjustment of marketing messages for better performance. It focused on images to cultivate brand image and identity. Also, it payed attention to the two communication with customer to improve customer relationship and build the brand community. Furthermore, the marketing campaign developed an online discussion topic (#VintageWorld) to rise online discussion. The action plan and its project management are showed in Appendix III.
6.2.1 Marketing Mix
Marketing mix covers the important market tools used by companies to accomplish their marketing objectives including product, price, promotion and place (Kotler and Armstrong, 2012). Therefor, the marketing mix of Vintage World was well designed to reach its objectives.
6.2.1.1 Product
Vintage World offered target customers the products in accordance with their demands and needs. As figure 3 shows, the products are deeply involved in the pink and cute style and sweat style. These products can meet target audiences’ demands. Furthermore, the products were vintage and renovated by those suppliers who complied with sustainability standards including ISO 26000, which was consistent with the sustainable brand image and meet the demands of the target customers. Moreover, these products were well selected by the entrepreneurs and classic products of the word famous brands including Chanel, Miu Miu and Gucci.
Figure 3: Products of Vintage World
6.2.1.2 Price
The business adopted penetration price strategy due to three reasons. Firstly, it adopts lower prices to penetrate a market and is suitable for new enter to attract customers (Hess and Gerstner, 2001). Rekettye and Liu (2018) agree that penetration pricing is effective to attract customers and develop market share. Secondly, the penetration pricing strategy can be effective to attract the target consumers who are price sensitive and those who reduce their consumption in the economic recession. Moreover, the pricing strategy is consistent with the focused cost leadership employed by the business. By penetration pricing, Vintage World can offer lower price than its competitors thus improving its competitive advantage. Generally, the price strategy fits in the business’s strategy and external environment.
6.2.1.3 Promotion
The promotion activities of Vintage World emphasis on Instagram to promote its website and reach its target customers in Singapore. The Instagram account of Vintage World focused on cute & lovely style by concentrating on pink (Appendix I), which was consistent with preferences of the target audiences. Also, the consistency of colour and style is attractive and impressive to the target audiences. By using the pink and lovely style, Vintage World could show its uniqueness to the target audiences who love the style.
Based on AI and big data, social media marketing campaign can be more effective because these technologies allow marketers to track visitors, evaluate their marketing performance and send marketing messages to target audiences precisely (Lies, 2019). With big data analytics, social media builds customer profile for each user and the customer profile covers users’ preferences, age, habits, region etc., which helps marketers to conduct precise target marketing (Lies, 2019). Therefore, Vintage World took advantage of marketing tools from Instagram to promote its marketing messages to its target audiences. Based on AI and big data analytics, Instagram allowed Vintage World to promote its marketing messages to the target audiences in an accurate way. Also, the business evaluated customer responses and the performance of its marketing messages based on the analytical tools offered by Instagram. Meanwhile, the business adopted Weibo to reach Chinese consumers. It also used the analytic tool offered by Weibo to evaluate customer response and performance of marketing message and adopted Weibo’s AI and big data to deliver marketing messages to its target customers.
Furthermore, Zamil (2011) agrees that word of mouth has positive impact on consumer behaviour decisions and customer trusts. Thus, the action plan developed a discussion topic in Instagram with the purpose of improving brand equity. The discussion topic was ‘#Vintage World Sustainability’ to promote the sustainable brand identity and image. The plan was intently to rise positive word of mouth by encouraging users to share their vintage clothes and other fashion items.
6.2.1.4 Place
The distribution channel of Vintage World focused on e-commerce by developing its own website. Swarnakar et al. (2016) illustrate that younger generations especially generation Y have strong preference to e-commerce to seek high efficiency and convenience. Given that the target customers are 16-to-24 years old, it is suitable for Vintage World to focus on e-commerce by developing its own websites. The website is supported by the business’s social media marketing activities.
6.2.2 Consumers Behavior and Customer Relationship
Customer relationship acts an important role in customer satisfaction, brand image and corporate performance (Akroush et al., 2011). Thus, Vintage World payed heavy attention to the development customer relationship. Akroush et al. (2011) illustrate that two-way communication between a brand and its customers is an effective way to develop customer relationship and identify customer demands and wants. The business therefore actively responded customers’ comments.
6.2.3 Market Segmentation
It is impossible for a company to meet the demands of all customers and it only can target at one or a fewer of market segments (Clancy and Roberts, 2012). There are four market segmentations including geographic, demographics, psychographic and behavioral segmentation (Ahmad, 2003). The market segmentation of Vintage World for this market campaign is consistent with its target audience and explained in the below.
Geographic segmentation: target customer live in Singapore and Tier I & II cities in China.
Demographic segmentation: those customers who are female, 16 to 24 years old, students, with SG$ 2000 to 3000 disposable income, living with their parents or not, college or university
Psychographic segmentation: those customers who are having strong preference to sustainability, vintage and fashion, slow lifestyle, price sensitive
Behavioral segmentation: those customers who are purchasing in regular, special or festive occasion, seeking for both economic benefits and quality, and those who can be first-time user, regular users
The business adopted undifferentiated targeting strategy. In other words, it adopted the same marketing messages and offerings to all above segmentation. This is because the targeting strategy is cost effective and timesaving. The strategy does not require the founder of the business to develop different marketing strategy and messages to different segmentation. This business only has one worker, so it was hard to develop differentiated marketing activities. Furthermore, differentiated marketing strategy is costly for small business. Vintage World has been focusing on the niche market in the first place, therefore it was less important to further divide the market.
7.0 Outcome
7.1 Execution
The founder of Vintage World was preciously executed the action plan based on the time schedule. The action plan was specific and achievable that allowed the founder to accomplish all tasks in the plan. The founder did all of the planned tasks in the action plan. With the help of the Grant table, the founder was able to focus on time control. More importantly, the founder worked every day as a real entrepreneur.
Furthermore, during the execution of the plan, the founder faced many challenges. Firstly, it was challenging to collect material to make marketing materials because the brand focused on the niche of pink and sweat style and relevant materials are rare, whereas the founder did not give up and insist on finding the most suitable images for marketing promotion and to develop the brand equity of Vintage World. Eventually, the founder found proper materials for the brand’s marketing campaign from social media and Google Image. Secondly, the founder faced the challenge of using the analytical tools in Instagram and Weibo. To solve it, the founder read online articles and watched YouTube videos to learn how to use these tools and others’ experience. Then, I tried to use these tools to gain my own experience. Finally, I accomplished the tasks in the action plan. Thirdly, I found difficult to communicate with some customers who were mean, whereas I tried to use my proper communication to make them followers. To have such proper communication, I observed other brands how to response mean comments and watched relevant YouTube videos and online articles. Generally, the process of the plan execution was a learning process for me in which I completed all tasks and developed my capabilities.
7.2 Results
The results of the business project were not very successful. The founder attempted to build an online brand community for the target customers to share their opinions and express their love to vintage fashion products in lovely and pink style. Perhaps because the market that the brand engaged was too niche, there were few followers. Target customers tended to be less passionate who showed less concerns to Vintage World and its products. The comments to Vintage World’s posts in Instagram were few. The results showed a less effective marketing campaign. They suggested that the market campaign did not reach many target customers. The unexpected results can be explained by the fact that the founder lacked experience and funds for marketing activities. It is fair to say that those people who succeed in their first entrepreneurship are rare.
However, in Weibo, the marketing campaign was more effective that gained more followers and ‘Likes’ even though the founder did not focus on this social media. This result could be explained by cross culture issues. Antunes et al. (2013) explain that marketing activities and strategy can be less effective or ineffective in a foreign country due to culture differences. Culture differences result in divergences in customer preferences, perception, attitudes and opinion (Antunes et al., 2013). The founder comes from mainland China who naturally have more understanding about Chinese culture and market knowledge about there. However, the founder has less market knowledge about Singapore.
Another factor leaded to the unexpected result was the lack of funds. The founder only had SG$200 fund to facilitate the marketing campaign, which significantly limited the capability to reach target audiences. Moreover, the founder lacked experience to build a business and implement marketing plan. Swathy and Benazir (2014) agree that entrepreneurship is challenging, and young entrepreneurs faces the difficulties including the lack of experience, fund, confidence, patience, commitment and self-motivation to reach success. These difficulties can explain the unexpected results of Vintage World. Indeed, the founder was less confident, faced funding issues and less patient, which leaded to the unappreciated results. More importantly, the business project only had two months to execute. However, entrepreneurship tends to need longer time to reach success. The result would be better if there were more time for implementation.
7.4 Self-Reflection
The unexpected result of Vintage World reminded me the difficulty of entrepreneurship especially after I experience those difficulties and challenged discussed above. I have recognised that there are huge gaps between plan and implementation as well as between theory and practice. I have learned that the business world is very complicated and dynamic. I have recognised that I as an entrepreneur must have multiple skills and competencies to control over all issues related with my business. To be specific, I had to address marketing tasks, business strategy, funding task and operation to build Vintage World. I have realised that I will have to take responsibility of leading and managing human resource, business operation, strategy, marketing, supply chain and finance in the future. Thus, I will develop these skills and competencies.
Furthermore, I found that I was impatient and lacked self-motivation, which resulted in the unexpected outcome. The middle outcome of my project was under my expectation that made my less patient and compromised my confidence as well as self-motivation. I became self-doubt about my capability, plan and strategy and wondered whether or not there was consumers who concern the environment. These issues are consistent with Swathy and Benazir (2014)’s argument that young entrepreneurs lack experience, fund, confidence, patience, commitment and self-motivation to reach success.
Based on my self-reflection, another issue leaded to the unexpected result was that I did found any venture capitalist. The issue leaded me to the lack of funds, business network, guidance and suggestions. Kaplan and Stromberg (2003) explain that venture capitalists can offer financial supports and government relations, business network, experience, consultancy etc. They would be able to help solve many entrepreneurship challenges if I were able to find them. I did not find venture capitalist because I had less involvement in the crowdfunding platform. Moreover, it was hard to compete with other entrepreneurs in the platform to gain investment.
8.0 Conclusions
This business project has developed my competencies and helped me enrich me knowledge. I developed Vintage World which is a small start-up focusing on vintage clothing and advocating sustainable value in Singapore. Developing this business allowed me to learn how to develop business model, brand identity, brand image, marketing strategy and campaign and use marketing analytical tools. I have learned that business model is the core to develop any business and strongly related with business strategy and marketing strategy. In my perspective, business model means that way that a company operates its business, address its suppliers, customers and networks and generates profits. One of important lesson I learned is that marketing strategy and business strategy must be consistent with business model. Furthermore, I learned that brand identity and image are critical components in marketing strategy. In my perspective, brand identity helps customers to distinguish a brand for its competitors and is in customers’ memory. Also, I have learned that brand image represents a company’s quality, value and promises to its customers. I have recognised that they can improve the effectiveness of my marketing activities. I have also learned that the development of brand identity and image require large amount of investment and time. Furthermore, I have learned that effective marketing campaign needs achievable, specific, measurable and realistic objectives. I found that resources and capabilities can strongly affect the outcome of marketing campaign and business performance because the unexpected result of my marketing campaign was caused by my lack of experience, capabilities and funds.
Moreover, I have learned that the following knowledge including external and internal environment analysis including PEST framework and SWOT analysis, target audience, market segmentation, crowdfunding, marketing mix, consumer behaviour and customer relationship. In my perspective, external environment can bring threats and opportunities to a business, and internal environment analysis can help me evaluate my resources and capabilities. Thus, based on environment analysis, I can identify which opportunities I can grasp by my resources and capabilities and which threats I must be concerned. I have learned that target customers and market segmentation are related. There is no company that can meet all customers’ demands in a market. Thus, I have to use market segmentation to divide the market and then target at one or a few of segments. In this business project, I have focused on the niche market of pink and lovely style products in vintage luxury fashion market. The above knowledge is important for developing marketing and involving in entrepreneurship. More importantly, I learned how to practice the knowledge.
If I were able to do this project again, I would focus more on funding. I would use venture capital to gain funds, business networks, supports and suggestions. Another important task would be increasing the funds for the marketing campaign.
To be noticed, the unexpected result did not frustrate my passion and commitment to be a female entrepreneur. On the other hand, I have determined to develop my capabilities and experience of my next business venture. I have found that I lacked experience and skills related with marketing, communication and entrepreneurship. My plan is to develop these skills and relevant experience. I will read books and watch online videos to learn marketing, communication and entrepreneurship. Also, I will try to know the stories of success entrepreneurs to identify how they reached success, such as Elon Musk (the CEO of Tesla), Jeff Bezos (the CEO of Amazon), and Hu Weiwei (the female co-founder of Mobike).
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Appendix I – The Website of Vintage World
https://emira1997222.wixsite.com/vintageworld
Appendix II – Instagram, Weibo and Indiegogo
Indiegogo
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/funding-for-my-dream-vintageworld#/
Appendix III
Plan
60 Days Action Plan
