Today, I went to Starbucks with my friends after lecture and I realized that they have changed their traditional cup (white with a green Starbucks logo on it) into red cups for Christmas. Also, there are many Christmas-related products like glass cups and instant coffee. Starbucks popular holiday beverages are also returned, including peppermint mocha, gingerbread latte, eggnog latte and caramel brulee latte. From my point of view, it is more than Christmas special— more profits can be produced in this way. A new app is also created by Starbucks named Starbucks Cup Magic. Customers can download for free and use to discover Starbucks holiday characters found on iconic red cups, coffee bags and signage.

     The Starbucks Cup Magic app allows customers to share their feelings of Christmas products. It is connected to Facebook and Twitter, which will make great promotion for their Christmas-special products. When I went to Starbucks today, I found that many people were there to try the Christmas-special although they were not really wanting a cup of coffee. The new arrival of Christmas Classical coffee will probably make huge profits to Starbucks. Therefore, what the red cups really brings about is not only the Christmas Special coffee, but also money.

Today, I read a business blog on Canada Business Network, which talks about mobile websites. Mobile websites is becoming increasingly popular due to the widespread use of smartphones, ITouch and IPad: increasing number of people accessing the web from their hand-held devices. More and more businesses are trying to build their own mobile website in order to reach more customers and get more profits. Compares with traditional website, the mobile websites are designed to fit the smaller screens of hand-held devices. Pages are often simplified, unnecessary images are removed, and slow-loading content such as video is reduced.

It seems that mobile website can bring about many advantages, however, in my opinion, not all of the businesses are appropriated to have a mobile website. Firstly, building website costs a lot. There need money to design, maintain, and repair the website. So, for those small companies with little fund, it is not the best choice for them to have a mobile website. Secondly, there are lots of alternative way to make promotion online rather than establish an own mobile website. For example, advertising on other mobile website, this costs less money. Thirdly, it is time-consuming to promote a new website and let people to become familiar about it. Therefore, it is better to advertise on some well-known websites like Facebook and Twitter to save money and time. Above all, a number of problems need to be taken into consideration for a company to decide whether to have a mobile website or not.

Social entrepreneurs are everyday people with ideas or businesses that deliver a social, environmental or community benefit. They often have a personal experience of the need they are addressing and many are from the communities they seek to serve and help. As such they are uniquely positioned to address some of our most pressing social challenges. Social entrepreneurs are passionate, driven and committed. They are motivated by an unmet need in their community or society more broadly and develop innovative solutions to meet that need. They use business not for the sake of profit only but to achieve a social or environmental outcome.

Blake Mycoskie is said to be a social entrepreneur since he established the company because once he traveled to Argentina in January 2006, he was struck by the country’s health and poverty problems and discovered that numerous children did not have proper footwear. Half of TOMS — the half in their Santa Monica headquarters and in retail stores on 5th Avenue — is entrepreneurship. The other half is charity. After five years of giving shoes, Blake was ready to address another need: vision. On June 7, 2011, TOMS debuted One for One Eyewear, which provides eye treatment, prescription glasses or eye surgery with every pair purchased. 

Thank you TOMS Shoes! That’s the voice from the hearts of us.

TOMS Shoes was launched in Venice, California in 2006 by Blake Mycoskie, who is only 32 years old. Blake built up the company with $300,000 of his own money and TOMS sold 10,000 pairs during its first year in business. He visited Argentina through the race and liking the country returned on vacation. During the trip Blake witnessed children living in extreme poverty, with no shoes to protect their feet. That’s why he got the idea to establish TOMS Shoes. TOMS Shoes has a variety of shoes based on the traditional Argentine alpargataa slip-on—in lightweight fabrics and vibrant colors and prints for women and men. The range of customers for the company is not restricted. Mycoskie gives a promise which says: ” For every pair of shoes purchased, TOMS Shoes gives a pair of shoes to a child in need.” Since its launch, the revenues of TOMS Shoes are estimated $4.6 million and Mycoskie has donated over 115,000 shoes to children in need around the world through a series of “Shoe Drop” tours. The recipient of the People’s Design Award from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and the Smithsonian Institution, TOMS has expanded to include a line of t-shirts, hats, and infant onesies.

 Blake Mycoskie is an American traveller and social entrepreneur. To learn more why he is a social entrepreneur, see next post please.

Aritziais a women’s fashion boutique that offers beautifully designed clothes that are on trend and high quality. Born in Vancouver, Canada, in 1984, they have boutiques in select markets across the US and Canada, including New York, Vancouver, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto, Portland, and London. in the video, Brian Hill introduced how the company developed and their special way of doing business in general. Every retail store of Aritzia has unique feature of architecture which can attract people.

  Aritzia contain several branches at variable pricing level which are suitable for customers at different ages. It is a nice idea of business since they can attract as many consumers as possible in that way in order to larger their revenue. I like Aritzia very much because of they sale all kinds of staff that are in fashion and I can always harvest some wonderful product whenever I go to those retail stores. As compared to other large clothing stores like Zara and H&M, the weakness of Aritzia is its relatively high pricing, which may not be accept by some customers.