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Taste
Your Fashion
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Group members:
Bong, Wong Chunbong,
52986595
Michele, Ji
Jinxia, 52794769
Sally, Huang Sudan,
52773196
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Our company FOREST, a Hong Kong local firm which
engages in fashion business, is a small and medium size design and retailing
company. We mainly design and sell fashion products included clothes and other
accessories such as hats, scarfs, necklaces. Our target customers contain
white-collar class and fashionable young people with the purchasing power about
400-800HKD.
Since we insist on offering good designs and
services for customers, we provide customers with one-line service included
designing, producing, marketing and retailing.
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Source: http://image.baidu.com/
Adversity
At present, FOREST comes to the bottleneck period
of its development. We meet the difficulty of continuous sales decrease over
several seasons. The reasons behind are shown as follows:
1. In
recent years, we encounter an increasing number of competitors who have similar
market position with us. As these rivals have grabbed a large number of
customers from our company, we have to face the continuing decrease in revenue.
2. We have
not established the characteristic of our products so that our products
encounter numerous substitutes. In this way, we have no enough power to
maintain high customer loyalty and win more new customers.
3. Lack of
promotion platform is another problem in our company. Nowadays, we just promote
our products by means of some mediums like TV and website advertisement,
leaflets but these promoting approaches are not that fresh and interesting for
customers. Therefore, we cannot boost our products effectively.
A
Successful Case--- Agnes b
As what we mentioned before, our company is continuously in the bottleneck,
which manifests in the way of sales decrease. Moreover, even we do a lot of
efforts to find the suitable solution; we cannot achieve any progress until we
find a successful case-Agnes b.
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Source:
https://www.google.com.hk/imghp?hl=zh-CN&tab=ii
Introduction
Agnes b, a famous fashion brand from France, was built up in Paris in the
year of 1975. It was named after Agnes Trouble, who is the founder of Agnes b.
The business scope of Agnes b is quite wide, which covers across various kinds
of business fields such as fashion clothing, flowers, Café, Beauty and even
film interests.
Owning to the popular design style and unique character that is “match and
reflect the spirit of the age, a wardrobe that adapts to every personality and
can be worn for a very long time”(1) Agnes b becomes a large scaled
international company with 10 subsidiary companies.
Meanwhile, there are about 360 outlets all over the world. Its outlets are
easily to be found in big cities, such as London, Singapore, Taipei, Tokyo,
Hong Kong, and New York. Moreover, Agnes b announced that more shops will be
set up to in Beijing and Shanghai, owning to the fast increasing demand.
Reflection
After reading the case, we draw the conclusion that Agnes b is a brand with
a collection of shops from different business fields. Their products are
attractive and high quality, but it is also found that the design of products
from different business fields has no direct connection, apart from their logo.
Actually, Agnes b’s wide business scope has a lot of advantages for the
whole company development. Since the target customer of products in different
business field is quite different, Agnes b is easy to get in touch with
different customer groups, so that the good brand awareness is easily built. Customers
of products in one business field are likely to be drawn attention by the
products in other business fields. By this way, Agnes B’s products in every
business field have the chance to attract new customers with low marketing
cost, what also makes a great contribution to the whole company’s sales
performance increasing. What’s more, the sales performance is likely to be
improved stably, because Agnes b is difficult to be influenced by accidentally
bad performance of single business field.
Innovation
Introduction of Innovation
As what we learnt in the class, innovation implies the improvements that
can be applied to a product, a product process, a business model, and even a
course to something that already exists. According to 1993 study of American
Companies, 80% of them believe that innovation is important to their business,
while only 4% among them think they are good at innovation. The reason is that
to innovate, one must have a wide range of interests. (3)
Application
(New Ideas Forming)
Inspired by the case of Agnes b, we want to learn from the business model
of Agnes b to get touch into more new customers. Owning to the limited finance
ability and small company scale, we are not able to develop a new business
field. Thus, we come into a new idea that is collaborating with a company in
other business field.
Not copying Agnes b’s business model completely, we prefer to build close
relationship between the designs of the products from two companies. As we are
independent companies, we need to own some similarities in the products’ design
so that the cooperation relationship can be built, and our virtual organization
can be set up.
After evaluation, we decide to collaborate with a catering company named
Ants. There are several reasons as followed. Firstly, we have similar target
customer with the catering company’s. Our target customers are the white collar
class and people who pursue high quality life with quite high income. Meanwhile,
the catering company also focuses on the white collar class. Therefore, we are
able to come into contact with more new customers. Secondly, the two companies
are facing the same situation: the period of bottleneck and sales decreasing.
Lastly, the two companies are all in the industries about beauty. We all use
different colors and patterns to provide customers enjoyment. Thus, we believe
that we have similar product nature.
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Is it a good ideas to combine the muffin with tie???
sources: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/now-serving-fashion-week-tea-party/
http:// www.zazzle.co.uk
Negotiation
Then, we began to negotiate with them. At the beginning, we held the
opinion that catering company creates the new products according to our design
only. However, they do not agree with that. After negotiation, we make the
decision that not only catering company needs to make new products according to
our design, but also we need to do so.
After we reach an agreement, we decide to build up a website named “Taste
your fashion.com”.
We try to integrate the ideas from designers of both companies’ and
customers. For example, after fashion week held, some latest clothing will be
popularized, and then the catering company will design the relevant products
with same color or pattern. Our customers will vote for their favorite design on
the website. All the products will be sold on the website and off-line shops.
Virtual Organization:
To cooperate with Ants for fashion and catering crossover, we decided to
form a virtual organization for this new project and create a homepage for it.
This project name is “Taste your fashion” and the website address will be
taste-your-fashion.com. It seems to be an old idea that a website for a project
is just normal; it should be the same as our Forest homepage. Is it the truth?
Let’s go to see below to stimulate:
Initial Draft Design for Every Product:
In this page our designer team and the chef from Ants will post all our draft
ideas on this website. In the initial stages, we will post a series of fashion
clothes, dressing, T-shirt, jeans, other accessories such as bags, ties,
necklace….etc. Everything about fashion will be combined with “food”, our
design will be post shown out to public through this website. On the other
hand, Ants will also post their new series of meal, drinks, dessert on the
website.
We will post the design pictures or sample photos to let all visitors see
what our design. Of course our designers will also explain these ideas on the
website, so visitors can get more information about this new design. However,
the explanation will not be the formal as reporting to managers. It will be as
chatting with friends so visitor should enjoy more for it.
Crossover between Fashion Designer and Chef:
It still seems quite simple as just post draft ideas on the website. Since
this is a new project to cooperate fashion designers and chefs. So they will
have interaction in this website.
In the initial stages that both sides will post their first draft design on
the website, so we can go to next step to integrate them together. Once our
designers saw the new ideas form Ants, they will refer their foods to create a
new design product or modify their draft product.
For example, if Ants designed a dessert of Muffin, we can merge the Muffin
into our product, such as a Muffin style dress, a Muffin backpack or a Muffin
pattern ties. It is free for creation that no limit for the designer to post
and modify their designs. On the other hand, Ants can also create any foods to
catch up “fashion”. In this stage, both design and chef can exchange their
ideas through the website, the discussion will be shown on the board, so
visitors can know how the new ideas to be born. It is also one or the important
advantages for this virtual organization---to exchange ideas between experts in
different field.
Customer Ideas to Finalize the Product
Apart from crossover between designers and chef, customers are the third
party that can also join the discussion and involve in the design process.
Since our Taste-your-Fashion.com open to public, everyone can come to see all
our designs. Base on the linkage from our Forest Company and Ant company
homepage, our existing customers should be the main group to visit this website
and they also are potential customers for this new project. To catch their eyes
to follow up our project and attract new comers, we will setup a membership
system. All visitors can join to be Taste-Your-Fashion.com member with free
charge. The main function for this membership system is to get the right to
advise comment for the design product in our website.
In the above mentioned that we will have open discussion on the board about
the design for both our fashion products and Ants food in this project. Once
visitors came to see the designs and explanations, they can join as member and
advise comment on the board too. They can be free to show their comment, vote
out which designs are his/her famous and suggest some modifications of it. It
is clear that these potential customers comment are the most important things
to us, we will refer this comment to do some changes.
The Structure of our final design
Knowledge Management:
In this Taste-your-fashion website, many ideas from our designers, Ants
chef and members of this website will be shown out. It seems to collect
individual knowledge (ideas and comments) and then organize to be useful
outcome for the new products designs and marketing information in our internal
database. To manage all these ideas, we can refer knowledge management for help
to make it be better.
How to Acquire Member’s Knowledge?
The most difficult parts to acquire the knowledge are from the website member’s
ideas. We can do some promotion to attract more visitors to join as our member
and advise more own comment to us. For example, we can setup a benefit system
that members can get some marks own they advise comment and vote our which is
their famous design. When this marks collected in a certain, some coupons and
gifts can be provided to them. These ideas should be well to attract more
members and improve their locality to our website.
How to Package the Knowledge to Be Ideas?
Package the ideas is also important for this project. Since we got comments
from both sides, the draft should be modify and repost on the website, it must
setup a regular procedure to make sure all are under schedule. Both Ants and we
will handle our own product design and modification, we will refer the comments
on website to have weekly update on a certain week day (e.g.: Monday). It is to
make sure everything is on schedule and all comments should be studied.
How to Prevent Too Much Information?
Besides, some comments from members may be useless and unreasonable, or
some suggestions are in opposite directions. We will have a judgment system for
these comments. In each company will have their internal procedure to decide
how to revise their design; it should consider about the technical ability,
budget for sample preparation and production, align with the theme ideas or
not. We will provide the most of freedom in this board for discussion but we
also have a bottom line to make it not be over. Also, both companies will
assign a coordinator for this project. They will be responsibility to
communicate with each other about any issues for this project.
Benefits for This Virtual Organization
Let’s see below reasons why we chose virtual organization as our collaboration
with Ants.
Products can match market request in order to attract new customers
Through this website, we can get customers comment directly so our product
design can be up-to-date as the market requirement. Besides, for this new ideas
customer can involve in the design process; it is a really fresh point to
attract new comers to visit our website.
Share the budget/adversity of this new project to our partner
As we mentioned above that we are not a big company. Compared with the
pervious example Agnes b, they have strong financial power, mature marketing
and international well-known brand name, so they are easy to develop any new
markets. For our case, the better choice should be cooperate with another
catering company to develop this new project. It can share both resources, the
budget of this project and any potential adversity we may face.
Brainstorm designers through customers directly comment on the website
In this website, when our designers posted their draft design, members can
be free to advise comment any time. Besides, our designer can also discuss with
members to share ideas; it is difficult to get this chance in traditional for
both sides. We can predict that our designer will face impact from this project
and brainstorm them to refresh their designs.
Extend as long-term project base on customers
response.
Since this is a fresh idea, it is difficult to predict any adversities so
we planned not to invest too much. However, this project is flexible for either
short or long-term development. In the initial stages, the designed products
will just be sell online and our off-line shops. If the feedback is really
positive and can give us benefits, we can expand this idea to design more
products as well as to design a actual theme café.
Conflicts
in Virtual Organization and Solutions
Conflict refers to a process that begins when one
party perceives that another party has negatively affected, or is about to
negatively affect, something that the first party cares about. (4)
In this virtual organization, we mainly confront process
conflict and relationship conflict. Process conflict is the conflict over how
work gets done and relationship conflict is the conflict relating to
personalities and interpersonal styles.
The main incompatibilities between us are shown as
below:
In the second stage of our virtual organization, we
would like to integrate two companies’ products together. However, we have different views on the way of
integration.
From our perspective, we prefer to let
catering company to produce products based on our designs. On the other hand,
Ants prefer to design their own products first and then we design our
fashionable products on the basis of their designs..
2.
Communication incompatibility.
Initially, we communicate with each other by means
of written exchange such as e-mail. Although e-mail can help people to reread
received messages without worrying about losing any information, it has some
disadvantages for communication. First of all, using e-mail rely on written
base which can lead to different meaning because of different people’s
comprehension and perception. By this way, it is easy to misunderstand others’
views. Besides, the lack of emotional expression is another factor that can
result in misunderstanding issues. Furthermore, when a sender types many
arguments in a redundant e-mail message, the receiver may forget to answer to
one or more arguments in the reply.
According to Friedman’s statement, misunderstandings can accumulate when
the sender suspect a violation of interaction norms. (5) Since
e-mail has these inherent properties, it blocks the communication between us
and our partner.
Under these situations, we become aware of
disagreement and then our team feels tension and anxiety about it. Hence both
of us intend to solve these conflicts together.
As both parties desire to get a win-win outcome, we
prefer collaboration which means both teams work together sincerely and
creatively so as to get a way that satisfies both sides. Therefore, we discuss
our issues through online chatting. During the discussion, we share our own
ideas and objectives with catering company and they show us their views as
well.
Finally, we find integrative solutions for these
conflicts and they are shown as follows:
1.
Instead of one side following the other side’s
design, both sides should make products in light of each other’s design.
2.
Apart from exchanging e-mails, our team will
communicate with Ants by means of other approaches, for example, video chatting
on Skype.
All in all, the collaboration assists both teams to
merge insights from people with different perspectives and then figure out a
desired outcome.
References
(1)Agnes b official website
(2)Agnes b (2013) From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
(3)Course material: Innovation/Creativity MGT6209
(4)K.W. Thomas. Conflict and Negotiation Processes
in Organizations. The Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology
(5)Raymond A. Friedman. E-Mail Escalation:Dispute
Exacerbating Elements of Electronic Communication.
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