Business Plan

Amanda, Nikita and I are all in charge of writing the business plan, I have been writing step 1&2, Amanda step 3 and Nikita has been writing step 4&5. It has been quite challenging writing the business plan as I didn't realise how much actually goes into a business as I've never thought about it in great detail before. Writing the business plan has made me realise how good our brand could be or how good the idea actually is, it has also made us as a group think in more detail at areas of our brand that we need to make stronger and pay more attention to. 

Mission statement 

Our companies mission is to design and make a variety of sports bags using ethical and environmentally friendly materials and practices. We aim to use a minimum of 70% recycled sustainable waist for our product, labels, packaging and marketing.  Our brand is a company that gives back so as a brand we aim to give a percentage of our profits to underprivileged kids to get them into sports, we also aim to donate some of our profits into a charity that helps improve our environment.

Our product is both beneficial to the buyer and our environment in that we offer a luxury sports bag that retains the style and quality of your typical high-end bag yet is made ethically out of recycled materials.

I have been using our mission statement as a guide to help me write the business plan as I keep going back to it and reflecting on wha we really want our brand to achieve, the aim is to reflect this throughout the business to keep our brand consistent and strong.

Logos and Colour Palette

Colour palette options

Marko and Chloe are the groups product developers, they created these two colour palette boards. We want our bags to appeal to all genders so as a group we decided to pick out the best colours from each board. We all agreed that the pink in the second image was too bright to go on the outside of the bag and much preferred the subtlety of the orange in the first image however we still wanted to use the pink somehow. We decided to compromise and create two colour palettes one for the inside lining of the bag which could be incorporated in with a print and one for the outside of the bag. 

The image on the right shows the two final colour palettes we agreed on, still using quite  simple palette for the outside of the bag to appeal to everyone while hopefully still keeping the bag quite modern and stylish we decided to give the bag a vibrant twist on the inside to make the bag more appealing and exciting. The final colours we chose will be used throughout our brand image which includes websites, apps, and any social media pages as well as being incorporated in our shop layout. 

Adapting the logos

Although Amanda an I are in charge of creating the logos Dani had also created a logo that she was quite adamant we use. I thought the best way to try and overcome this hurdle was to try and come up with a strong logo that incorporates all of our ideas. 

Amanda's Logo Designs

Dani's Logos

The logos below show the adapted logo designs I created using Adobe Illustrator, the aim was to try and incorporate everyones logo design ideas to try and create a logo we are all happy with and proud to show off. Amanda's logos were very contemporary and quite futuristic and although toned down i tried to incorporate this within the font of each logo, I then incorporated the F from my logo still connecting the logo with our brand name while keeping the logo quite modern. Dani's logo incorporates a mountain and I personally feel as if this has been extremely over used within other sports brands especially specialist sports brands however I tried to come up with some other mountain ideas and designs that I thought might look different and make our brand stand out more and look more individual.

My logos

Despite putting alot of effort/meaning into each logo Amanda and I have created our work went unappreciated as the group didn't really take time to consider any of our ideas. Amanda and I decided that it would probably be best just to go with Dani's logo as it saves arguments and it consumes less of our time as we have alot of other work to be focusing on as well and we can't keep going back and forth with logo designs. 

Recycled Ethical Fabrics

I have been looking into companies that create or use recycled materials and I came across Ecoalf the company started in 2009, the idea of the company was to create a fashion brand that is truly sustainable. The company discovered that we were using 5 times more natural recourses than the planet is able to generate, this drove the companies need for change. The company recycle discarded fishing nets, plastic bottles, tyres, post consumer coffee, cotton and wool. 

The company use recycled bottles and plastic for their products with the intention of cleaning up some of the plastic islands focusing on the island in the North Pacific, South Pacific, North Atlantic, South Atlantic and the Indian ocean. Fishing nester one of the greatest killers in the oceans. The nets congregate driven by strong winds and currents. To create fabric out of plastic bottles the bottles are first collected and passed through a series of steps of cleaning, and crushing to obtain plastic flakes which through a mechanical process are then converted into polyester spun fibres that are manipulated to obtain the final quality. These recycled fibres are then used to develop fabrics, labels, straps, laces etc. 

Fishing nets are made of synthetic materials, which decay slowly and they often drift for years destroying the environment around it in its process. Many of them end up caught on reefs, they catch fish, turtles, crustaceans, birds and mammals. They also destroy hard and soft corals, wiping out complete ecosystems while swaying in the current. Although removing the nets can be costly and time consuming Ecoalf see the process as conserving our environment while creating sustainable fashion that can be worn for style and practicality. Fishing nets have some of the worlds best nylon quality and are often recycled into various different fabrics. 

The images below show some of the items from the Ecoalf Lookbook.

Ecolaf use some of the hardest materials to recycle and transform them into practical, wearable, fashionable garments that are both affordable and environmentally friendly. Ecolaf are a good company to look into and I have learnt alot about what they do and how various different materials affect our environment and I feel as though we can learn alot from this brand especially because our brand Frey aims to create sports bags using similar methods. 

http://ecoalf.com/uk_en/lookbook

Brand Strategy

Over the past few days I have been looking/researching into brand strategist to help me understand my role better and to refine our brand more. I found a good website (http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/77408) that has been really helpful to look at. Looking up branding has made me realise that as a group we need a stronger identity for our brand, something that will make us stand out and become more niche as this will then attract buyers. 

I came up with the idea of making our winter sports bags out of recycled materials whilst still keeping the high end high quality feel to them. The idea being that our company would be promoting innovative high textiles using sustainable waist,  the theory behind this is that people who partake in winter sports are out making the most of their environment so keeping it healthy by recycling should appeal to them. As a group we had previously discussed that we wanted our company to be ethical I think using recycled materials and or off cut fabric pieces to create our bags would make our company extremely unique. 

Amanda and I had the idea that our company could also give back, we decided that a percentage of our profits would go back into the company, a small percentage would go back to the environment and finally a small percentage would go to underprivileged kids to get them into sports. 

When speaking to the group about this idea they all agreed it would be beneficial in making our brand niche and more appealing to our buyer we agreed to do some more research into recycled materials to help us understand how we can work with them. Creating these high end sports bags would mean the buyer could indulge in a good quality luxury sports bag without feeling guilty or overindulgent. 

Once I finished defining our brand in more detail I decided to play around with logo ideas, one thing I have learnt alot about branding so far is the importance of being consistent, everything has to link and flow nicely for the brand to make any sense. I decided to try and link the name of our brand in with the logo design as we chose the name Frey for it's meaning (image on the left) and the connection it could have with our brand. Frey also known as Freyr was the Norse god of prosperity and peace, I thought these symbols could be incorporated some how into our brands logo design. The Norse god Frey/r was one of the most powerful Norse gods who had alot of power over the weather and in turn the environment which fits in well with our recycled sports bags. Incorporating the meaning of our brand name not the logo is quite important as it is a big representation of our brand and what it stands for so I think it would be nice for that to be recognised in some way. 

The image above shows some of the logo designs I created using some Norse symbols that linked in with the meaning and definition of the name Frey. The logos on the right incorporate the Norse peace symbol, the logos on the left incorporate the symbol of prosperity and the logos on the top left incorporate the F which was the symbol for the god Frey. I have mainly used light grey and blue tones as this is what we agreed our brand colour palette would be. I plan on showing these logos to the group in our next meeting to get their views and opinions on the logos. 

London trip

This week we went to London to do some research into sportswear brands that are currently on the market as they would be our competition for our brand. We decided to look at some of the ways in which they were advertising their brands through shop layouts, window displays and even through clever packaging to give us a better understanding on what we need or could do to improve our brand and the overall image. While in London we looked at various different shops both sports and non-sports shops. It's quite clear that currently sportswear and staying fit and healthy is very fashionable especially amongst young people. This was very beneficial to us as it meant that we could walk into shops like Gap (seen in the image above) and look at what they have to offer and how this relates to our brand. Although Gap don't offer many sports bags it was good to see how they presented the shop floor and their garments, they showed a very clear layout/formation and a very strong colour palette. I think we can definitely take some ideas from Gap to use in our shop layout, visiting Gap also gave me a good indication of how we can pair up our brands bags with different outfits and styles. 

Looking at different window displays has actually proved tone very interesting. Selfridges had some amazing window displays some of them were to do with sports like the image on the left, however each display had something about them that would draw you in. the colours in this display made it stand out, the layout was also extremely simple which was very affective. I've learnt that when it comes to window displays simplicity and colour are key, Selfridges have used the simplest ways to convey their message/ideas which has created brilliant displays and advertisements, which is something I think we can use for our niche brand Frey. 

I really love this display (image on the right) it is another Selfridges window display, I thought it was quite clever as they used toiles and pattern pieces within the display which I think is really nice to see. Yet again the display is very simple but at the same time it feels quite honest because the garments aren't perfectly finished and developed. The complete process of the garment is shown on display from the pattern pieces to the toiles and then finally the finished product. I think it's a lovely refreshing way of presenting something, they made an ordinary jacket alot more interesting to the passers by. 

Creating a survey

Over the last few meetings we have been writing down questions that we needed to know from potential consumers to help us make our brand stronger and to identify the needs of our customers. Elissa and chloe took all of our thoughts and questions and turned them into a very clear survey that we shared via our individual Facebook pages and the Frey pages. So far we have received quite alot of responses from the survey and will soon be looking at the results. 

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/9XXCTVJ

Social media

Today the people in our group who are in charge of the social media aspects for our company created an Instagram, Facebook and Twitter account to promote our brand and get our ideas and images out there for everyone to see. The pages consist of some of the work we have done as a group such as moodpboard, colour palettes, initial logos and winter sports imagery. 

The pages include images and videos of famous athletes showing off their winter sports skills, the pages are designed so that potential customers get a feel of what are company is about and who we are targeting. I think they are played out nicely and shows very clearly what we are about as a company, I do think that we need to advertise our niche a bit better throughout the pages so that it is clear how we stand out from other similar brands. 

Business Plans

Today we had a lecture about business plans and how to make our brand stronger, we had a look through different zines from previous years. This was good as it give us an idea of what to focus on for our brand and what makes a good strong brand, we also talked about what needed improving in some of the zines and from that we focused on what needed improving within our brand. When then started to focus more on our business and started to fill out a business model canvas, as a group we struggled to fill this form out as it started to become clear that our brand idea wasn't clear and we weren't quite sure what made our brand different to the usual winter sports bags.  I have decided that as my role is branding I will look into other brands and research alot into what branding is and how to create a good brand to see if I can come up with any ideas on how to make our concept stronger to help us progress and move forward. 

Branding With Una Burke

A few days ago we had a guest speaker Una Burke who is a multi-award winning luxury leather and accessory designer/artist. She spoke about her journey into the industry, her struggles and how she came about her own brand and business, which was all very encouraging and really quite interesting. One of the key things Una Burke spoke about was the importance of making sure you target your customer and know what they want and need as this helps to build a solid reputation for you and your brand which is one of the most if not the most important aspects of creating a brand. One of the key things I learnt through listening to Ms. Burke was pricing, how to price items is something I have always been curious about. 

Pricing:

To price your items you add up all material costs, the time you put in to creating each piece (£15 or more an hour), calculate your overheads (packaging, logos etc.) The total amount will equal the total costs of how much you have spent, if you multiply this by two you get the wholesale price, then if you multiply by two again you get the actual price not including Vat which is an extra 20%. Finding out how to price items was is useful because it means that when Amanda and I are focusing on the branding aspect of our niche business we can research into prices of fabrics and finishing’s. This will give us a good understanding of what fabrics will end up making our bags too expensive which intern would price us way out of the market and which fabrics would actually be beneficial to our brand and our consumer.

After her talk we filled out a Niche opportunity sheet as a group. The idea was that it would help us develop our brand and product more, and help us to pin point our strengths and weaknesses. Our group struggled with this because we ended up disagreeing on what our brand was and should be an what makes it niche after half the group went away and changed the idea we had all agreed upon. As a group we ended up deciding that we want our niche brand to still focus on sports bags but in particular winter sports bags as these sports are normally more specialised and need stronger more robust bags to carry all the equipment in. We are still trying to think of ways to make our brand more niche and desirable but after alot of changes we are now set on our brand idea and hopefully this won't change again. 

Researching and Branding

On Wednesday our group met up properly for the first time to discuss our ideas for our niche brand. We discussed what we wanted our niche brand to be and how we wanted it to stand out. We all decided that our brand should be ethical and sustainable because that’s where we feel the fashion industry is going nowadays. Our brand will be a high end sports brand specialising in gender neutral sports bags that are both practical for various different sporting activities yet also fashionable and very wearable for everyday uses. As a group we came up with some good ideas and worked really well together, I think our brand idea is a good one and with a little refining could become a really strong niche brand.

We decided that the overall look of our brand should have a contemporary feel giving it a high-end look that looks good for gym and everyday uses. Our colour pallet will be fairly minimal we’ll be using light greys and blue tones with a few splashes of orange, we thought these colours would fit both men and women and would be perfect for bags. So far we have worked really well as a group with no disagreements, I think we achieved quite alot on Wednesday and it was a good head start to our project. 

During Thursday’s session our group were thinking of names for our brand, I came up with the name Cratous for a brand name, as it’s Greek for god of strength and power, I thought this was very fitting for a sportswear brand. We all liked the name and agreed that having a meaning behind the name would make our brand more individual and would make us stand out more. We then looked to see if there were any brands out there that are already called Cratous and we found a menswear brand called Kratos London, we decided that although a different spelling our chosen name was too similar. 

We ended up choosing the name Frey as we thought it was quite contemporary and simple. From this we continued to think about how our brand will stand out from similar existing brands.  We will create various different social media pages to promote our brand such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.