Enterprise: The development of Cauldron Clothing (Update 4)

I thought that this assignment would give me the perfect opportunity to develop on an idea myself and my partner had came up with for a clothing company called Cauldron Clothing. The idea was to create a graphic tee-shirt company with alternative designs, which hopefully would then expand into being a fashion brand. Here is a post I intend to keep developing with my ideas and justifications.

Initial things that have to be considered when starting any enterprise are; customers, colleagues and productivity. The following is my development on the previously mentioned areas.

Customers- The market on a whole would be the alternative community, however as there are manny different branches such as goth, punk and metalhead, I want to initially focus on only one element in order to target a niche market. The subculture I have decided to target my products at is new age goths. The group of people usually aged between 15 and 25, female, that like gothic culture but like to simply throw on a t-shirt that is a statement to who they are.

Colleagues- As this would be a cult/independent company, the colleague considerations are quite small. The idea came equally from myself and my partner Damian Josebury, therefore i'd like to keep it as an intimate venture where the only changes and compromises that are made are due to client suggestions. In terms of roles, I enjoy graphic design and he enjoys photography, therefore I would design the t-shirts and he will photography them for advertising and distribution.

Productivity- This element would drastically depend on the success of the company. For example, initially we would be at risk of a drastic loss if we ordered in bulk of a particular design, if it then later turned out that our customers preferred another. So to begin with I am working on a base 5 designs that would be distributed through social media, as this is a common place for communities to form based on our niche target audience, then dependant on interaction the designs may change before the online shop opens. For the printing of the designs, I would outsource this to a separate company, however if Cauldron clothing becomes a success, we would invest in our own in house printing service to maximise profit.

Other elements that are vital to the success of a company such as this are distribution and advertisement. After some initial research, the simplest way to sell homemade items are either through Ebay, big cartel or Etsy. The only problem is that these sites take a cut from your sales. Ebay takes 10%, Esty takes 5% and big cartel costs monthly to keep your store open, however these prices do vary dependant on how many items you want to list. Another part is that Ebay process 1 billion transactions every day (https://www.enterprisetech.com/2016/06/29/ebays-billion-daily-transactions-cooled-water/), accumulating $9.6 million in 2017 (https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/ebay/financials) as where Etsy only made $314 million in that same year. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/219412/etsys-total-merchandise-sales-per-year/) Finally big cartel only averages an annual revenue of $4.5 million (https://www.owler.com/company/bigcartel). Therefore deciding on which platform to use creates a tie between Ebay and Etsy as Ebay seems more likely that the item will be seen, however they take double the cut than Esty do.

In terms of advertisement, I think the most affordable and logical answer is to use Instagram. 800 million people use Instagram worldwide (http://www.businessofapps.com/data/instagram-statistics/), therefore it makes the most sense that products will be seen throw this platform, where they can then press a link in order to guy the item. It wouldn't purely be the Cauldron Clothing page that they would be advertised on either, models from the shoots would then share the images, family member would share them in support and customers would share them which would make the amount of people seeing our products immeasurable. Physical advertisement could also be done through flyers or free stickers at events or places where my target audience would be, for example at Download festival, Slamdunk festival or in the Oasis market in Birmingham.

The companies core values would be similar to my own: Aesthetics, creativity, originality, stability and growth. In terms of my idea, these are pretty self explanatory. As my contribution to the project are designs, aesthetics, creativity and originality are at the heart of my work and I believe any business should strive for stability and growth.

Competitors are something else to consider. There are two other core companies that produce similar products to what I am proposing and that is Killstar and Restyle. Both sites are full of unique and beautiful designs, however they are more advanced in that they range from clothing to homeware and aren't purely focusing on t-shirt designs. The fact they have moved on, opens up a space in the market for the product I am providing, not only to mention that my USP is based off them which is affordability. These examples make unique garments, however their prices are very high, which makes it difficult for those in a low budget to afford, therefore I would undercut them by 10% or 20% in order to make my t-shirts more desirable.

Here are some designs I have been working on: