Design Meeting 9/2/11

In our most recent Design Studies meeting we have further discussed our potential business ideas further. I feel that we have come to the conclusion that we are going to go down the up-cycling into the fashion world route in community places. We discussed that members of local communities and cities could donate their old clothes that are maybe completely useless to charity shops or even just to themselves and then the members of staff employed would cut up, rip apart, alter the garments to becoming one off pieces giving the customers very unique and individual garments. The process of each garment could/would be kept in the bar code so that when scanned the customer would be able to see what 'useless' garments their new clothing had come from which would in turn encourage then to up-cycle more items to see what our team could do with them. Regular customers would be given more of an incentive to go back and buy items with the 'club-card' point value aswell, maybe at the end of each month a garment is given away to the most eco friendly/ highest donator customer?
Using the fill-out sheets that Hamid gave us in our lecture before hand we quickly went through the pros and cons (etc) of our business proposal. The customer group that we decided we were mostly going to look at was females aged from 16-40. Although this is quite a large age group to take on with the growing eco-friendly trends that are present today we felt that with this business proposal it was very much achievable to target a larger market successfully. As technology is a MASSIVE in todays world to go into, we felt that having some sort of technical quirk would be a perfect way in keeping the younger "ipod generation" on top of the local trends. So we are to further look into creating an app for phones and also a blog that would be linked to said application. This would give the need of constant update and put the business on the global internet highway, giving publicity aswell as relying on word of mouth and other advertising events. Items should be roughly priced or even cheaper than the high street market so that the business is able to grow further. Income will be slow to start off with until a faster route of materials has been achieved.
PRODUCT-one off designs, completely unique using same designs possibly and different fabrics and texture for different looks and feels of garment, up-cycling
PLACE- source own materials to keep material cost low-market, charity etc, off street boutique, near city centre but not in?!
PRICE-varies, near high street value, payment for threads/sewing equipment etc
PROMOTION- applications and blogging, night classes, promo nights, hobby
PEOPLE- repairs on own designs, tweaking high street products to fit certain styles, altercations
PROCESS- staff contribute to everything throughout blog etc, train regular customers at night classes and offer jobs?
PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT- staff wear clothing as constant promotion, sewing machines in floor so that visual is available to customers, make one off furnishings, completely customize.