Marketing Essay Sample on the Vogue Jacket

Business Background

Epic Wear is a Phoenix, Arizona based startup, co-founded by Brown Smith, Millicent Herman, and Changyin Lu. The business venture anticipates venturing into the clothing line industry by introducing a special type of jacket wear that will go by the name Vogue Jacket. The idea behind the innovative jacket is that it will meet and solve most of the challenges faced by travelers worldwide. Some features of the jacket are; an earphone holder, a Smartphone pocket, touch screen friendly gloves that extend from the sleeves, a telescopic stylus zipper, a passport pocket, a sleeping mask and an inflatable neck pillow all attached into the hood, and lastly a detachable bag pack on one of 3 varieties of the jacket (Mullins, 2012).

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The jacket will come in three styles that is a Blazer for the travelling business class, a Windbreaker and a Bomber. Brown Smith is the Companys Chief Executive Officer, with 10 years managerial experience at Woolworths, Millicent Herman is the Chief Design Officer having 8 years designer professional experiencing having worked at a world leading brand Calvin Klein and Changyin Lu the Chief Operation Officer with 10 textile industry experience from China Textile City. The skills and diverse backgrounds off the 3 co-founders makes a formidable combination for a disruptive innovation (2015).

There has been existing companies in this industry but there is no existing product with all the features Vogue Jacket is aspiring to have. Some like the Travel Jacket come close and will be the biggest competitor to beat, but given the teams background and the high quality textile of our product we stand to win the market fairly. Of the 3 existing Companies it controls 30% of the market share with the other two each controlling 15% and 10%. This leaves about 45% of untapped opportunity.

As technology advances and the aspect of internet of things takes center stage we envision the use of smart features into our jackets in the new future once we enter the market.

Target Market.

The Vogue Jacket is developed for the individual who are always on the move travelling. This could be due to business needs, leisure or personal interest. We have all this prospective clientele in mind us we design and produce the product.

Target Customer.

The target customer will be residents of North and Central America where we intend to put up 3 retail and warehouses. That is Arizona, Wyoming and Illinois. This 3 will serve as central locations from where customers can buy or order from for shipment within the United States. Our target customers will be mostly teenagers and the youth who desire luxury and comfort while traveling but still have their smart devices around with ease. We will also be targeting the elderly who may be on tour locally or abroad (Gruber, 2010).

Market Research and Analysis.

We have collaborated with two U.S.A national market research firms Infotrek Insight and Wonderful Tour Research Firm to have a market overview. From the 1 year survey findings and analysis, the existing target population is about 350,000,000 million individuals. 80 % of this comprise the youth and the teenagers. About 1% are the elderly Americans who would be on tour annually and 15% foreign tourist into the U.S. From existing market statistics it was found that 60% of the total target customer would be willing to switch to better alternatives if they were available (Mullins, 2012).

Market Plan.

For the past five years, there has been a 10% growth in the industry Revenue for Companies dealing with enhanced travel jackets. As the Industry growth prospect remain fairly at that level in the foreseeable future it is a great opportunity to tap into the market. We intend to use the social media that is Facebook and Twitter for advertisement given the biggest customer base are technologically savvy individuals. Given our COO technical know-how in production we intend to use the best technology for fast and efficient production such that we dont face a supply shortage once we hit the market.

Product and Services.

Our products will come in styles of 3 jackets, a blazer, windbreaker and a bomber. The blazer will be specially customized to meet the needs of the business class that require comfort but still maintain a level of executive nature. In light of this it will lack the bag pack but have a sleek detachable hood that contains the inflatable pillow and sleeping mask. The products will come mainly in three different colours black, blue and red. Customers will have a chance to pre-order custom made limited editions as will be posted on the companys web page. This will be some of the ways to fight competition and to keep our customers needs unique and catered for. One of our biggest competitive advantage is that we talked about exclusive rights with 2 of U.S airlines for transport services and rights granted under a 5 year renewable contract. With this we can reach 80% states for orders placed.

The retail price for the products at our three strategic stores will be $ 120 for the blazer and wind breaker and $ 100 for the blazer. For every online purchase and shipment an extra shipping charge of $10 will apply. Our jackets will be about $10 more expensive than similar jackets in the market but off better quality than any other and of more functionality than 80% of the existing jackets (Mullins, 2012).

Revenue Model

Margins.

For the business venture to kick start, we will require about $1,600,000. We have been able to raise $300,000 from personal savings and $600,000 from crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. We seek to obtain the rest through loans from financial institutions $200,000 and the remaining $500,000 from venture capitalist. The finances will go into different uses, such as purchase and shipment of production machines from China and German, purchase of company vehicles for distributions, lease of operating premises, set up cost including automated computer systems and brokering the deal with the 2 airline services.

Cost advantage.

An agreement for an all year round, 5 year contract with 3 major supplies for raw materials has been entered into to benefit from economies of scale and credit and ensure consistent supply for production.

Sales Forecast.

Vogue Jackets, will be priced at a profit margin of 20% per unit. Though this will be about $10 more for each unit we hope to counter market loss by providing better quality linen material on our jackets. We anticipate to achieve a 10,000 unit sales every month for 11 working months in year, thats about 110,000 units annually. That translates to about $3,300,000 in revenue annually. We intend to recruit about 150 sales team members 80% of whom shall be skilled, qualified and experienced individuals and the rest qualified, inexperienced but trainable individuals (Mullins, 2012).

References

Gruber, M. (2010). Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model. Academy Of Management Perspectives, 24(3), 93-96. doi:10.5465/amp.2010.52842953

Kickstarter,. (2015). The World's Best TRAVEL JACKET with 15 Features || BAUBAX. Retrieved 12 September 2015, from https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597538543/the-worlds-best-travel-jacket-with-15-features-bau

Morgan, E. (2015). Plan A: Analysing Business Model Innovation for Sustainable Consumption in Mass-Market Clothes Retailing. Journal Of Corporate Citizenship, 2015(57), 73-98. doi:10.9774/gleaf.4700.2015.ma.00007

Mullins, J. (2012). PLAN B: RE-THINKING FUNDING. Business Strategy Review, 23(4), 47-49. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8616.2012.00897.x

Schumacher, D. (1999). The Business Excellence Model. European Business Review, 99(3). doi:10.1108/ebr.1999.05499caf.001