Free Custom «Naivas’ Marketing Plan» Essay Paper

Executive Summary

Naivas Crafts and Wares is a start-up retail store that will be based in Kitchener-Waterloo. It will offer Chinese gifts and crafts to the consumers, who love oriental culture and prefer personalized style. Naivas plans to locate its store in the Fairview Mall in the Kitchener area. The store will be opened on April 27, 2013. We intend to cater for the middle and upper class customers, who will look beyond the common crafts and gifts for the expression of an individual style and personality. Our emblematic customers will be those, purchasing a special gift to a loved one, or a person, who wants to own a unique craft. We also want to provide an extemporary customer care and services to our customers; the unique product value will be complemented by a positive customer experience. By the start of the second year, Naivas plans to develop an online presence, www.naivascraft.com. In the following year (year 3), Naivas will venture into e-commerce, where we intend to ship our products directly to our online customers.

Naivas intends to create an opportunity for the Chinese owners to combine our art and culture into an investment. We will use our innovative and creative ability to come up with products that will create a high demand. We want to create customer loyalty through customized services provided to our clients. Customer satisfaction will be our highest priority.

At Naivas, we intend to sell products that will provide quality and value to our esteemed customers by meeting their needs for the personalized lifestyle. Communication with our customers will be done through printing media advertisements, sending out coupons, newspapers and yellow pages, as well as home Décor models.

Company description

Naivas is a recently established retail store that offers unique, assorted, and innovative crafts and gifts to customers. It is located in the Fairview Mall of Kitchener, Ontario. Naivas will supply middle-and upper-class customers, who are fascinated with Asian style arts are looking for a gift that cannot be found in the national chain store in this very busy and very packed shopping mall. We plan to enlarge our business by carefully building a repeat client base and providing commodities they fancy. We also want to expand our business to e-commerce by the third year of operation. This additional business channel will allow us to reach a broader customer base. We feel it is important to offer personal customer support and services to achieve our business philosophy.

Mission

Naivas has a vision of being a store that provides the unique quality for the style-conscious consumers, who are fond of the Chinese arts and culture. Naivas intends to generate a fair return on investment and ensure continued growth and community involvement through the provision of affordable and unique Chinese fine arts.

We intend to inspire, inform, and show our customers the ways to create a personal expression within the confines of their homes, and, at the same time, creating a taste of elegance amongst their friends. Our desire is to use good customer care and service, smart pricing, and building trust with our customers in order to create loyalty.

We also intend to create a motivated and satisfied workforce to ensure they are committed to work. We will have respect for the diversity of ideas, skills, knowledge, and behaviors within our workforce, and use it to achieve the common goals of Naivas.

Naivas will inform, inspire, and show the customers the ways to create an expression of them within their homes and an elegant taste among their friends. Through customer services, smart pricing, and a sense of trust, it is our desire that you will look at us, as at your valued resource to achieve an experience of creative crafts and gifts.

Goals of Naivas

Non-financial goals

• To realize a yearly growth rate of about 15% in Year 2;
• To develop an Internet presence by Year 2;
• To take Internet presence to e-commerce by Year 3 of operations;
• To expand the customer base by 15%  each year and increase demand to the point, where it exceeds supply;
• To build customer loyalty by providing innovative designs, high-quality art, and having a customer-centric approach.
• To maintain a direct cost of sales of 60% or less, and gross margin of 40% or more;
• To maintain operating expenses to equal or less than 40% of gross sales;
• To decrease the costs through operating efficiencies by 5% annually;
• To generate total revenue of $1,692,298 in Year 1;
• To reach profitability within ten months.

Industry Analysis

The crafts and giftware industry makes more than $6 billion Canadian dollars in Canada from sales at the wholesale level annually. Consumers in 2005 spent about $282 billion on buying gifts and house decorations. That amounts to roughly 10 percent of the total $2.8 trillion retail market. Strong growth is happening in the gift and home decorative market. The state of the industry is being determined in a positive way by the consumer attitudes and changes in buying behavior (Statistics Canada, 2007). Following are a few observations:

-         Consumers in Canada today spend more money on crafts and giftware than they spend on clothes. With a fresh emphasis on the core importance of family and home, not only are consumers in Canada striving to beautify the living space, but they are also looking for the ornamental items that can affect the emotional climate of their home;

-         As consumers are overwhelmed with choices in their lives, they look for stores to offer them products that will enhance their lifestyle, make their lives more comfortable, and provide unique and uncommon product selections beyond the mass-market retailers.

-         Consumers around Canada are looking for the products that can reflect their individual style and taste. The more personal and interesting the product is, the better it reflects one’s personality. The Chinese is the largest visible minority group in Canada, comprising 3.5% of the population in 2005. According to the 2006 Census, Chinese are accounted for 26% of the visible minority population in Canada. More and more Canadians are getting familiar with the Chinese culture. The shopping experience with high quality Chinese handicrafts will continue bring them the most personal feeling.

-        In the service arena, making business easier for consumers is a winning element. Simple things like free delivery and easy return policy will win big points in the consumers mind. The Canadian giftware and crafts industry is being strongly impacted by the Internet, with more and more web sites offering very competitive services, and many products being available for electronic mailing at a relatively low cost.

Competition

In Kitchener-Waterloo there is a limited choice of arts and crafts stores. There are no stores specializing in Chinese crafts and giftware in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. Specialty gift and crafts dealers have the capacity to make a distinction by the types of goods and services that they offer to the consumers, and Naivas is not an exception. Naivas will set itself apart by offering Chinese arts and crafts that are unique in style and design. However, the craft and giftware marketplace is a varied field surrounding many choices for the customer. Other people selling products, such as decorative accents for homes, collectibles, general gifts, and seasonal decorations, could still have an impact on the business.

Main Competitors

Green Earth

The independent gift and craft shop has two stores located in Kitchener-Waterloo area; the first one is located in Fairview Park Mall, and another one in Conestoga Mall. Their products include candles to exasperate, home décor, jewelry, gardening, and gifts. Their home décor, gifts, and other products are original and distinctive in style. From the jungles of Bali to the villages of Mexico and Africa, the artisans have carved, sculpted, and painted unique Christmas gifts to accent a home or office, and they are not very expensive. They also offer native masks, scones, metal lanterns, wall hangings, Aztec glyphs, wooden statues, and wicker cabinets, and indescribable wall hangings from Indonesia colored to look like moons, suns, big cats, and other wild animals. Green Earth attracts customers, who love nature, unique home décor, and crafts of different cultures. Green Earth is franchising, so the franchise agreement may contain some restrictions that inhibit the franchisees freedom, such as product or service offered and line forcing (Greenearth, 2013).

Hallmark

Hallmark is a retailer of gifts, cards, and ornaments. It has many locations around the area of Kitchener-Waterloo. One store is located in Fairview Park Mall. A large proportion of collection focuses on cards. They do not have decorative items within textile furniture, and handmade arts products. The gift offering is placed for the special occasion. During such occasions, the appropriate gifts for wedding, anniversaries, graduations, and birthdays are offered. They also offer decorative assortments, such as tabletop ornaments and décor for holidays, like Valentines, Halloween, Christmas, and Thanksgiving. The overall product collection offered by Hallmark represents a more ceremonial gift idea (Hallmark, 2013).

Target market segment strategy

To generate sales, we intend to have specific market segments within the area. Our marketing strategy will be seeking to create customer awareness first. This is because of products are new and unique in the region. This will help us to create a reliable customer base. Our services will also help us to generate sales through return customers and referrals.  Our market will be segmented in to two groups:

-         Customers purchasing giftware and crafts for their loved ones;

This forms our first market segment. This group of people is looking for something unique to obtain it as a gift for someone else. The gift must stand out in order for it to achieve its purpose to the one receiving it and to the one that is buying it. The giver must feel that the gift is suitable for the purpose of appreciation, while the receiver must see the beauty and uniqueness in it. We will, therefore, target this group by being innovative and creative.

-         People buying crafts and giftware for themselves;

These are people with specific styles or design in mind. The group opts for the unique products that are of a high quality, and whose style matches their ideas and perception on arts. These people will, therefore, go for the unique products. Since the people buying this crafts are conscious about the style, we exquisite craftsmanship is needed in order to make elegant objects. This group will include the Chinese population living in the area. The group forms our main target market.