In response to Sara Salazar’s blog post about Starbucks’ expansion strategies in China to cater for their tastes, being lived in China for over ten years, I definitely agree that it is an area with great potential of business growth. This fast-developing country has an increase in consumers’ taste for Western foods and drinks, which attracted several companies. Even though China is far from being the largest coffee market, but it has a significant market growth of estimated 10-15% annually.

 Just as Sara had mentioned, Starbucks is facing a lot of competition, one of which is from Costa Coffee. This Britain coffee chain is also catching up with the expansion opportunity, by its tactic of opening as many stores close to Starbucks as possible. Almost all of Costa Coffee’s stores are beside Starbucks, creating direct competitions. Both chains are trying to expand into China with a significant fast pace and aims for high market share. It is then up to the point of differences that they provide, which differentiates them from one another, and is also why Starbucks are applying the new marketing strategies as blogged by Sara.

Sources:

http://www.china-briefing.com/news/2013/10/09/chinas-coffee-industry-is-brewing.html

http://www.worldcrunch.com/business-finance/coffee-wars-in-china-starbucks-vs.-costa/c2s4086/#.UomDWRYu6fQ

Levi Strauss & Company had recently launched their new line of clothing, the Wellthread Docker that combines sustainable design, workers’ well-beings and environmental practices.

Aiming to become the antithesis of disposable and fast fashion, Levi’s designs this new batch of clothing stressing its durability. Also, they anticipated the future rise of clothing recycling and developed a cotton material that recycles easily while maintaining strength. The Wellthread process consists specialized cold-water pigment dyeing that reduces water and energy consumption by around 30%. With piloting new approaches of programs to improve workers’ lives, the Wellthread clothing is exclusively made at one of the improvement pilot site.

These big changes in manufactures and designs of clothing can be tough, yet beneficial to the company. In this fast developing world where sustainability is highly viewed, initiatives such as the Wellthread can bring attentions to Levi’s. However, it is crucial for the company to market these clothing to convey its social and environmental well-beings. This leads me to question, will the consumers comprehend their effort? And ultimately, will consumers buy?

Sources:

http://www.triplepundit.com/2013/11/levis-develops-triple-bottom-line-khakis/

http://www.core77.com/blog/fashion_design/levis_wellthread_process_a_cheaper_more_sustainable_way_to_manufacture_clothing__25877.asp

http://www.environmentalleader.com/2013/11/08/levis-process-combines-sustainable-design-environmental-practices/

A logo is a crucial intangible asset of a company, and also an important aspect for marketing of the brand. In Brian Patrick Eha’s blog post, he organized five main keys to creating a successful logo:

1. Simplicity. A simple logo makes it easy for customer to digest.
2. Brand Consistency. Design should fit the company’s overall message.
3. Memorability. Put something different to make the logo easy to recall.
4. Remarkability. Create what makes it “worthy of remark”.
5. Market Testing. Do market research to ensure its suitability.

 These are useful tips to keep in mind while designing a logo. I find logo designing very amusing as it creates a direct visual representation of the brand, being the “face” of the brand, while creativity can be widely explored. A successful logo should embed all the above points, which assists the brand in creating brand awareness and loyalty.

Several logos have gone through evolutions to be improved, and can be analyzed through the five key points. For example, Shell’s logo is clearly modified to gain simplicity, while Apple’s logo gone from the rainbow colors associating free and easygoing to the futuristic appearance connected to its current tech giant position, adhering to the brand consistency.

Source:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/227017

As Julie Jeehye Park mentioned in her blog post it is important to have good relationships with the employees, and also to retain them through motivations.  This can be evident through the company of Pixar as an example. Similar to Zappos as discussed in class, Pixar provides a very interactive workplace that highly encourages creativity from workers, which shapes its corporate culture and acts as a key element to its success.

Inside the Pixar Animation Studios, you will find the 24-hour cereal bar, the Pizza Room, a Breathing Room for yogic meditation, a fitness center, along with live performances, aerobics sessions and various self-improvement classes. Just like a theme park, Pixar characters are everywhere, such as the full-sized figures of Sulley and Mike from Monsters University in the foyer. This headquarters is designed so that it “promoted encounters and unplanned collaborations”¹, as wanted by Steve Jobs.

These definitely foster the workers’ relationships and create great motivations with low absenteeism and staff turnover, in which “most people never leave here”², said Oakley an employee. It is very impressive how they shape the job into a lifestyle to retain employees and ignite creativity and imagination.

Take a look inside the Pixar studios here!

Sources:

^1&2 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10144531/Monsters-University-whats-it-like-to-work-at-Pixar.html

http://human.ly/knowledgebase/pixars-company-culture/

Debbie Brown had launched a mobile gym, Adventure Bus Inc, by purchasing a 72-seat school bus and retrofitting it into a mobile gym that caters for children. The bus contains facilities such as monkey bars and rock-climbing wall, with specially designed fitness activities. Ms. Brown started up as an entrepreneur by researching the concept from other countries and bringing it into Canada. With strong word-of-mouth advertising, the business venture has been a success, having growing popularity in birthday, school and community events.

However, Ms. Brown is now unable to catch up with the increasing demand and needs to purchase a second bus. But funding is a major problem, especially along with her unwillingness to partner up and constraints to having official loans due to her draining personal finances.

I think that this entrepreneurship presents a very interesting and innovative idea. However, it is essential for Ms. Brown to solve her funding problem in order for the business to further expand. Various suggestions have been proposed, of which I think microloans from family and friends would be viable, where she would be able to pay the debt easily with less financial stress. Also, working with parent volunteers instead of paid staff would be beneficial in cutting costs and creating better relationships with the community.

Sources:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-growth/the-challenge/in-pictures-entrepreneur-trying-to-save-her-school-bus-turned-gym/article15389797/

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-growth/the-challenge/her-business-a-gym-inside-a-school-bus-hit-a-bump/article15387183/

Google is undergoing the process of developing several new projects, but they are still mainly concerned about increasing the profitability in the two areas that dominants the usage market but makes relatively small amount of money: the smartphones and YouTube. Google has invested heavily in the Android system, and is currently trying to improve its search algorithms to cater for the wide range of consumers that uses smartphones as their primary search tool. While with YouTube, Google is also working to make it more mobile friendly, and expanded the paid channel for audiences to pay directly to watch content from certain producers.

Being the tech giant, I think that Google is a great example of how technology is embedded into business. As discussed in class previously, innovation is a significant aspect of technology and this is also what Google have been working on. It is experimenting on a few futuristic and high-risk projects, such as the self-driving cars, Google Glass the “wearable computer”, the WiFi balloons that beam Internet signals to remote areas, and Calico the newest research house specializing cellular causes and effects of aging. Even though these ventures seems to need a lot of years of development and experimentation, but I am sure that successful results will redefine technology and create another milestone for Google.

Source:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/us-business/google-seven-new-frontiers/article15096563/