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About us

Started in Paris in 1986 with the intention of delivering the avant-garde continental fashion trends to
your doorstep we quickly became the one step chic fashion destination for premium customers all around
the world. Focused heavily on stretching the limits of design and breaking the traditional fashion norms
we grew at an unprecedented scale with a fashion empire stretching from the elites of the New York
Upper East Side to the Royal Bedouins of Persia. However, the in-store experience is a pivotal driver of
our growth. By the turn of the millennium, we owned 2000 stores worldwide and revenues pushing the 8
billion-dollar mark

Our Portfolio consists of casual & party wear, accessories, designer collections and footwear for both
men, women and children. Besides having featured our own collections in Fashion weeks all around the
world, we source designs from many independent designers that match our design culture which adds
that subtle hint of personality to our portfolio

Xperience
We at Bohemian Inc. are focused on helping customers navigate the outer realms of fashion. Our target
group is majorly trendy customers with decent purchasing power parity. And the major touch point of
such customers is the in-store experience. Combing through such distinct designs is a challenge even for
the most adventurous customers and we realise it and positioned our stores in such a way. Not only are
stores the prime source of information but they are the face of any fashion label to the outside world.
Keeping this in mind, utmost importance is given to their design & locality. They are positioned in places
assured to have maximum visibility such as premium shopping streets & upscale shopping centres. An
additional advantage to such locales is the distinction it provides for our stores while adding to the innate
environment.

Over the first few years of our launch, we realised that the major nostalgic factor for people is the
personal relationship they used to have with their tailors or the shop owner who owned the store around
their street. They looked much beyond fashion and actually cared about their customers looked. It was
becoming increasingly difficult in the 90s due to a multitude of factors such as

The business mentality of the 80s impacted the fashion world


Distinction drastically bringing everyone down to muted coloured suits
in Design irrespective of the gender making it difficult to distinguish
between individual choices in such a thin spectrum. As the famous
anecdote by Ralph Lauren goes
At the end of the day they just need a black suit
This decade saw a huge rise of multi-national fashion giants which
Steep Sales also meant centralised operations. It might be good for the
Targets efficiency, but that meant the only way to track them is by some
numbers. This resulted in a huge competition amongst the front
line employees to finish the sale as soon as possible which meant
minimum interaction. Some firms came up customer feedback
systems as a Band-Aid solution.
With an ever expanding size of shopping districts shopping
No Inter- became more of a lucrative activity which meant customers
Personal moving out of their locality and travelling long distances to shop
which also saw increased levels of window shopping which is
Relationship detrimental to the sales persons morale. And also tacking such
huge customer base meant difficulty in establishing interpersonal
relationships

Our mission was to address these major issues while establishing the store and were fairly successful at
that. When customers walk into our store we observed their shopping patterns and took their feedback
in terms of design and maintained a database of users which helped us profile them much better and
improve ourselves in terms of customer centric design. Being an avant-garde label helped us to a certain
extent in terms to incorporating the bold and eccentric designs our customers suggested us. With this
kind of profiling, it enabled us to suggest the perfect choices when the customer visited us next the time
bringing in the familial customer experience back on the table.

We were set right from the start to not set quantitative targets for our sales man which allowed them to
improve on the customer satisfaction which is the sole criterion for our success. This kind of
differentiation enabled us to deal in margins as opposed to other stores who are forced to deal in volumes
to compensate for the margins in order to keep their top-line intact. This also meant aggressively
managing the portfolio of stores and relocating them in response to the evolution of shopping districts
and traffic patterns which sometimes resulted in huge investments at a much higher frequency than our
competitors. But in the end its all worth it with our growth rate as evidence.

Digital Revolution
The new millennium brought in a revolution to announce itself which we decided to call the internet. This
led to an unprecedented level of challenges with an opportunity tagged to each one of them. Meanwhile,
the growth rate which we are so proud of took a hit bringing us to our knees and making us think of the
course of action. Before we could come up with a strategy we found out the landscape has already
shifted. Internet boosted the customer decision-making process by allowing them to access a staggering
amount of product information which allowed for in-depth product knowledge even before purchase and
stores became merely a point of sale thereby killing our inherent advantage. Within a couple of years
came a whole different set of challenges listed below
E-commerce - The biggest blow to the fashion industry in its history. Its making the
concept of stores obsolete while influencing purchase decisions at all check points
Changing Customer Preferences Internet has also brought number of life style
and fashion blogs and social networks which kept changing customer preferences at a rate even
the industry could not keep up
Peer to peer lending With the rise of online escrow systems peer to peer lending
became a thing with sites like Craigslist taking almost 10% of the traffic from the market
altogether heavily skewed towards premium segment
Online Rentals The final blow in the draw formalising the whole rental process and
making it accessible for everyone which made buying designer wear for parties look foolish. One
of them operating with a tagline of Get 10 for the price of 1
As alarming as these forces have been each of them has their inherent disadvantages and are working to
overcome them some of them eventually leading to an on-ground presence. Our approach deals with
tackling the issue in the short term while formulating a solution which helps us circumvent the potholes
the e-commerce players have got themselves into and end up in the position where they would like to
be.

Transformation A
This is the hands-on approach that deals with the short term solution of how to reposition the core
business to handle the competition and the changing environment. Before we involve social media its
important to see what all parts of the value chain you want to impact. For the scope of this assignment,
lets deal with Customer Acquisition & Engagement and the Lead times. To encompass such a bracket,
you need to have dedicated social media attributes & capabilities. Major goals would be

To build an aspirational value for the brand. Fuels the FOMO aspect of the millennials
Use it for feedback and as a grievance redressal system at times. This however has to be done
with utmost care to avoid scandals like Indigo
Automate the process of predicting fashion trends to reduce lead times & improve pricing
Create a website that allows users to maintain their fashion blogs for free
Dedicated loyalty programs to reward your most commendable bloggers & customers
Highlight the procurement and production aspects which is entirely done in Europe as opposed
to promoting the sweat shop culture like other major fashion labels
Tackling other social issues and extending support to causes to build a better brand

Most importantly the core brand philosophy of personalised interactions should translate to the
online realm without seeming forced or fake. Elaborating the points stated above, FOMO aspect can be
tapped in by associating with life style activities. As a fashion brand we are into fashion shows and
parades but they are not ideally accessed by our target segment. In order to ensure such brand image we
have to associate ourselves with music festivals and select university events at least on the social media
front. Not only does it boost brand association but it also helps in the visibility aspect which is a major
driver of customer acquisition which is at the least thrice as expensive as customer retention.

Coming to the point of customer retention, feedback can be managed easily by chatbots and back
end integration to facilitate real-time tracking and give the public relations team a hang of the current
social media sentiment. Grievance redressal however should be tackled manually to avoid escalations
which result in social media rants or trolls causing irrevocable damage to the brand value.

Automation however, is the trickiest of the lot. It can be developed in-house with a constant influx of
trigger words and attributes of the customer target group. However, this kind of extensive social media
listening might not be feasible in our business context. To tackle this market many blockchain based
solutions are available on the market that customises the social media data to any business based on
their requirement. Since, its a solution based on distributed ledgers its completely transparent and
scalable which adds to the appeal. This can be expensive at the beginning with stiff resistance from other
stakeholders regarding the sensitivity of the data but this kind of acuity is necessary to shake out the
inertia in the existing systems. Not only will it assist in adapting the company to the emerging realities it
will help in rapid expansion when necessary. This kind of data could be made available to the designers
in real-time as opposed to the usual 2-week lead times they are currently facing right now. This can be
extended to fashion weeks and demand centric areas like high-end universities & offices which also helps
the production team in predicting the demand and adjust the pricing accordingly.

As mentioned earlier, one of the major issues the internet era has dragged in was the continuous
change in customer preferences driven by multiple opinions all around the globe. We are bombarded by
information every minute that it becomes impossible to stand your ground. In order to get a handle on
things, we create a platform where lifestyle bloggers can blog for free and based on their inputs and the
social media sentiment resonating it they can be rewarded in monetary and non-monetary ways. This is
a win-win scenario as maintaining traffic in a blog is a tedious and sometimes an expensive process. This
not only helps us influence the customer perception but gives us access to various designs and customer
feedback on them. We can even have our own designers maintain blogs to post designs they are a bit
sceptical about and based on the reactions the management can take an informed decision before giving
the go-ahead. This in-time becomes a free and inexpensive test market further reducing the lead times.

Proper reward structure needs to be in place if you want boost contribution. This could be monetary
in terms of direct payment or indirect incentives such as store credit or coupons which in turn will boost
your sales. However, this has to be done with caution so that people don not game the system in order
to gain rewards. As the age old adage goes The will to win should not outweigh the spirit of the game.
It could be non-monetary rewards such as picking the most creative and out-of-box designs and printing
them out as a unique piece for the designer or some symbolic gestures as such to drive content. This
model works the same way as that of paid bloggers but bypasses the ethical issues a blogger faces
surrounding paid content. This way he does not have to tip toe around the fact that he is getting paid for
the content and also allows other bloggers as this is an open platform.
Give your brand a social backstory is a well-tested success formula. Following the footsteps of John
Deere and Starbucks publish the origins, procurement and other parts of the supply chain that makes us
more environment friendly and puts in a positive light compared to competitors. With a vertically
integrated company like ours it will bring the humanitarian aspects to light. To build on it associate with
social causes which helps the communities and our brand image. Its better than most marketing dollars
we spend. However, the brand building efforts should exceed the deed itself which makes it look
insincere. As Mr. Gringham said At the end of the day its just good business. Thats all it is.

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