Taste-Your-Fashion.com

I.About us

 

+ 

 

= www.Taste-Your-Fashion.com

 

Cooperating Companies:

The fashion company: FOREST is a small and medium sized design and retailing company, targeting on the white collar class and fashionable young people with certain purchasing power.

Forest always offers unique designs and good service for their customers.

 

The catering company:

Ants Cafe:

Average consumption: 150-200HKD

Ants Cafe Offersdelicate dishes including high-quality cafe, drinks and liquor, desserts and western food, praising elite lifestyle.

 

Bottleneck Period!

Forest: Continuous sales decrease over several seasons

Ants Cafe: Limited by themselves on the design of the dishes, have not made any improvements on the creativity for long time and the customers have become cheesed.

 

-What we do through the platform?

This website is regarded as a platform for both companies creating values. The website will take advantage of the internet, launching series of on-line activities to interact with fans, followers and customers. Both of the company will also build any possible links between the two to maximize the benefits of the website. Such methods like membership, credit-based system will also be applied on this platform to attract and retain customers.

-Our Expected Outcomes

Because both of the companies are in the bottleneck period, so building the virtual platform is for Taking them away from the difficulties and helps the companiesimprove in moral, reputation and popularity, and also helps both companies find new commercial opportunities as well as development path.

This is an imaginative try for the companies with similar problems and needs. The website will not only attract customers’ attention to both brands, but also will generate profits for the off-line business, because the innovative form of promoting will rouse the curiosity of both regular and potential customers and the diverse promotion activities will make them try by the new e-business approach or find new service from the traditional off-line stores.

-Why do we cooperate?

1) The similar problems and needs

As what have been mentioned before, both of the two companies are faced with the same problems: the period of stagnations and bottleneck. Both of them have no ideas about how to take measures to change the current situations solely. The deep reasons of their stagnations and even decrease actually is no innovation. After customers have experienced all the fresh things, they begin to leave and find something more attractive.

 

2) The similar target market 

The target customers of both fashion company and restaurant are similar. The customer of the Forest is white collar class with certain purchasing power (income ranging from 15000 to 25000HKD/month) and has particular taste to life. Because the average consumption of Ants Cafe is 150-200HKD, so the pricing actually targets their customers within the white collar class, which is overlapping with the customers of Forest. And then our Taste-your-fashion.com will attract customers from both sides and make them become the customers of the counterpart, which will definitely bring more potential audience and generate more profits for both companies.

3) The similar enterprise-scale

Both of the two companies belong to the small and medium sized enterprise and they are in the similar period of their development, which make them better understand counterpart’s situation and demand, and also make the cooperation possible and feasible to implement.

4) The similar nature

There is an old saying in China from Mencius: The desire for food and sex is part of human nature. And there is also an Chinese phrase called：some people are beautiful enough to feast the eyes(秀色可餐). Those sayings help us to explain the idea to make these two companies cooperate together. The fashion industry is all about beauty and when appropriate people wear beautiful clothes, it will give the audience the feeling of enjoyment, just like the delicacies for eyes. So beauty and delicious cuisine are similar in the nature, and this similarity in nature makes our Taste-your-fashion more reasonable and more easily accepted by customers.

 

II. Operation:

value creation from taste-your-fashion.com

1．Operation

-This online platform has several functions

First, it’s an interaction platform for customers and our two companies. Customers can write down their suggestions and ideas in this community. We, two companies, can gain the feedback from them and give out our opinions and standpoints.

Second, it’s a display platform for customers and our two companies. Customers can show their special taste in fashion and food here with their friends. We, two companies, can also display our theme designs of fashion and food together in it.

Third, it’s an e-commerce platform to suit the convenience of our customers. Customers who have no time to order their needs can use this platform to make their order. We will receive their orders and provide them what they need as soon as possible.

-What are we selling?

Products on taste-your-fashion.com: theme designed fashion clothes and food. We cooperate with Forest Inc. to design specific theme series products for customers. Themes are changeable included spring, summer, autumn, winter, holidays, birthdays, and memorial days, etc.

 

Services on taste-your-fashion.com: individual services. We can tailor our designed products according to our customers’ need. Like one might make an order to ask for Easter party theme clothes and food, then our chefs and clothes designers would connect with her and give her individual services to tailor her need.

-Who are our targeting customers?

We are more focusing on a niche market, actually. Since our offline customers are targeting on those young and fashion women, the new website’s targeting customers are consistent with the physical shops’. These women have fair buying power to pay for our not cheap products, foods and fashion goods. Besides, they would also like to pursue the gourmet and fashion trends and hold theme parties at home for entertainment.

 

-How will taste-your-fashion.com meet our need?

When we were consulting with each other, we did care about the value creation part. The taste-your-fashion.com can help us in marketing promotion and customer services.
 

1) Marketing Promotion

One part is the display showed in the website. It becomes our two companies’ official website to release our brand products to our current customers. Besides, our cooperated theme products will attract more potential customers through this platform.

Another part is the online membership points. We are encouraging our customers to be active in this online community. They can click into this website and join in the online activities designed for them to gather membership points, like sharing of customer experience,ranking for new theme designs, etc. Then, they can use these membership points to exchange coupons and free gifts to consume in our two companies.

2)      Customer services

Although it is just a platform for us to share customers, we still pay attention to superior customer services. As mentioned before, it is a platform for interaction and e-commerce. Interaction platform as it is can help us gather customers’ personal information and focus on services for them. For example, the customers can make comments on the community, whether they are positive or not. Then, we can give them feedback of our standpoints or solutions on the community as well. This can enhance the customer relationship actually. It shows that we do care about them and still provide the best for them. E-commerce platform as it is can help customers to make orders easily. It is suitable and available for customers who have no spare time to buy our products in our physical shops but want to get our products as soon as possible. In this function, we can retain more current customers and attract more potential customers actually.

Moreover, it also provides an opportunity for our customers to make special orders. For instance, one of our customers wants to hold an Easter party. Then, she can make order though this platform to tell both of us. Then, we will arrange our designers to contact with her and give her specific theme designs of fashion cloths and food in the party. After all, we regard the taste-your-fashion.com as a multifunctional platform for both of our two companies to provide superior customer services. It will create value for us through the customers’ reaction in this community.

-How to make sure the conversion rate of taste-your-fashion.com?

First, it is about the design of website. As an opening website, we should make sure that the customers can easily click into and browse through our content. So, the structure of our website should be logical and clear. Besides, the web design should be user-friendly. Customers have no much patience to learn how to operate in the website actually.

Second, it is about the customer services. We are not only the display platform on the Internet, but also an interaction and e-commerce platform. So, we should focus on customer services. We need timely online customer representatives to serve those potential customers. Being enthusiasm and patient will let potential customers feel good and be willing to purchase from us. We also need complete after sales services to serve for current customers. These customers would like to share their purchasing experience in the community. So we should serve them well to gain their satisfaction.

Third, it is about the promotion for current customers. As mentioned before, membership points can exchange to coupons and free gifts. These promotion methods are quite effective to retain the current customers and encourage them to consume again.

After all, conversion rate should be related to several conditions. We could not just use methods introduced before to increase the conversion rate. We should create and change our strategies based on the real situations. That is the smartest way to deal with this problem.

2. The Key Resources and Required Skills

-The Key Resources for Building a True Community

The aim of tast-your-fashion.com is not only building to maximize the values for both Ants Inc. and Forest Inc., but also offer and deliver value proposition to customers through effectively and efficiently using their resources.

The following key resources are needed to build a true community:

1) Physical resources: As the taste-your-fashion.com is a virtual community, the extra manufacture facilities or building are not highly required. Ants Inc. already has physical stores which could provide strong backbone for further manufacture and delivery. What is the most important physical resource are the IT infrastructures which are fundamental and momentous for a virtual community. Because this community focuses not only on one-way interaction of showing design but also supports multi-communication between customers and company. It requires a qualified server to guarantee every customer won’t come across bugs when they are searching items or sharing opinions with other users. The importance of good operation of the website just likes the physical stores daily operation that both needs good infrastructures to guarantee customers enjoy a pleasant journey.

2) Intellectual resources (Knowledge Management): Taste-your-fashion.com is the production of intellectual creativity from Ants Inc. and Forest Inc., so intellectual resources are the key resources both our two companies value to support this virtual website. We rely on the existing two brands, because this could bring the customers we already have in physical stores to our taste-your-fashion.com. They are the early adopters and keys to run smoothly in the start-up stage. Also because of the brands recognition, if we provide superior service to the customers online, the nature of virtual platform provides easy way for them to share with their friends or family by just clicking the link. The brands of two companies will also attract potential customers from each company and mix them up to maximize values for both.

Besides the brands, the proprietary knowledge also stands in the key points which bring backbone for companies’ long-term operation. For our Ants Inc, it can be the secret recipe of our cakes or private data of our premier customers, etc.

All the intellectual resources are related with knowledge, so in the following skills part we will demonstrate more details about the crucial skills for managing both parties’ knowledge.

3) Human resources: Taste-your-fashion.com is in a highly knowledge-intensive and creative industry. We don’t sell the cakes as what the cakes cost; we sell our design and ideas of cakes which place added values by our differentiation strategy. People are the highest important resource for us to pay more attention to. If we can’t make good design to catch the fashion trend of our partner Forest Inc. or satisfy the needs of customers, or we can’t preserve the design achievements successfully, taste-your-fashion would face the situation of losing customers, destroying image and copycat phenomenon. All these consequences won’t produce win-win situation or maximizing values for both companies. So the key points for design are to get the most creative people and know how to manage them.

What the requirements for human capital of virtual website different from physical stores is that we appreciate people who are versatile. Those people who only have creative ideas to design only what they think are not the right one we are looking for. We need people with creativity and high assimilation ability, because customers are always the lighthouse for our business. Designers should assimilate customers’ taste and then add their creativity into the end product. Also people working for virtual website should master basic to moderate IT skills, extra IT workers are needed in taste-your-fashion.

4) Financial resources: Taste-your-fashion is established by Ants Cafe and Forest,and thiswill reduce the risk for both companies. The risk is not only in the operation but also in the finance stage. Two companies could provide stronger financial support than only one company and reduce each of their financial burdens when are seeking diversification in different virtual platforms. They could make cash pooling which operates the cash debiting or crediting each sub-account of taste-your-fashion, Ants Inc. and Forest Inc. easily. This cash pooling also realizes the maximum using excessive cash and makes every cash valuable. 

-The Required Skills for Operating the Virtual platform

Economic Value:

What the taste-your-fashion.com provides to customers directly is not physical substances, it offers vast information that customers could not get in the physical stores. Both companies catch the economic values through the information captured in virtual website to prosper the sales even the whole brands. The cycle for information operation is producing, distributing and selling.

1) Knowledge management skills (Design): How to design is a quite tacit thing that most ideas are embedded in designers’ mind. At this point, how to manage the knowledge they have and transform them into the real economic values requires good knowledge management skills. For the explicit knowledge, such as the documentation of products or customer profiles, they could be shared easily and freely between the two companies. But for tacit knowledge, our two companies promote the communication of designers from both, especially facing with a new theme order or festivals before. Clearly communication through words could reduce most of misunderstanding and uncertainty between both parties.

Design is the source of the information showing in the website. It’s a production process which demands high quality and fitted skills to satisfy customers and keep the brand image. The design skills greatly determine whether taste-your-fashion would win the market. Although some customers would consume when highly promotion is added, the core for sales is your value proposition which means the degree of design for taste and fashion.

2) Learning Skills: As what we demonstrate before, this is a knowledge-intensive and dynamic industry. Everything is updating quickly which demands people in this field continuing enrich themselves with new knowledge from the theories, market and people around. For designers, they need to catch the cutting-edge fashion and most advanced technology. Also they have to share ideas with colleagues and the other party to make integration. Therefore good learning skills are demanded in this business.

3) Web page design skills: Besides the raw design for catering, how to show or layout your products to customers relates to the sales too. We can always see some physical stores furnish themselves attentively and layout their products in a thoughtful way. Why retailer put so much emphasis on the showing process? Because what you layout has already show the retailers’ taste and image, customers could easy distinguish whether your brand is fitted into their expectations through just a glance. For the virtual website, it must catch customers’ attention and guarantee they won’t close the tab when they first visit, only did that you could develop further business or potential economic values captured in the information.

4) Sales skills: Although taste-your-fashion provides a platform for both companies showing the newest design, it’s also a forum for customers communicating their ideas and opinions. Companies should pay more attention to the discussion between customers than contacting with themselves. Because during the discussion, we could easily find what customers want and the comments from other customers just play as a market research to test publics’ taste and opinion. It’s a free and direct resource for salesman to determine how to approach those customers and explore more consumption among them. The communication and projection ability embedded in sales skills are quite important to obtain economic value.
 

Working Over Time?

1) Financial skills: In the start-up period, both companies reached an agreement about the investment portion for taste-your-fashion.com, so it’s not a big problem for virtual website operation under the financial limit. However, if the website will work over time, it’s indubitable for companies to concern how to finance more money rather than all invested by their two to expand business for the virtual website. To master good financial skills to manage existing money and finance more capital is a vital foundation.

2) Leadership skills: In both physical catering and fashion stores, we have good structure of management. For taste-your-fashion.com, we still need to aware it’s not a totally accessory but a real new community which also needs additional people to manage. Ants Cafe and Forest could send out some people to establish the management team for virtual website, and their mission is to motivate staff and influence them to perform at the highest level they can. While the management tactics may be not same with managing staff in physical stores, because virtual companies value knowledge and creativity, so empowerment leadership style may fit into this new organization. The management way still needs more thoughts for the senior managers.

III. On-line? Off-line? That’s a question!

1. Comparison between an online community and a physical community

                                           1) Online Community

 An online community is a virtual community that exists in the Internet and whose members show its existence through participating in membership ritual. Meanwhile, an online community can be the form of an information system where anyone can post their ideas. In addition, online communities have also become a supplemental platform of communication among people who may familiar with each other in real life. Many means of online communities are used in social software separately or in combination, including text-based chat rooms and forums that use avatars, voice, or video. Significant socio-technical change is the main reason for the proliferation of such Internet-based social network.
 

2) Physical Community

Physical community is composed of a group of people whose identity as a group lies in their interaction and sharing about similar interests. Plenty of factors may affect the identity of the participants and their degree of adhesion, such as belief, intent, resources, preferences, risks and needs. For the physical community, it is a more socially connected and specific place for its members. In addition, physical activity has been seen as an essential component of physical community. For example, all of the physical community’s members are gathered to have a running competition. 
 

3) The differences between an online community and a physical community

There are some differences between an online community and a physical community. In the one hand, the online community has the nature of relationships and even the choices of people’s identity. It provides people many activities from home, such as shopping, reserving products and paying bills. However, the physical community must have a specific place to organize activities.

On the other hand, in the online community people can talk to others completely in their convenient methods or situations without seeming offensive or rude. They can show themselves the way they want to be perceived, such as exaggerating good qualities or hiding bad qualities. They can be more honest and open when able to “hide” behind their screen. They can observe the person they are talking to the way they want to see them, and focusing on or imagining the behaviors they want that person to show. There is less of a focus on physical attributes or facial expressions, and more of a focus on conversational skills and personality.

2.Comparison between an Virtual Community and a Web Portal

1) Virtual Community

A virtual community is a social network of individuals who interact with each other through specific social media, potential political or geographical boundaries in order to pursue mutual goals or interests. Virtual communities all encourage interaction, sometimes focusing on a particular beliefs or interests, or just to communicate. Some virtual communities do both. Community members can communicate with each other through chat room, message boards, virtual worlds or social networking sites. 

2) Web Portal

A web portal is a website that gathers information together from various resources in a uniform method. Apart from the standard search engines character, portals provide other services, such as news, email, databases, stock prices and entertainment. In addition, portals provide a new way for companies to provide a consistent view with access control and procedures for multiple databases and applications. Some famous public portals are MSN, Yahoo, Baidu and so on.

3) The differences between a Virtual Community and a Web Portal

There are many differences between a virtual community and a web portal. First, the purpose of a virtual community is providing a platform for people to communicate, but a web portal aims at providing various information or news to its browsers. A web portal brings plenty of information together and posts them in the website. In addition, the web portal can be classified based on the function differentiation, such as search portals, news portals, stock portals and so on. However, in the virtual community plenty of communication platforms can be founded, such as chart room, message boards, forum and so on.

Second, the amount of information provided in virtual communities and web portals are different. In most of virtual communities you can only find limited information about a specific and concrete interest or belief, because virtual communities are used for a variety of professional or interest groups. However, in web portals there is a lot of information because web portals are, for many users, the starting point of their web browser.

Finally, virtual communities are aimed at a group of people who have the similar interests or beliefs. Because virtual communities all encourage interacting people having a particular interest, the members of virtual communities are limited and only focus on a particular group. However, web portals face more wide users because a web portal is just the starting point of web surfing and it aims at serving almost every user.

3. Our Virtual Community

Our virtual community is really a community that provides a platform for members to communicate with others. First, in our virtual community we use website to organize members together and the virtual community is a social network of individuals who interact others through the Internet. All of our activities are organized in the website, so members can take part in our activities through the Internet at home and participate in every time when they are convenient.

Second, our virtual community provides many interactive modules for members in order to imitate their passive to communicate with other members and our company. For example, there is a voting module in the website. In this module, members can choose their favorite caters and designers of the corresponding season. At the same time, they can also participate in the design team to give their ideas about next season’s design. Moreover, we also develop a forum for members to express and discuss their opinions on specific topic every week.

Finally, our virtual community can attract people who have the similar interest and belief. For example, all of our members are those people having a strong interest in fashion and caters. They would like to chase fashion trends and taste delicious caters. In addition, they also have the interest to participate in design and have their own opinion about costume design and food design. Meanwhile, the most important thing is that most of our members are the loyalty customers of both of our companies.

Therefore, considering on above analysis we believe our virtual community is really a community and it can enhance members’ interests on our company.

Reference:

1. Alexander Osterwalder (2010), Business Model Generation. Canada: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

 

2. Carol Kinsey Goman(2012), 5 Tips for Virtual Collaboration

3. Catherine M. Ridin，DavidGefen(2004), Virtual Community Attraction: Why People Hang Out Online

 

4. Keith Ferrazzi(2012), How Successful Virtual Teams Collaborate, Harvard Business Review

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