STRENGTHS
Design
Teri Jon’s designs boast a luxurious and complex designs that are in line with the current and trending fashions. This is a factor that sets Teri Jon’s apart. The designs take on a complex and sophisticated look, a theme that is synonymous with the high and middle class woman in the market. This is the approach taken by some of the competing designers, such as, Nannette Miller and Catherine Malandrino. To remain competitive in a highly competitive and ruthless market, Teri Jon has identified a target market and focussed human resource towards developing designs that are best suited for them.
Creativity
The design team at Teri Jon’s incorporates a unique approach towards coming up with new designs. The manner in which the team look up the latest designs from the top and highly ranked designers to gauge the customer’s expectation acts as a motivation for creativity. This creativity is clearly seen from the final designs from the Teri Jon design house. Creativity is an essential part of the human resource department in any company involved in the fashion and design industry. It plays a pivotal role in the finished product. The creative abilities of Teri Jon’s design team sets its products apart, a vital element f product differentiation in a saturated and highly competitive market. Creativity is a strength that allows the design team to experiment and venture into new ways of making better looking designs at low costs.
Quality
The fashion industry relies uses quality to gauge the value and true worth of a design. Teri Jon has taken this seriously by her routine of personally checking and getting involved in every design before it is released from the design house. The attention she pays to every detail makes the final product from the Teri Jon design house stand out and associated with quality. From picking out fabrics, trims and designing all dresses to have distinct features and embellishment, paying particular attention to the silhouettes, every stage of the design process is scrutinized to ensure that only the best possible quality is in the finished product. This proves to be a huge strength and advantage in the long-run. Customers like to be associated with a production house that is synonymous for its quality. This attribute found in Teri Jon’s designs goes a long way to create a growing and developing reputation in the fashion and design industry.
Competitive Pricing
Teri Jon has identified the undeniable fact that designs from the renowned designers in the fashion industry are too expensive for the middle class woman. She has managed to create high quality, sophisticated and complex designs that rival the quality of the renowned designs at a much lower price for the customers. By choosing to set a competitive price, Teri Jon increases their marketability and thus her market share.
Marketing Plan
Teri Jon has a well-defined marketing plan that acts as a backbone and guide to every design produced from the Teri Jon design house. The company’s well-structured and defined Marketing Plan allows for the company to create products that are tailored for every age- bracket in the market. The company has designs that range from $700 to $1,200 for a wedding dress as well as designs for the middle class. Teri Jon’s designs tend to concentrated on the middle-class market, where the large portion of the market is at. This specific and focused approached in the marketing plan sets Teri Jon’s house of design at a better position financially in terms of revenues and profits.
Diversity in Product
Teri Jon’s design house has developed designs for all of the seasons year-round. By creating designs that are specific to a particular season throughout the year, the design house has creations that revolve around a particular theme for a particular season. This creates diversity in their products a factor that is vital in determining the marketability of their products.
Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction can be achieved through many ways. One of the most effective ways is through making one’s product to specifically suit the customer’s needs and/or wants. Teri Jon’s design house employs this in every design to ensure customer satisfaction. By knowing the client’s needs and wants through identifying the colours and tailoring, the design house can reduce the risk of stale stock and increase sales and profits by producing designs that have been proven to be in line with prevailing consumer needs, wants and prevailing fashion trends in the industry. This increases marketability, sales, profits and reduces risks associated with stock.
The design house has managed to use the company website to avail an avenue where clients can have their designs tailored to their own specifications. Clients can select a particular design and place a request to have the dress tailored according to their own body size and type. This service provides clients with an option to have their design customized to their own specifications. Customization builds on the company’s ability to ensure complete customer satisfaction.
Technology
The company has managed to embrace technology by having some of its services accessible through the company website. Through the use of e-marketing, the marketing team can take advantage of a vast and cheap marketing method and technique. Through the use of e-marketing, the company can reduce costs as compared to other advertising techniques. E-marketing is a modern marketing technique that has seen a surge in market sales. This is attributed to the increase in use and need for the Internet to conduct business.
Economic Conditions
The fashion industry continues to grow despite harsh economic conditions. During the most recent economic downturns, the fashion industry has continued to grow. It is considered as one of the few industries that will probably never reach their limit or peak. This is due to the fact that with every passing day the propensity for people to don designer attire increases.
Customer Loyalty
Teri Jon’s marketing team aims to retain customers and build customer loyalty by conducting promotions in the magazines and newspapers heavily during the holidays. Through promotions, the company can increase client loyalty.
WEAKNESSES
Design
Most of the clothes that are designed by the Teri Jon design house are mainly evening dresses that are suited for special occasions. Despite the fact that design is one of Teri Jon’s biggest strength, it is also one of its major flaws. The company has unique and creative designs that carry different seasonal themes. The designs are however mainly created for evening occasions. These designs are highly marketable, but due to the rare nature of evening occasions, customers are limited to the amount of Teri Jon’s clothes and designs they can buy. This limits sales and profits.
Business Gap
The Teri Jon’s design house has ignored and essential and vital part of the fashion and design industry. The design house does not have a jewellery, accessory or handbag line to complement the clothes design. This places Teri Jon’s design house at a big disadvantage in the market in terms of competition. Other prominent and renowned design houses like Luis Vuitton, Versace and Valentino have jewellery lines, handbag collections and accessories to complement their clothe lines. This translates to increased sales and profits since clients are more willing to spend at shop with all the items required to satisfy a particular need. The companies rely on impulsive buying patterns of customers.
Uniqueness
As much as the Teri Jon’s design house seeks to create a distinctive identity through product differentiation by employing unique and thematic touches to their dresses, they still fail to attain a clear and distinctive look from the competitors’. The Teri Jon’s designs do have a sort of identity. However, this identity is not solid enough to clearly distinguish it from the vast majority of designs in the market.
OPPORTUNITIES
E-Marketing
The use of the internet to expand business operations and enhance accessibility of products and services is essential in succeeding in the 21st century fashion industry. The internet has increasingly become an important tool in the fashion industry. The Teri Jon’s design house can take advantage of the existing technological infrastructure in place. The company can create an e-shop where customers can look through the e-catalogue of all the designs on sale and place their order. This can be further enhanced by introduction of after sales services like delivery of orders. This would result in increased sales and marketing.
Economic Conditions
The past and prevailing economic conditions have been proven to favour the fashion industry. This can be seen in the manner in which the fashion industry experienced steady growth amid an economic downturn. Teri Jon’s fashion and design house can take advantage of this fact and seek to expand.
Product Diversification
Teri Jon’s designs mainly consists of evening dresses meant for evening occasions. The company can seek to expand and diversify its product portfolio by including designs of casual and official business wear. A further introduction of a men’s line would serve to increase clientele base and increase its market share. If implemented, the diversification of designs and products would inherently increase sales and profits.
Technological Advancement
The company already has a positive foundation of adapting to current technology. The company can further seek to exploit this by hosting its own website that is inclusive of all its services and products. This would increase accessibility for its customers, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty. This will also increase efficiency within the company by having some of its functions digitalized.
Business Gap
The company can seek to close the huge gap within the business by expanding its scope of operations. The Teri Jon’s fashion house can venture into creation of jewellery lines, handbag collections, shoe collections and other accessories. This will help put a more defining touch to their cloth lines as the accessories will complement the clothe lines.
THREATS
Competition
The fashion industry is not only saturated but also vigorously competitive. Curving out a name and building a reputation and even possibly a brand in the fashion industry is very difficult. The Teri Jon’s fashion house faces stiff competition from the moguls of the fashion industry. Fashion houses like Louis Vuitton, Versace and Valentino all have vast experience, financial power and depth in creative staff to maintain an edge in the market. They pose a huge threat to the Teri Jon’s fashion house. Though successful in its own way, it still has a long way to go and may find it difficult to outwit the industry’s moguls.
Expensive Workforce
The fashion industry has recently realized a huge growth and surge amid an economic downturn. This has made the industry quite lucrative. As a result the workforce in the fashion industry attract a rather lucrative salary. This makes the cost of labour quite expensive. In order to keep up with the competition. The Teri Jon’s Fashion house needs the best creative workforce that they can possibly employ. This means the company will have to incur a much larger ad inflated wages expense. The company may have to adjust its budgets. This may prove to be a huge problem since the Teri Jon’s fashion house’s budget is relatively small compared to its competitors.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The Teri Jon’s fashion house has many opportunities to exploit. These opportunities may providing the defining edge the company needs to create a distinct identity in the fashion industry.
The company should seek to create a jewellery line, a bag collection and other accessories to complement the clothe lines. This will increase product diversity living customers more to choose from and inn turn increase sales and profits.
The company should exploit the company website. The company can use the company website to link with most used social sites to market their products and services making them accessible to existing customers and attract potential clients.
The company should revise the Human resource to ensure employment of skilled and creative staff. This would ensure a creative edge over competitors.
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