In Class Week 3

This week in class, I spent more time revising parts 1-3 for the storefront project. I spent some time trying to make part one more unique to our business. This was hard because it is hard to anticipate how we will be unique because it is just an estimate. The main reason that we think we could beat out our competitors is because of our location and not so much because we our unique. No one in my group has any experience in our industry and I believe that it would be easier to make these projections if we had someone who had a better understanding of the market.

I also worked on part two of the storefront project. The main thing that we needed to fix was our data. The data that we had was not from a reliable source and it wasn’t specific enough, so I spent a lot of time researching statistics about childrens birthdays and the type of people that living in Brookline. It was a challenge finding this information because not a lot of people do studies about how much is spent for a child’s birthday party. A lot of the data that we found wasn’t very relevant to what we were trying to do so it took a lot longer than expected.

I also spent time figuring out how we would compete with the cheerleading team when it comes to selling warrior water bottles for the $200 project. The cheerleaders are selling their bottles for $17 but only $15 if people pre-order so  we are going to sell ours for $10 but for $8 if people pre-order. I keep getting annoyed when I hear an announcement or see their flyers because it just means that we will need to work a lot harder to make a profit. We are also at a disadvantage because their profits are supporting their team and ours is just for our class project.

Tipping Point week 3

This week I read pages 70-100 of The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. In this reading, I learned what a maven is. A Maven is a person that is an expert on getting the best possible deal. When you get advice from your maven friend, you always take it because you trust that they are always right. He explains that these mavens give everyone all of their knowledge because they like sharing their information. I have one aunt that is a maven. She loves collecting coupons and telling me where and when there will be a sale. If I ever approach her with something that I am considering purchasing, she will tell me exactly why or why not to buy it and usually if she says I shouldn’t get something, its because she knows of some other place with the same thing for less.

I also learned about what it takes to be a good salesperson. According to Gladwell, a salesman is a person that could persuade you into buying anything because they understand how to manipulate someone's thoughts so that they want to buy it. He said that good salespeople understand three things: 1. Little things are important 2. Non-verbal cues are as important as verbal cues (which pretty much means that your physical presence matters just as much as what you are saying) 3. How convince someone that they need to buy whatever is being sold. This makes me think that salesmen need to know a lot about psychology because they need to know how to know what the other person is thinking about and then using that information to influence their thoughts. Before this reading I just assumed that a salesperson had to know what they were selling but now I feel that all good salespeople could sell anything.

This week in class, I spent most of my time revising storefront parts 1-3, primarily the SWOT analysis. The SWOT Analysis that we submitted the week before didn’t make a lot of sense and we put everything in the wrong boxes. This week, we fixed it so everything was in the correct place and we came up with a few more things to put in each box. We struggled coming up with the opportunities and threat. Part of the struggle was because we found it confusing coming up with things that were out of our control that could potentially affect our business. This was especially challenging because everything we came up with as a opportunity or threat was based on a projection that we made which could end up being inaccurate.

Another thing that I worked on which helped in the revision of parts 1-3 was researching statistics on child birthday party. This was hard because very few people record data on children’s birthday parties. I ended up finding a blog where someone said that the University of Minnesota did a study which found that lower income families were willing to spend a lot of money on their kid’s birthday party. There was a link that should have taken me to the study, which would have been helpful so we’d actually have numbers to back up our point, but when I clicked it, the site had been taken down.

On Thursday of this past week, we found out that the cheerleading team would be selling BHS Warrior Nalgene water bottles which is a problem for our $200 assignment. Part of the reason we chose to make warrior water bottles was because nobody owned a water bottle with our new logo on it. Now, we have competition which might force us to lower prices since our bottles are much lower quality than the nalgenes that they will be selling. Next week, we will have to figure out a plan to make our bottle more appealing than the one that the cheerleaders will be selling.

The Tipping Point: Week #2

This week, I read pages 30-70 of The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. In this reading, I learned what a connector is and what an example of a connector is. A connector is a person that is acquaintances with a lot of people. They usually are able to meet a lot of people because they have been a part of many communities. An example given in the book was Paul Revere. Paul Revere was a part of many different revolutionary organizations which allowed him to spread the word that the British were coming to so many people so quickly. Before this reading, I didn’t even know that there was another man, William Dawes, who went on the same ride as Paul Revere but through different towns; Dawes didn’t have nearly as many connections as Revere so those towns were not prepared for the British. Something else that I found interesting was a study done by Gladwell. He took 250 last names out of a New York City phone book and asked people to count how many of those names shared a last name with an acquaintance of theirs. When I read this I didn’t think that there would be any clear patterns but Gladwell found that successful business men that were old had the most and college students had the least. Once I read that it made a lot more sense because older people have more time to meet more people. Gladwell said that the highest scoring people are considered connectors. This shows how it actually is all about who you know. The people with the most acquaintances were the wealthy business men. Gladwell did a connecting study to find out how people got their job. He found that more than 50% of people got interviewed for their job because of an acquaintance or a ‘weak-tie’ as he called it. He said that weak-ties are more important in the professional world than close friendships which I thought was odd. He said this because close friends are usually people that you either work with or are neighbors with but the weak ties make you more of a connector because they have less common acquaintances which allows you to make even more relationships.

The book that I will be reading during this quarter is The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. This week I read the first 30 pages. Those pages were all about how the little things could makes such a big impact. For example, In 1995, Hush Puppies, a type of shoe that were popular in the fifties that were about to stop being made, suddenly started to sell like crazy because a few people in one neighborhood of New York City started to wear them. I thought this concept of a tipping point was very interesting. I think with most of these trends/epidemics, when they first start to catch on, aren’t looked too much into for the minor reasons why the trend started. This book shows that the minor details actually can make a big impact. I’ve always been told that ‘the little things matter’ but I haven’t really noticed it until this reading. Additionally, Gladwell wrote that when these tipping points occur, the trend would exponentially increase or decrease in popularity.

Another interesting theory that Gladwell spoke about was the 80-20 rule. As an example, normally 80% of a company's sales would come from 20% of the customers; A tipping point occurs when it changes a lot and goes to extremes. The first thing I thought about when I read this was the Occupy Wall Street movement. The movement started when  people found out that about 1% of the nation owned about 40% of the wealth. According to the 80-20 rule, one could predict that this would mean that a tipping point would occur which it did when the movement started. I also was curious whether this rule is commonly used by businesses or if it is an original rule that Gladwell came up with. I looked it up and found out that businesses do use this rule and it is especially helpful while investing which makes sense.

In-Class work week of 12/1/2014

This week in class, my group got a lot of work done. For the $200 assignment, we decided on a product to sell. We ordered 65 water bottles that have the new Brookline Warrior logo on it. We bought them on sale so they only cost us about $2 each and we are planning to sell them for around $8 each. I did however show a picture of the bottle to a few of my friends and they said they would pay more than $10 for it. I also spoke with a member of the superfans that said that the club would be able to promote our water bottles which could be very beneficial.

For the storefront project, my group decided that we would put a do-it-yourself arts and crafts shop. We would allow customers to to customize candles, soap, picture frames and more. For this project, I wrote out our business strategy which included our differentiation strategy and our keys to success. When we first decided on doing a do-it-yourself arts and crafts shop, I felt a little pessimistic. I didn’t think that it would get any business and that there was too much competition nearby. After doing some research, I was surprised to find out how successful local competitors are doing and how none of our competitors sell exactly the same products. Also, we would be closer to the city than our main competition, Make Meaning, which is in Dedham. I think that this location is great for our business in particular. because it is so close to so many elementary schools and it is on route 9 which would help get publicity.  also started working on the packet that the accountant gave us. We were having trouble coming up with a name for our business. We came up with a lot of terrible puns for names while brainstorming but I’m hoping we could avoid puns for the final name.