The external blog that I chose covers the business story of Everlane, one of my favourite clothing brands.

Based on the blog  Hot Startup Everlane Wants You To Know You’re Being Screwed Over By Retailers and my own purchasing experiences about Everlane, the team uses lots of tactics to make the brand popular and successful.

As it says at the beginning of the blog, “Your $120 designer shirt sells for ten times what it cost to make. Not at Everlane.” The establisher Michael Preysman actually has no fashion background, the main reason for him to start the business is that he wants to offer customers with high-quality clothes with fair prices. The customer group Everlane focuses on has no difference with traditional retailers, but one huge change is that Everlane only do online selling services. By cutting intermediates, which are the retailing stores, the brand only has one channel. Customers purchase products in official website, and parcels would be delivered directly to them. This action helps Everlane cuts the renting fees for stores, and to save money for both consumers and business owner.

Another aspect differentiates Everlane from other clothing brands can be called “detailed information and comparisons provided”. At the end of every product page of the official website, there is a chart indicates the true cost of the product, such as materials, labor and transportation fees, additionally the price of similar products from Everlane and traditional retailers are listed. These information help customers to know better about where their money goes and why they should choose Everlane rather than other brands. Also, the detailed information not only creates an “honest brand image”, but also successfully helps the brand to compete its competitors, because customers all want to purchase products with good quality and lower prices.

Additionally, Everlane launches its products relatively slowly. At the beginning it only has men clothing line, then the brand updates four new products per month. This method makes a new brand safer, what’s more important, Everlane could focuses on the little amount of clothes it produces, as well as it is easier for the company to observe customers’ reactions about products and make adjustments as soon as possible.

Everlane has already 200000 users and more than 30% of them are repeat consumers, we could say that the brand did gained success in this short period of development. But when looking into the future, there are still problems existed. Could Everlane keep the quality of its products? How to gain larger customer amount? Should the online selling method be strengthened? These all could be questions for Everlane to answer.

Word count: 432

Work Cited:  https://www.everlane.com/

http://www.businessinsider.com/everlane-2012-3

In Prithvi Khanna’s blog The Fall of Blackberry, the fall of Blackberry, one of the previous biggest company in the smartphone market, was clearly analyzed with statistics.

As a background information, before the trend of the screen touch hit the smartphone market, Blackberry had a huge market share, for example 20.1% in the quarter one in 2009. However according to the statistic, there is only 0.1% market share for Blackberry in the quarter two in 2016.

I agree with the reasons the author offered within the blog, which mainly contains 2 reasons of the brand’s failure. Firstly, Blackberry underestimated its competitors such as Apple and Samsung at that time. Based on the brand’s success at that time, the CEO and managers didn’t forecast the future of the smartphone industry, as well as they ignored the developments of other potential competitors. Secondly, Blackberry lacked of innovation. As Apple and Samsung equip themselves with their own app stores, Blackberry didn’t update its system, as well as it doesn’t keep up with the trend of screen touch smartphones, therefore Blackberry faced a market failure.

However, the connection between the Blackberry and the concepts covered in class could be strengthened. The mention of the business and strategy is a great idea. In my opinion, the author could improve the blog by coming up with advices to Blackberry.

For example, in order to solve the problem in association with the innovation, Blackberry could divide its Customer Segments into two parts, for those businessmen who have the requirement to deal with emails and schedules, Blackberry could offer them with the traditional phones with buttons, for those who are addicted to new technologies, Blackberry could produce new screen touch smartphones to meet the satisfactions. Also, the author could connect the situation that Blackberry is focusing on software to the concept Value Proposition.  Based on the fact that the net loss of Blackberry is $372 million in 2016 (Fried), Blackberry no longer has the ability to compete with other smartphone companies. According to the decision of switch to software producing only, the Blackberry actually changes its Value Proposition to offer the market with qualified software and reduce the costs of the company in order to save the brand.

Word count: 378

References:

Blackberry will stop designing its own phones and focus on software

Global smartphone OS market share held by RIM (BlackBerry) from 2007 to 2016, by quarter

It is widely known that Apple has a very short time period between different generation of devices. This feature has always been treated as one of the company’s business strategy, which is the technical innovation. However, when facing this phenomena in an opposite way, according to Vittotio Chiu’s blog The Ethics of Apple’s Business Model, the company is actually tricking the customers.

According to the opinions displayed in this blog, I personally agree with the writer. By applying changes that are not mandatory on the devices, Apple gained lots of profits from the “planned obsolescence”. The writer takes the new product Iphone 7 as an example, the abatement of traditional 3.55mm headphone jack is biggest change, direct influence is that customers who keep up with the Apple technical trend have to buy a totally new Iphone, as well as they have to use Iphone 7’s new headphones. The change of the headphone setting is not mandatory at all, however it does push lots of Apple supporters to buy a new device, The most important is that the change makes the switching cost from Apple to other electronic brands even higher, as the headphone setting of Iphone and other brands of phones are totally different now.

At the very last of the blog, “compromises” are mentioned by the writer. In my own opinion, more analyzations of the compromises could be added to the blog in order to make the work better. However, the writer’s mentioning about one of Apple’s Value Proposition is very valuable. Apple has claims of “Environmental Advancements”, however there exist both short time periods between Apple generations and the recycles barely been applied. These actions declare that Apple does not follow its environmental value proposition well. Also, the Customer Segments of Apple could be added. By offering creative, good-quality electronic products, Apple mainly focuses on the customers with high requirements, who are always interested in creative technology and who have high consumption levels.

Combing the Value Proposition the writer mentioned and the Customer Segments above, I personally think that the “future compromises” of Apple is to focus on developing new technologies for devices and to offer customers with better user experiences, what is the most important, the unethical using of “planned obsolescence” should be reduced or even abandoned.

Woed count: 380

Learning About A Representative Chinese Cuisine in Vancouver

Vancouver, as one of the most famous cities in the world with huge Chinese population, is placed as the fifth in the Mercer 2016 Quality of Living rankings. A factor that contributes a lot to the fantastic living quality is the well-developed catering industry, and Chinese cuisine helps the Vancouver catering industry become more diverse.

Based on the fact that majority of Chinese cuisine restaurants have good developments in Vancouver, it would be a nice opportunity to study about the method that these restaurants choose to run the successful businesses.

Pick one of the Chinese restaurants as an instance, Kirin Restaurant, a finest Chinese cuisine brand that has chain restaurants in downtown Vancouver, Richmond, etc.

The most attractive business tactic that Kirin use is Differentiation. As everybody already know, it is quiet common to find a Chinese cuisine in Vancouver, as well as for Kirin, the brand has hundreds of competitors that also offer customers with delicious Chinese cuisine. However, according to the mission statement, Kirin differentiates itself by “showcasing the finest Chinese Cuisine in Vancouver and served in a warm, authentic and elegant atmosphere”.

There are two main ways of Kirin’s Differentiation strategy:

Firstly, Kirin originally sets a higher level of value proposition. In order to gain reputation and win more profits, Kirin hires main chef who has Head Chef Status and leads the “New Era” Cantonese cuisine trend, as well as Kirin also uses best raw materials to make the cuisines. The action of picking experienced chefs and using finest materials helps Kirin to achieve a better food quality, also Kirin could offer customers with a better taste experience.

Secondly, Kirin is always trying to establish a closer customer relationship. Kirin has splendid decorations and accept not only daily reservations but also banquets and wedding. These activities make the distance between the brand and customers closer. As well as Kirin not only has membership, but also offers customers with festival gifts such as mooncakes and new year cakes, it is also an attractive way to appeal to more customers and keep a friendly relationship with customers.

In conclusion, Kirin makes itself a successful and competitive business case in the Chinese cuisine catering industry in Vancouver by using the strategy of Differentiation.

Words Counted: 383

Websites used:

http://www.kirinrestaurants.com/index.php5 (Kirin Restaurant)

https://www.imercer.com/content/mobility/quality-of-living-city-rankings.html – list (Mercer)

  Business ethics, generally known as a “social conscience” of enterprises, is expressed in many different ways, such as developing healthy relationships between employees and companies, the active reduction of pollution emissions and organizing charities. However all of the business ethics are based on the profits of the enterprises themselves, which makes it hard to literally achieve the goal of ethic.

  Apple, as one of the most significant and successful companies, has a wide range of customer group all over the world. By taking the advantages of Chinese cheap labour force, Apple cooperates with Foxconn, the electronic manufacturing company, to open the Chinese market. However what makes the Foxconn famous worldwide is not about the manufacturing itself, but the “Foxconn suicide” accident started from 2010.

  Since the first employee of Foxconn jumped off the enterprise building in January, 23, 2010, this kind of accidents seem frequent inside this company. Reports shows that one of the most important factor leads to those suicide is the severe work pressure. Pressures of employees are mainly defined as two categories: bad working environment and low incomes. During the manufacturing, the noises inside the factory disturbs employees and damage their health, while the average income of manufacturing employees is 1300 RMB, which is under the level of lowest income standard 1448 RMB.

  Foxconn itself as the biggest manufacturing cooperating company with Apple in China, gains billions of profit. However the way how Foxconn treats the employees could be expressed as cruel. In my position, as a manufacturing company, under the circumstance of gaining profits, it is Foxconn’s responsibility to offer employees with an appropriate level of salary and clean working environment. Employees as the biggest labor force of a manufacturing company, have their rights to get proper salary and work in safe environment.

  The lack of business ethics of Foxconn, expressed as not protecting employees’ standard rights to get appropriate salaries and offering them with high-pressure working environment, has made Foxconn’s market value smaller, as well as Foxconn has also gained negative rumours about itself. In conclusion, an enterprise should always has business ethics, for not only keeps rumours away, but also accomplishes the social responsibilities.

Word count: 356

Work cited:

Zimmerli, Walther Ch., Klaus Richter, and Markus Holzinger. Corporate Ethics and Corporate Governance. Berlin: Springer, 2007. Print

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