Final Reflection

1)
While it may be surprising I think the most formative part of this class was the bug list. Being the first assignment of the semester I truly think that it helped change my mindset to be more critical in my thinking and aware of my feelings as well as others. Building on this my favorite assignment of the class was What's Your Secret Sauce? since it not only forced me to take a step back and evaluate myself, but also to hear what my friends thought about me which was very interesting to hear. My proudest moment from the semester is when I actually began to take steps to start my business and be some sort of successful.

2)
I would definitely say that I have developed more of an entrepreneurial mindset this year than in the past. Even in day to day activities such as watching TV I find myself analyzing commercials to see who they are targeting and how they are trying to do that, after all commercials are professionally made and what better way to learn than real-life professional examples.

3)
One recommendation I would give to a student who is going to take this class is be proactive. One of the tricky parts about this class was the fact that the assignment deadline is at 12 pm which is just an unusual time for me. To fix this all you have to do is do your work in as far in advance as possible, but if it isn't fixed it will cost you. Overall, its a great class that taught me a lot about how to look at opportunities in the world.

(Some Tallwood shirts)

Venture Concept No. 2

Venture Concept
Opportunity

The clothing market has been alive since before America was founded, however, since clothes are considered in today’s culture to be a necessity there will therefore always be a niche in the market for clothing lines. The question then becomes not who will buy clothes, because anyone can potentially sell a jacket or a vintage hand-me-down, but what kind of clothes will they buy. At this point a lot of the opportunity exists, of course, on the designs and quality of the shirts, as well as the marketing on social media and on campus (until we gain popularity, then we will move to a larger market). That being said we still have a specific target audience in mind, youth between the ages of middle school (13-14) - college and even out of college (26-27). This is because the youth of every generation are the most receptive to change. The reason for this is our style is inherently rooted in being different and unique. In middle school and high school everyone is either a trend setter or a trend follower, making these ages essential to target because all it takes is the right person to pick up the trend for the whole school to follow. These kids will then either take the style with them to college, introducing it to more people, or pick it up on their own since they are more likely to be independent in their fashion styles. In terms of location are target is Florida, specifically Jacksonville, Gainesville, and Tallahassee since we are all from Jacksonville and go to either FSU or UF. As we progress in the amount of shirts we are making as well as the amount of consumers we will expand accordingly in response to media analytics showing where our brand is being worn the most. Currently members of our target audience are buying clothes based mainly on celebrities, however social media is contributing to a rise of shopping being done on platforms such as Instagram and Twitter where there is an increasing amount of ads that allow you to purchase an item with a press of the finger, or mouse. Therefore, consumers are beginning to turn to social media to satisfy their clothing needs, which is exactly what we want. Social media is a free advertising platform which allows us to market ourselves at peak efficiency. However, it is 2019, which means that more and more companies are attempting to establish a strong social media presence, which means that our window of opportunity is continuously shrinking. Regardless, the era of social media shopping has yet to reach its peak.

Innovation

One of our main creative additions to the clothing market is how we brand ourselves. While most companies try to look as professional as possible, our vibe is more of a homemade in the backyard style, within reason. There’s a difference between looking like amateurs and looking like a local business. Our goal is to create customer loyalty, which is often prevalent among smaller, more local businesses. Related to local look is how we deliver the shirts. Every order is placed in a burlap sack with our logo on it, as well as a sticker, and then driven and dropped off to the consumer. This will have to change in the future as we cannot simply drive across the country at a whim but for now that is our delivery innovation. As for our prices we are currently selling single t-shirts for $15 and then 2 for $25, the same goes for our sweatpants.

Venture Concept

As I mentioned before, there are more and more companies hopping onto social media to expand their market. We are going to do exactly that, but with our own individual look that isn’t blasting back to school ads at you for all of August. Besides this an essential element for our product is the presence of us, the creators. Clothing companies love to show the shirts and the designs that they have, but they never even mention the designer behind it. A group of decently attractive nutheads designing clothes out of their backyard is a way more notable brand then shirts posted on a solid color background saying 15% off. As mentioned in the innovation section we anticipate packaging to play a decent role in retaining customer loyalty. It’s different from the norm while providing a reusable bag that has our logo on it, continuously advertising our brand to whoever uses/ sees it. In terms of how we are going to change the actual business make-up in the future we have talked about using companies such as Shopify which is a Canadian based company that deals with the financial aspect of receiving and delivering orders. This will allow us to not have to worry about orders and delivery so that we can focus better on our clothing and our branding. Employees are another topic; we will most likely hire minimal employees except potentially models for social media. Other than that, our goal is to do as much of this process ourselves, reflecting our brand image. I have no qualms, however, in potentially hiring people to work on social media as it requires a lot of time to adequately keep in touch with your audience as well as gauging what their needs and wants are. This will, again, allow us to focus on the clothes themselves, which is the most important part of the business.

Reflection

Unfortunately, I was unable to submit the first venture concept assignment and therefore did not have any feedback to reflect on or a previous draft that I was able to edit. I did, however, submit the What's Next assignment and the feedback I received was as follows: the marketing is as important as I say it is and worth the time,  don't mark up the price too much, and inquiry on how I would expand my audience. I believe that I have adequately explained how I would expand in the future and am not worried about it being an issue. 

(Snapshot of one of our Instagram posts)

Exit Strategy

1) Identify your exit strategy

My exit strategy is definitely to stick with my company for at least 10 years. If I've already put in the work to create something that I care about then I'm definitely going to stick with it for awhile. That being said one taste of success would probably lead me to try and start more businesses so I would definitely consider selling or joint-owning down the line.

2) Why have you selected this strategy?

I have selected this exit strategy because this start-up idea is very important to me, my friends and I have been working on it and continue to work on it now. Since we are so passionate about this we want to be a part of it and if it became successful we would absolutely stick with it and keep creating. After all, that's pretty much my dream job, getting paid to create and design.

3) How do you think your exit strategy has influenced the other decisions you've made in your concept?

I definitely think that my passion about this idea has led me to think and act differently when answering these assignments. This is something that I would be willing to do for the rest of my life so of course I'm going to treat it differently then Joe's fly-catching device. Since we are expecting to get bigger we are starting small so we can financially support our progress 100% of the way. So yes I think differently about my venture because I am actually invested in it and need to think about finances and such because it literally affects me.

Reading Reflection No. 3

I chose to do my final reading on Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life by Lisa Chaney

1)
-What surprised you the most?

I was most surprised by the fact that she was able to be so successful coming from such an unsuccessful background, especially due to the fact that her father abandoned her and her mother.

-What did you most admire?

What I admire most is that she was so passionate and confident about her fashion and style. Her creativity made her stand apart from other designers but she stuck through it and succeeded because of her perseverance.

-What did you least admire?

The thing that I least admire about her is probably the way she used sex to gain a leg in the industry. She had several affairs with rich and powerful men that helped her make more of a name for her brand.

- Did the entrepreneur encounter adversity and failure?

Definitely, being poor and being a woman brought a lot of negative attention to her as well as her reputation for sleeping with rich guys. Nonetheless she powered through and reached success.

2)

Creativity. Gabrielle Chanel was so creative that she was able to build a fashion empire. Literally the epitome of creativity is when you create things that the world likes and its very obvious that people liked her and her ideas.

3)

There was nothing particularly confusing about this biography.

4)

-Looking back on your childhood, are you thankful for the hardships that you experienced for making you into the person you are today?

-Thinking about everything you've made and given to the world, do you think you changed the word? and if so, for the better?

5) 

I think that Gabrielle Chanel would consider passion to exemplify her definition of hard work. Gabrielle put everything on the line for her company, even her body, she exuded passion for her company and that's what brought her success. I think that if anyone asked her about hard-work she would respond by asking how passionate they were.

-

-

Celebrating Failure

1) This semester I failed for the third semester in a row. Since I've been at UF I've tried every semester to make straight A's but every single semester I fail because of my procrastination and laziness. It is really disappointing honestly considering my brother makes straight A's at Notre Dame studying physics while I'm just here in J-School (shoutout J-School).

2) While I know this is stretching the prompt a bit because it says this semester, this is just something that has been on my mind recently because it means a lot to me. Recognizing it now and calling myself out on it makes me excited for next semester because that is another chance for me to reach my goal. Other than that I learned that I need to be more proactive in my life and plan ahead better.

3) Failure sucks, plain and simple. When you set your mind to achieve something and then don't, there's no worse feeling. However, failure helps us learn, about ourselves and about each other. When we fail we need to recognize it, completely. If you don't accept your own failure then you start running from it and that results in lies and cheating. Cheating is just accepting failure. This class makes me look at things a little differently now, everything is a calculated risk. I think that I will be trying to take more calculated risks from now on.

What's Next?

Existing Market

1) I think the next step for my business is to finalize some designs and start making a large amount of shirts to start selling. At this point we have developed a brand and have created a decent amount of demand, but now we need to supply that in order to get our brand to a bigger audience and create more demand.

2)
- Ben, 24 - When I asked Ben what he thought we should do next he completely agreed with what I said in the previous paragraph. Ben said that we definitely need to start pumping out shirts to sell because we need people to see what the brand is about and seeing other people wear it makes people more likely to buy it for themselves.
- Anna, 20 - Anna agreed with Ben that more shirts need to be made, but she also emphasized that we need to improve our social media. Anna said that while it's good that we have one and are using it, we need to completely revamp it and make it more professional.
- Kelsey, 21 - Kelsey actually disagreed with the two other interviews. Kelsey thought that we should wait to produce more shirts and instead work on mastering the screen press. Her thoughts were that we needed to act more professional since we are already doing everything by hand. Once we get really good at printing is when we should start mass producing.

3)
I liked the feedback that I got from these interviews, all of them were very helpful to consider with my current business plan. I particularly agreed with Anna's point about our social media. Since we've had the Instagram only one person has had the password for the account and after the split into different locations he is the only one able to post. Being part of the Tallahassee squad I am unable to influence his posts since I am in Gainesville. What I need to do is get the password and work on diversifying our media presence.
As for Kelsey's comment I actually disagree with the suggestion to get better at using the screen press because of how our brand is very do-it-yourself and making our shirts look professionally manufactured takes away from that brand. We have even talked about making our designs look more hand-drawn than they are now to add to that brand even more.

New Market

1)
The new market that I am identifying is a very trendy, designer clothing market such as Louis Vuitton. To make this new market all of the prices of my shirts will be raised significantly. Besides this there will be a much smaller selection of designs that come with each release in order to make them more rare/exclusive. Orders will still be delivered in the burlap sack but with a sticker and a pin instead of just the shirt.

2)
-Brian, 20 - Brian was not very intrigued by the new market. He said that the shirts seemed a little overpriced and he did not know "what the h*ll" he would do with a pin that's included in the shirt order.
-Liz, 19 - Liz was more of a fan of the new market than Brian was. Liz said she liked the high-class aspect of the shirts and that she would definitely buy some sweatpants and potentially a shirt. Her biggest issue was the fact that our clothes were made more towards males than females.

3)
I honestly did not expect anyone to be up for this new market. Based on the designs that we've made they do not at all match with a designer brand. That being said Liz surprised me greatly by her enthusiasm on our sweatpants and that she like how expensive they were because they made you value the purchase. I clearly do not have as much money as Liz but the fact that there are consumers for that market took me by surprise. I agree however that our market is more targeted at males and we need to improve our female clothing options.
Compared to the previous business model this one is most definitely inferior. The quality of our products simply do not match up to the quality of the designer brands. Marketing could most definitely help if we advertised ourselves as if we were real snobby and high class, but that just feels fake and snarky. I would much rather drive for hours delivering t-shirts for 15$ that they will enjoy than ship a shirt for 40-50$ that is completely overcharging the customer.

Unfair Advantage

Resources:

• Screen Printer
• Screen printers are very essential to the shirt making process, having one allows us to make our own shirts whenever we want and not have to rely on a third party to produce them which is more money and more time.
• ink/dye
• ink and dye is useful obviously but not exactly rare
• 3 different geographical locations
• Since spreading out for college the members of Tallwood have split across the 3 cities of Tallahassee, Gainesville, and Jacksonville. Having theses 3 locations makes it easier to reach a larger audience on a personal level, not just over social media.
• Connections through 3 different fraternities (and thus multiple sororities)
• There are 3 of us in Tallwood who are also in Greek life. This provides us with a much greater selection of customers since we live with 50 other people, let alone the people we meet throughout the year at various events. This allows us to show our brand to a much bigger audience and get feedback as well as purchases. 
• Social Media account: Instagram
• This is nothing rare at all since its free to make an Instagram, but its important nonetheless.
• blank tees
• Another relatively simple resource to gather, just takes time and some money. Tallwood buys all their clothing thrifting and prints on them or dyes them.
• Tallwood burlap sacks
• One of my favorite resources, we ship all our clothing in branded burlap sacks. This adds a handcrafted touch to the order since it isn't completely plastic wrapped and smell like a factory.
• Adobe Creative Cloud
• We use Adobe for our designs. Being in college is very helpful for this resource because of the fact that it is discounted for people with an .edu email. However, Adobe is open for purchase by anyone.
• 5+ different designers
• While most clothing companies are going to have a decent amount of different designers, what makes Tallwood different is that we constantly look at and challenge each other's designs. In a traditional company style manufacturer there would be someone overlooking the designers, either accepting or rejecting designs, but our group analysis allows us to get the most feedback and improve our own designs before they are even released.
• Shirt Delivery
• So of course ordering a shirt from Amazon will get it delivered to you by a truck, but an order from Tallwood will get you a delivery by a car full of 19 year-olds in the middle of the night. This point is similar to the burlap sack because it adds to our quirky, homemade vibe. We make this for the customer and so we are going to make sure they get it. 

After analyzing my list of resources, I would say that my top resource is the connections we have through Greek Life. While this may sound very conceited, Greek Life exposes you to so many people that you are constantly meeting new people and making new friends. Say, for example, I wear a Tallwood shirt one night at a social, every single person there is going to recognize it as a brand that they are not familiar with and potentially ask about it and therefore get exposed to the brand and the products. Wearing it myself is important too because people are interested in what other people are passionate about and as a creator I am very passionate and would express this to any interested consumer. On top of this, Greek Life is very interconnected and so every person I get interested will tell a friend who can tell a friend and then the domino effect takes over.