Petite Clothing - Fashionable Clothing For Women Of The Baby Boomer Generation

Value Proposition Canvas

When taking into account petite clothing, the market has experienced gap in customer expectation. By being short, it can result in lot of stress when consumers are shopping for clothes, hence people tend to be loyal when they have discovered a place. As noted, there are more than 30% of clothes purchased by consumer through online mode were returned due to customer facing size issue (Parker 2018). The Petite Clothing will be a start-up retail company which will be selling fashionable petite clothing to women of the baby boom generation. The business will make petite clothes that will be exclusively directed to its targeted customer group. The initial group of Petite Clothing is open an online clothing retail application. The expansion plan will comprise of including some potential franchise to Petite Clothing retail store and build a brand name.

Petite Clothing will tailor its inventory to meet the specific requirements of its petite customer segment group. The owner looks to promote Petite Clothing through targeted promotion campaign that will comprise of grand opening event, coverage through local media, printing advertisement and directly mailing its customers (Frederick, O'Connor and Kuratko 2018). The company looks to earn revenue from its customers purchasing its products. Furthermore, the company has recognized that its break-even point would not be lower than $20,000 of monthly sales. The business has projected that its annual profits will reach $400,000 within the span of three years. Petite Clothing requires a total fund of $150,000 through banks to launch its business successfully and the owner will be contributing a sum of $100,000 through personal savings.  

Taking into account the revenues, Petite Clothing aim is to generate revenue from those customers that are buying its products. Petite Clothing initial year income statement aims to generate profit margin of around 25% with net income after tax on yearly basis of $100,000. The business has an objective of setting its break-even point of no less than $20,000 in terms of total monthly sales. The business anticipates its three-year annual profits would reach $400,000.

Petite Clothing will produce revenues from selling the retail clothes and other type of merchandise. The sales figure for first year is projected to be around $500,000 and the business anticipates to exceed the sales figures of $800,000 by the end of third year. Petite Clothing has the objective of achieving monthly profitability within its first year of operation. Petite Clothing would require $250.000 as a working capital to launch its business activities successfully (Kuratko 2016). The owner would raise a sum of $100,000 through their personal savings and the remaining fund would be achieved through bank loans. The start-up funds obtained will be used for renovating the business sites, inventory and to meet operational expenses such as payroll, utilities and rent.

A small part of Petite Clothing investment will also be dedicated towards creating an online clothing store. The business deems to be an inexpensive e-commerce tools that would provide very easy way of creating an online boutique store where it will be able to sell its products to other parts of world. 

Petite Clothing

The customer value proposition canvas emphasizes on actually understanding the problems and producing those products or services which solves the problem of customers. The value proposition canvas can be considered critical to business models. It is helpful for business to make decisions and positioning the product (Burns 2016). It is much more than just a simple graphical representation of customer wants. The business is required to align their strategies as per the needs of customers. This can be helpful in producing a product that customers want.  

The value proposition of Petite Clothing puts forward that it provides value to customers by helping them to find out the clothes under single application. The customers will find it easy to navigate and find sizes which will secure the payments (Blundel, Lockett and Wang 2017). The petite clothing shop online application will offer variety of clothes to customers that are 5.4 feet or those that are below 5.4 feet. The online shop will be available to customers for 24/7 and customers can order products for all types of petite shapes.

The Petite Clothing owner have a strong marketing backgrounds and recognize the significance of effective marketing. The owner anticipates to attract customers to its shopping app. The owner will take the service of local PR firm in order to get assistance in developing and implementing the strategic marketing plan and guide its publicity efforts in a very cost-effective manner (Liang, Wang and Lazear 2018). The marketing message of Petite Clothing will revolve around the concept of Baby Boom generation because they are revolutionaries and trend setters.

Petite Clothing will make partnership with local organizations particularly the Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Merchant Association. This strategic partnership will help in publicity of Petite Clothing in local events (Audretsch and Moog 2022). The initial marketing efforts of Petite Clothing will be to target the local consumers that are present in its community. The company will be heavily dependent on local print and broadcast media reporting, traditional advertisement, marketing campaign through direct mail and networking.

Petite Clothing during the initial stage will assign the significant part of its advertisement budget for printing and broadcasting media in order to spread the word. The comprehensive advertisement as well as semi-annual direct mail marketing campaigns will result in grand opening (Fayolle, 2018). The business will take advantage of lower cost publicity activities and it will post flyers both online and in community bulletin boards.

As an online clothing shop, Petite Clothing will be conducting business on 24/7 basis. The business will take around 2/3 area of its leased premises space for administration and stock purpose (Henry 2021). Along with this, Petite Clothing will have one full-time owner and it will be hiring three-part time employees for serving its customers.

Petite Clothing will be securing merchandise from local sourced manufactures that are making clothes. The business will also have access to Florida Apparel Market, which is the biggest wholesale merchandise warehouse within the state. Upon purchasing products from FAM, the purchasers will receive product displays and also promotional materials with purchase (Henry et al., 2017). In addition to this, the business will also work very closely with its regional sales representative. To implement control over costs, Petite Clothing will be keeping track of inventories and it will manage level of stocks by putting in place an inventory control system (Hunger 2020). This will comprise of standard bar code with related equipment and software. The business will hire staff that will carry-out yearly inventory audits and it will hire auditors from outside whenever necessary.

Gain Creators

Technology is helpful in everything as it helps in scheduling the work shifts of employees to ordering of inventory (Lasserre 2017). Petite Clothing entrepreneur is looking forward to set up an online clothing shop experience for its customers with familiar range of technologies that is needed for running the application smoothly and competing against the bigger business in areas.

The information technology solution of Petite Clothing will include a security technology and this will help in eliminating incidents relating to shoplifting and break-ins (Zhang and Cueto 2017). The business will have a point of system software program attached to its application that will help in speeding up the transactions and reduce any possibility of error during shopping. The point of sale software will be equipped with radio frequency where readers will be easily able to view the price to a running total and will be computing the sale tax automatically for every transaction. The POS of software can be tied to inventory based management solutions. This will help in updating the inventory databases on an instant basis when any single individual items are sold.

Petite Clothing will put in place communication technology as it is serving its customer directly. The clothing application will have customer chat support where customers will be able to interact with Petite Clothing during the business hours of operations (Burton, Sørensen and Dobrev 2016). The chat support will address queries relating to products or services and get quick solutions.

The Human Resource of Petite Clothing will include sales staff of three members that will be working as part-time employees. These positions are not yet filled and the owner believes that finding a qualified employee will not actually be an issue (Morden 2016). The sales associate of Petite Clothing will be paid on hourly basis along with commissions. Petite Clothing will also provide bonus through sales incentives and it will also conduct a yearly review for encouraging retention of employees.

As Petite Clothing is a small business, the company will have small number of staff. The owners will take up the leadership roles within the company and it will be considered accountable for every-day operations, overseeing the marketing efforts, purchasing the merchandise, management of inventory and all other administrative duties (Pollman and Barry 2016). A small sales staff will also help the owner in securing sales, helping the customers and general maintenance of stock on floor. The owner will be managing the daily operations that will consists of supervision of staff, maintaining of inventory and bookkeeping. The owner will also be considered accountable for looking after the merchandise and will also maintain awareness about trends prevalent in the industry.

Petite Clothing will require a sum of $250,000 as fund to gets its business operations started. The business is currently seeking funds from banks as business loans. Petite Clothing has based its projection on the basis of assumption that the present economy of UK, spending habits among the consumers and growth in population will continue till the foreseeable future (Burns and Dewhurst 2016). The business also assumes that its current and future supplies would continue to sell the inventory to Petite Clothing based on the price which will allow the business to maintain its current profit margin. It is also noteworthy that Petite Clothing is able to hire reliable employees at a very reasonable wages.

Customer Jobs

The petite clothing industry is a strong business because its ever-changing styles and continues consumer demand. Although supercentres and megastores have been market dominant for the last two decades but there are more number of consumers that are looking for change (Patriotta and Siegel 2019). The petite set of consumers are in search for a much peaceful and very customer friendly shopping experience. This can be considered true particularly for those that find very hard to discover clothes that fits them well.

The current business of petite clothing should be considered as a viable business opportunity. Nevertheless, there is hardly any probability of decline in market for at least another twenty years (Lynch 2018). Even in future the clothing business will always be in demand. The petite clothing customer segment still find it hard to get the right fit and there is still a huge gap in market that is unfulfilled. The business is considered successful because outstanding shopping experience and this will give rise to repeated business. The growing trend of online store could serve as a business opportunity for Petite Clothing.

The business does not face any direct competition for its unique business model. However, there are some business that are directly competing with Petite Clothing as they target younger demographics and they specialize in natural fibre clothes. They are also found to be carrying local art and jewellery (Ansoff et al. 2018). While some other competitors target the younger women, that specializes in providing industrial fashionable clothing with classic lines and punk gothic edge.

If Petite Clothing start-up never existed, the world would be worse off because the huge market gap in petite clothing might not have been addressed. With the growth of Petite Clothing the business will gain positive reputation in the market amongst its targeted set of customers. This will help in opening numerous opportunities. The business owner has decided to continue its operation as a small business and it will develop and grow the company by simply increasing its current set of clothing lines. Petite Clothing will also expand its selection to take into account numerous products particularly swimwear, lingerie and sportswear.

Inside the span of five years, the business owner would be assessing the potential for franchising its offline stores in some selected locations as well. The business understands the power and ease of customers shopping experience through shopping application and having the online presence will also help in spreading awareness among the consumers regarding its product lines and brand for wider community.  

The investors must invest in this business because the petite clothing has immense growth and this segment of market does not have any direct competition. Eventually, the business will produce desired profits and within the targeted span of time. The business is looking forward to penetrate and create awareness among 60% of the targeted customers. Furthermore, making investment in this business viable because there is a strong customer base for petite clothing and the business anticipates to make profit of 50% during the first year of its operation. Overall, petite clothing will be a profitable business as it has potential to expand and also establish a strong reputation as the quality petite clothing online shop.  

References:

Parker, S.C., 2018. The economics of entrepreneurship. Cambridge University Press.

Frederick, H., O'Connor, A. and Kuratko, D.F., 2018. Entrepreneurship. Cengage AU.

Kuratko, D.F., 2016. Entrepreneurship: Theory, process, and practice. Cengage learning.

Burns, P., 2016. Entrepreneurship and small business. Red Globe Press.

Blundel, R., Lockett, N. and Wang, C., 2017. Exploring entrepreneurship. Sage.

Liang, J., Wang, H. and Lazear, E.P., 2018. Demographics and entrepreneurship. Journal of Political Economy, 126(S1), pp.S140-S196.

Audretsch, D.B. and Moog, P., 2022. Democracy and entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 46(2), pp.368-392.

Fayolle, A. (2018). Personal views on the future of entrepreneurship education. In A research agenda for entrepreneurship education. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Henry, C., Hill, F., & Leitch, C. (2017). Entrepreneurship education and training. Routledge.

Zhang, S.X. and Cueto, J., 2017. The study of bias in entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship theory and Practice, 41(3), pp.419-454.

Burton, M.D., Sørensen, J.B. and Dobrev, S.D., 2016. A careers perspective on entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 40(2), pp.237-247.

Pollman, E. and Barry, J.M., 2016. Regulatory entrepreneurship. S. Cal. L. Rev., 90, p.383.

Burns, P. and Dewhurst, J. eds., 2016. Small business and entrepreneurship. Macmillan International Higher Education.

Patriotta, G. and Siegel, D., 2019. The context of entrepreneurship. Journal of Management Studies, 56(6), pp.1194-1196.

Lynch, R., 2018. Strategic management. Pearson UK.

Ansoff, H.I., Kipley, D., Lewis, A.O., Helm-Stevens, R. and Ansoff, R., 2018. Implanting strategic management. Springer.

Henry, A., 2021. Understanding strategic management. Oxford University Press.

Hunger, J.D., 2020. Essentials of strategic management.

Lasserre, P., 2017. Global strategic management. Macmillan International Higher Education.

Morden, T., 2016. Principles of strategic management. Routledge.