Portfolio-VE project

Stacey Moss The University of Melbourne

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This document contains extracts from a group project for Internet Marketing (MKTG30009), which I thoroughly enjoyed developing with three fellow students. I am happy to provide the full document if you would like to read the rest.

VINTAGE EXPLORER

Social website for vintage fashion lovers in Melbourne


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Table of Contents Elevator Pitch 3 Our Product 3 Value Proposition 3

Key Features 3 The Target Market 6

Demographics 6 Psychographics 6

Understanding the Target Consumer Market Analysis PEST Analysis Market Growth and Attractiveness Market Size Revenue Model 7 Revenue Channels 7 Potential Revenue Revenue Model Risks Competition 7 Key Competitors 7 Competitive Advantage Promotion 9 Summary 10 References 11


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Our Product Value proposition Vintage Explorer encourages co-‐creation of value between the business and the website’s users. The website not only mitigates the problem of a lack of a complete, detailed, up-‐to-‐date online directory for these kinds of stores in Melbourne but helps to facilitate the creation of a community with the same interest. This website aims to appeal to the growing, niche market that is passionate about vintage fashion in Melbourne. However, rather than merely providing these consumers with a service (a directory), Vintage Explorer hopes to promote the organic growth and development of the service – tailored to the wants and needs of the tribe. Therefore, the users can find their own value in the website, above the basic directory, mapping and social media services offered by Vintage Explorer. It is from these potential services that future sources of revenue may be generated. Vintage Explorer therefore offers a service that consumers have not previously had access too. Whilst fashion blogs, social media, online clothes swapping websites, and directories do exist, Vintage Explorer is the first to integrate all of these for the Melbourne market. Therefore the website provides value in offering the target consumer something new, convenient, interactive and deeply positioned to meet their needs.

Key features THE DIRECTORY [Text not included]

Elevator Pitch The demand for vintage fashion is growing in Melbourne but there is no centralised database which identifies all of the different op-‐shops, second hand and vintage stores or tells you how to get there. Furthermore, there is no platform where vintage-‐fashion lovers can discuss the growing trend and their own personal styles. This is where Vintage Explorer comes in.


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CO-‐CREATION OF CONTENT AND COMMUNITY [Text not included]


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SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE INTEGRATION [Text not included]

MOBILE APPLICATION [Text not included]


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The Target Market Demographics

• 18-‐30 years old (Brace-‐Govan & Binay, 2010, p. 74) • 80% female (J. Jiang, personal communication, September 26, 2012; Advertise,

2012) • Straddling many economic brackets-‐ low to medium/high discretionary spending

Psychographics • Understand value for money. • Use clothing as a form of personal expression. • Are creative (DeLong, Heinemann & Reiley, 2005, p. 40) • Are averse to conforming or being restricted to mass-‐produced ‘fashion’ (Brace-‐

Govan & Binay, 2010, pp. 75-‐77) • Have a desire to be environmentally friendly present among most if not all,

however is only a primary motivator in a minority (Brace-‐Govan & Binay, 2010, p.77) but not the primary motivation for the whole market.

• Seek unique, one-‐of-‐a-‐kind items. • Enjoys sharing new find/outfits for feedback and reactions.

Understanding the Target Consumer [Text not included] WHY THESE CONSUMERS WILL USE VINTAGE EXPLORER Studies have shown that consumers spend much time “discussing, comparing, reflecting, showing off and even photographing many of their new possessions” (Crewe, 2000). Second-‐hand consumers, who are understandably proud of their finds, are likely to use Vintage Explore for these purposes (Henderson, 2000, p. 242). Moreover, being a community of “in the know” op-‐shoppers, recognition from fellow members is likely to be more valuable than recognition from non-‐op-‐shoppers (DeLong, Heinemann & Reiley, 2005, p. 36).


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Market Analysis PEST Analysis [Text not included]

Revenue Model Revenue Channels

• Direct Advertising -‐ Companies catering to this market, looking for a cool unique brand

awareness -‐ Private deals. Advertising for pages with high impression/ page views

• Affiliate deals/marketing of mainstream retailers who manufacture vintage

look-‐ a-‐ like garments • Sponsorship • Membership

Competition

Key Competitors Vintage Explorer’s primary competitors are Look Book, College Fashion, Vintage Melbourne, and I Op Therefore I Am (IOTIA). This is due to a combination of services provided and audience demographics (female majority, aged between 18 and 34) (Advertise, 2012; Advertising on College Fashion, 2012). While there are established websites that offer some of the key benefits our market is looking for, there is no one which meets them all (see Figure 1 and Figure 2 below). Vintage Explorer aims to encompass all of these key value points to create the perfect user experience through synergy and convenience. LOOK BOOK [Text not included] COLLEGE FASHION [Text not included]


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VINTAGE MELBOURNE AND I OP THEREFORE I AM Vintage Explorer competes directly with both IOTIA and Vintage Melbourne in its Melbourne positioning, specific focus on second-‐hand and vintage clothing, and helpful directories. However, neither website provides the degree of social interaction and co-‐creation that Vintage Explorer does. Vintage Melbourne merely allows commenting on owner-‐generated store reviews, and while IOTIA is a collaborative store review blog, there is no scope for sharing of users’ favourite new outfits or finds. Therefore, neither website provides an opportunity for users’ personal expression of style, which Vintage Explorer’s members desire. Moreover, neither website is integrated with Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest, failing to tap into its target market’s high use of such social networking sites.


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Promotion

SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGNS Social networks work as knowledge sharing and community building platforms. Our interest-‐based social networks on vintage and pre-‐loved clothing have a distinctive focus and approach than Facebook. Vintage Explorer aims to allow users to focus and organize around their interests first, whereas Facebook focuses on users’ life especially personal connections and networking. First, we targeted a niche community who shares the same interest in vintage and pre-‐loved fashion elements in the Internet. Potential subscribers will always have the inclination to join in networks of people with similar interests and background. This creates a stage to keep the contents fresh and the conversation going. It allows users to share photos, express opinions and suggestions in comment and posts, and feed into the excitement of interaction with other members. Besides, to market our website further, Vintage Explorer will join other social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest. Members are prompted to invite their own network of friends and contacts from other social media networking sites to join our social networking community when they create their own profile. SEO KEYWORDS To build traffic to the website, Vintage Explorer will adopt a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) method called Link Exchange, by linking with related sites to promote our website. It is claimed to be one of the most inexpensive SEO techniques, which can be adopted to obtain high rankings search engines. This method is also valuable to attain targeted traffic as the web site incorporates relevant links. However, good links cannot usually be paid for or exchanged, but are earned and given naturally because of the quality of the website itself. MOBILE APPLICATION In order to take advantage of social media, Vintage Explorer will attempt to create its own lexicon. Facebook owns the word “like”, twitter owns “follow” and foursquare owns “mayor”. Vintage Explorer’s lexicon will be ‘loVE’, to accent the website’s initials with a frequently used, positive emotion that women often use to describe clothing items.


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EVENT SPONSORSHIP For further exposure after the first phase of awareness building, Vintage Explorer will turn to event sponsorship with the partnered stores, vintage fairs, markets, and expos in Melbourne such as The Way We Wear Vintage Fashion Fair and The Love Vintage Show. The opportunity to have high exposure with a large portion of the target market makes it an attractive tool (Belch et al, 2009). But event sponsorship can be expensive, especially if the event doesn’t draw the expected crowd (Belch et al, 2009).

Summary For a variety of reasons, vintage fashion has become increasingly popular over the last few years as everything old is new again. This is very much the case in the fashion-‐forward city of Melbourne. Vintage Explorer is a website which offers Melbournians who love vintage fashion a directory of all of the stores and their location as well as a platform to share their passion and discuss stores and styles. The service offered is specifically tailored to the Melbourne market and encourages the Melbourne vintage fashion loving tribe to form a community and build a relationship with the brand. After analysing the market it was found that Vintage Explorer is a viable idea and has the potential to generate revenue through advertising, sponsorship and membership deals. The website is vulnerable to several risks, most notably the smallness of the available market since the business is localised to the Melbourne area. However contingency plans to mitigate the effects of this risk have been developed. The website will feature integration with other social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest which will provide users with more features and also act as a means of promoting Vintage Explorer. Search Engine Optimisation and a mobile application will be other methods used to promote the website. Vintage Explorer offers vintage fashion lovers a new way to express themselves and their style amongst their community and offers the potential to revolutionise the vintage fashion consumer tribe in Melbourne.


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Documents

Portfolio-VE project