Young Designer’s Own Business

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Nicole Bridger’s story gives me a lot of inspiration. After graduated with a fashion design degree, she already had a clear plan to set up her own fashion brand – “Nicole Bridger Designs”. The business has a fine value proposition and a clear customer segment. She opens up the store in Vancouver where is her hometown. Through setting up factory and organizing the workforce, Bridger’s business went well.

Source of image: fslocal.com

It’s always hard to start a business and also takes a long time to finance the enough capital. Instead of becoming a designer hired by big company for life, Nicole Bridger takes courage to pursue her career on her own. It reminds me the time when I was choosing my major. I am very interested in film production but I don’t know if I can make a living from it. Therefore, I chose to study making money instead of pursuing my hobby in university. I think certain specialized skills are not necessarily needed to start a business, for example, you don’t have to be a film director if you want to start up a film company. Sometimes, business skills are more required. But Bridger overcomes this problem, she knows exactly what she is doing for her business. Also, her experience in the industry provides huge benefits. Most importantly, her passion for fashion design and her belief that “making positive changes” encourage her to put all the efforts in her career. I wish her all the best in her business.

Nintendo’s Diversification Strategy – Is It Too Risky?

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Source of image: i.ytimg.com

Xinyue talks about Nintendo’s expansion through diversifying by making “quality of life” products in her blog post. She says that “Nintendo made a strong and solid start”. After reading the news, I think Nintendo introduces a good concept including the five “non”s campaign which provides a clear idea to the potential customers. Nintendo has shown that at least they had done their market research and had plans for investments, as well as some reliable partners such as Resmed. Overall, Nintendo does have a “solid start” and preparations for their Quality of Life to be launched.

However, diversification is still a risky strategy. It means entering a new market. The news states it’s not that Nintendo has no experience at all, but I believe many people are still unsure if product will be successful. After all, Nintendo is still a game company. Its success in game industry has made this impression unshakable in the hearts of customers. I predict that once Quality of Life is launched, most of people who buy it will be Nintendo’s loyal customers just like Xinyue, not the ones who are really interested in life healthy products. It takes time for people to accept a new product from a company that they are not familiar. Anyway, I hope Nintendo’s efforts will make their Quality of Life successful, though it’s going to be a big challenge.

Do Young People Really Need to Learn to Invest in Stocks?

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Source of image: timeinc.net

Mr. Chris Umiastowski wrote an interesting article about drop in Netflix’s stocks which happened recently. He claims Netflix could still be “the dominant subscription service for original and licensed TV programming around the world”. However, I am interested by his point that parents should teach kids to think about long-term investments in stocks. He considers them as “young investors who may utilize tax shelter and generates a long-term market-average 9-per-cent return”.

He uses Netflix as the example relates to the young people who are most familiar with technology trends, which I agree. He also shows his support in this stock crash and believes Netflix’s future remains bright. Based on my understanding, he might be disappointed about the current investors who do not consider Netflix’s long-term performance and think that young investors would think in a different way. It makes sense but do young people really need to learn to invest for now? I don’t think so. Why don’t they use this money going to university and learn other skills? Besides, a large quantity of their money comes from parents. It is not that easy to make profit, thus it is very likely for being wasted.

I think whether young people should invest or not, might mainly depends on their own interest and passion. They do not need to be rush, as they may want to have their own savings instead of putting it into the stock market.

Dole’s “Gokusen” Banana

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Source of image: pioneeringspiritaward.com

After reading Si Jia’s blog post, I can understand the success of Dole’s marketing strategy. I also can tell that Gokusen banana had won Si Jia’s heart over other banana brands. I agree with its marketing effectiveness. The Gokusen banana is differentiated as supreme banana. It really creates a huge value with a minor cost. Most importantly, Dole makes Gokusen bananas become famous not only among runners who are the ones own this “one and only ultimate banana trophy”, but throughout the whole country. It is true that only their information are printed on the banana and trophies only belong to them, but this marketing campaign definitely increases Dole’s brand awareness and builds a better brand image. It also attracts many new customers and thus creates enormous benefits.

However, I think this effectiveness will not last for long. It may be dangerous if Gokusen bananas still remain a high price at the time. To avoid this, I suggest Dole to implement this marketing strategy for every major Marathon event in the future. Because this creates a social benefit to encourage people participating the marathon, which is good for their health, by providing them this “one and only banana trophy”. Dole may also make improvements, such as introducing similar types of “printed” banana available not only for Marathon runners but to everyone, for example, the children. As everyone wants to have their own Gokusen Banana, this marketing strategy might become even more successful.

Conflict of Interest between B.C. Hydro and First Nations

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Source of image: vancouversun.com

B.C. First Nation chiefs urges the government to reject BC Hydro’s $8-million Site C hydroelectric megaproject. B.C. Hydro wants to construct a dam and 1,100-megawatt hydroelectric generating station on the Peace River in northeastern B.C. The project is needed because of growing population and the area’s oil, gas and mining industries. However, First Nations group argues flooding valley would impair their rights to fish, hunt and use the area for ceremonial purposes.

There is a conflict of interest exists. The First Nation groups have the right to stand out. There are social cultural issues behind it. They may claim that the land belongs to them and they cannot be affected. For the B.C. Hydro, the project may create benefits to them. But they have to consider the First Nations’ interests as one important external factor. And the company should have done the social-environmental analysis carefully before the project. For the First Nation groups, which has the responsibility to protect the interests of the local aboriginal people near the Peace River and does not share the benefits from this project, may have a different point of view. As non-aboriginal Canadians would not worry too much about fishing, hunting and so on. But the aboriginal people may take these things very seriously, consider as their rights. This is totally a cultural difference. Therefore, I would say the problem comes from B.C. Hydro’s incomplete social-environmental research and possible misconception towards the First Nations, thus leads to their fightback. So far, It’s not going to be easy to solve this problem, as the First Nation chiefs are going to address the issue to the Prime Minister. Hope it will be settled soon through peaceful negotiations.

Muji’s Expansion Plan in Canada

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This news made me excited. The Japanese retailer Muji finally decided to open stores in Canada. I am a loyal customer of Muji myself. I just love the “simplicity” of their products, and the quality which goes with a fair price. From the spokesman’s words, I can see that Muji takes this expansion very seriously. Right now, North America contributes a very little part of their revenue, but they still consider as a potential market in the future.

Source of image: nikkeivoice.ca

Expanding overseas may be difficult for a company. I think Muji has done a good job in establishing the brand reputation around the world, but they adopts a “careful” expansion plan in Canada this time. The target is to open 5 to 6 stores in the next 5 years, the speed will increase when it reaches a certain level. It shows their plan may vary with actual situation. The initial plan is to offer just 2,800 items in Canada, a relative low amount of products compare with other countries. I think the reason for being so careful about expansion is just to avoid risk. Muji does not want to open many stores at once, which I think is a good decision, because quality over quantity. They also concern about the high operating cost in Canada, which can be a restraining force indeed, makes pricing a challenge. I agree with Muji’s low cost on advertising strategy and like that “stores are the places to advertise and promote”. There are many other ways to increase brand awareness in marketing. In the end, I hope that good quality and fair price of their products will remain the same and bring Muji a success in Canada.

Paul Davidescu’s Dinner Planning Company

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I saw an interesting article on the Globe, wrote by one of our professors in Sauder. He tells about Paul Davidescu’s career story. Tangoo, a dinner planning company, originally launched as part of school project when he was an undergraduate student in Sauder in 2012. The inspiration comes from his idea of gaining benefit from “that easy-going, social feeling” atmosphere when people are socializing and having fun at night, which I think is very smart. Sometimes, people just act relaxing in that kind of situation and easily making the purchases. However, the company appeared to be unsuccessful, due to unexpected human behavior, suffered losses.

Source of image: tangoo.ca

Transforming an idea into a successful company is not easy, but technology provided him a helping hand. He re-emerged Tangoo as a “pocket concierge”, an app that would help customers plan outings and always be at-the-ready on the phone. Its business to the customers had completely changed. And no doubt, that brought Tangoo a big success. From Tangoo’s case, I learned that the technology power in marketing just cannot be ignored. I have heard that a lot of successful businesses emerged from making iPhone apps, or Android apps. Companies should absolutely consider the smartphone market’s importance in operations. Of course, I do not mean that every business should apply to this technology power. A small grocery store does not need to create an app for its customers. But many businesses, such as Tangoo, are just suitable to get in touch with customers through smartphones. Therefore, Davidescu definitely made a great decision for re-emerging his company as a pock concierge for being an mobile app.

Jobs-to-be-done and Milkshake Marketing

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Source of image: vapartners.ca

Harvard Business School professor Clay Christensen points out the wrong method of positioning the products for marketing purpose which many current businesses have used, and suggests a new way of segmenting their markets according to Jobs-to-be-done. Carmen Nobel tells about Christensen’s interesting insight into marketing in his post. This concept means rather than simply segmenting the markets by products or by demographics, companies should consider their products from customers’ point of view.

Milkshake is Christensen’s case example for this marketing concept. A fast-food restaurant wants to improve their milkshake sales and they find success when applying jobs-to-be-done segmentation method: by doing the research from existing customers and they figure out that how to improve their milkshake properly in order to satisfy the customers more. Then, the sales finally improve. However, It does not only apply to small businesses like Milkshake. I think jobs-to-be-done is a useful concept to every company when they are doing segmentation of company’s product and trying to improve the sales. It makes the company to consider more about customers’ interest, rather than just trying to improve the product itself, or just segmenting product into different demographics of customers and sell it without a clear understanding of their customer through study on their customers, and eventually fail. Applying this concept may help companies to avoid such failure. They may think as a customer of their products themselves, think about why the customers buy their products. Only when the customers get the satisfaction from their products, they are willing to pay.

Haotian Zhang's Blog

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Young Designer’s Own Business

Nintendo’s Diversification Strategy – Is It Too Risky?

Do Young People Really Need to Learn to Invest in Stocks?

Dole’s “Gokusen” Banana

Conflict of Interest between B.C. Hydro and First Nations

Muji’s Expansion Plan in Canada

Paul Davidescu’s Dinner Planning Company

Jobs-to-be-done and Milkshake Marketing