Executive Summary
Globalization has allowed people to move from their native homes in search for greener pastures and better living standards in foreign countries such as the USA, Canada, United Kingdom, and United Arab Emirates. One of the population that has gone global is the Desi population that is originally from Asia: India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. People from these countries share a common history and culture because the three countries were in the past one. However, something unique with the Desi population is that they still want to maintain their unique tradition even while in the foreign countries. One of their highly adored traditions is the Desi wedding.
These weddings are usually unique in terms of duration and outfit; they may last for up to three days. Usually, both bride and bridegroom and, as well as men and women in the party wear traditional desi attire. The men are usually dressed in an outfit called the sherwani or a suit. While, on the other hand the bride is dressed in a lehengas or saree. These outfits are found in different colors and the choice of outfit selected usually depends on tradition and region of origin for the bride and groom.
However, because of the high cost of Desi wedding attire abroad, Desi wedding lovers have to travel to their native countries to purchase Desi attire. Even though that appears affordable, there are other costs such air ticket that these cultural people have to bear. In addition, other lovers of Desi attire are reluctant to purchase these outfits for a number of reasons such as fearing the loss of privacy and confidential data, the lack of a platform to test the attire on themselves, too much variety or too little to choose from, shipping inadequacies, and the lack of customizations from online stores.
In line with that, the proposed business will seek to bridge this gap through the provision of both a website and a mobile app where Desi attire customers abroad can have their desired outfits are a reasonable price. This business targets low-middle income earners who cannot meet the cost of the expensive Desi dresses in their current international locations.
In essence, the business seeks to solve the problems that current customers are facing. This will be done by liaising with designers at the local level in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh where they will design the attires that will be marketed via the website and app. Stocks purchased from these designs will be shipped to Canada to confirm authenticity of the order before shipping to the customer and this strategy seeks to win the trust of customers who have a bad perception of shipping their products from online stores.
Thirdly, there will be standby tailors who will help make customize designs as per the customer’s requests. In addition, this will help potential buyers request for adjustments from the tailors so that they do not have the need of going to a shopping center to try and fit in the outfits. The interaction between the tailors and the customers will help solve this problem.
Furthermore, key steps have been taken to safeguard customer privacy and data. This start-up will require massive marketing but under a tight market. This will involve one-one-one marketing, word of mouth, use of social media, use of SEO marketing, Keywords technique, and customer referral program. The start-up is based in Canada but will solve international clientele.
Marketing a website can prove to be a challenging task for starters. A website can get a lot of traffic, but if it’s not targeted, the sales volume will still be low. One way of increasing sales is through the use of the customer referral program. In other words, the program should allow customers refer their friends or other people and get a reward for it. This can be in the form of points, gifts, or cash.
Acknowledging the power of referral program can help increase the sales of the business because it generates targeted traffic that is ready to purchase. In addition, friends influence others and if referred, they have a huge chance of buying. This will also boost customer retention because current customers who are recognized for their efforts in the referral program are likely to purchase again in the future.
Sponsored Advertising
On top of that, the business can also employ sponsored advertising to boost its popularity. Google, Yahoo and Bing offer the best sponsored ads although this type of advertising is more costly than other marketing strategies. This approach involves the use of unique search key words that users often use while seeking for the services at hand. The search engines help link the website to those key words so that when the customer searches for these services, the website or app pope up amongst the top 10 on the first page of the search engine. That way, there is a huge chance of attracting more targeted traffic to the website.
You Tube Advertisement
You Tube has grown in the past few years and is another source of targeted traffic. This will mean the creation of a You Tube channel that updates the customers on the latest designs in the stores. In that case, there is a need to have high quality short videos that show the business’s top designs, how they are made, whom they suit, how customers can acquire them, and when to put them on. Having an interactive website that provides quality information to customers will help attract targeted traffic and at the same time boost sales.
You Tube has become the second most popular website after Google in terms of quality traffic that is generated and it is possible to generate quality leads from it. Therefore, this approach must be considered because it will bring instant results.
Finance
The above start-up is going to require financing for different activities, and these include website and app design, warehouse for holding stock in Canada, marketing, legal issues and registration. In that case, it is essential to assess the different service providers and use those that offer quality services but at an affordable price.
Secondly, the use of sponsored ads on Google and other search engines is normally costly, but they have custom-made ways of checking the marketing costs that allows marketers to limit the extent on their marketing costs. However, with respect to a warehouse, a good ideas would be purchasing one or renting depending on the costs that are involved. However, the website can partner with other big firms and offer advertising space that will help generate revenue to conduct other activities.
