Journal:

Week 7: During this finally week of FMP has involved me working on a number of different areas of my project mostly to do with formatting the work, checking figures and details are correct and checking over anything I may have missed. I have also completed my executive summary I had it reviewed by my tutor and she talked about what areas needed work on the project overall and the details of it. The most frustrating aspect of this week has been the seemly never ending formatting and adjustments to the project, this is because I feel that my concept is has its strengths in the visual sense (which is also one of my strengths) I want this to be expressed on through the project but I am met with issues over the pages looking complex with the wording and it almost seems like a contradiction as to my overall concept proposal.  On a positive note I am glad I managed to complete all of my work early last week this means that I am not as stressed as I was in pervious FMP’s I have done. I also managed to have planned enough time to print and bind the project and I am very happy with the overall format and appearance, although I am concerned at the fact that I did not record enough of my progress on this blog which could affect my overall grade. In conclusion I am very satisfied with my FMP and how it has developed and I feel that the strengths of it lay in it new concept and the visuals of things such as the range and the marketing side of the project. Whereas the weaker areas are the financial aspects of the project, but I have gone into detail of my overall impression of the project and what I have learned from it but I am pleased overall with how it has turned out and I would be happy to present this to any potential employer as a showcase of my skills I have learned over my three years at the Fashion Retail Academy.

Front Cover, Executive Summary, Contents, Concept and Mission Statement:

These the final pages that I completed for my final major project, I feel that these tell the best representation of the brand and explains its concept to executives in a detailed and precise way.

Journal:

Week 6: This week was a very progressive and interesting week. With regards to my FMP I am progressing very well and have completed most of the work for each of the subjects, now it is just a question of formatting it in the right way and evaluating it as well producing things such as my executive summary and other business related pages. One most interesting things that happened was the world retail congress in which different groups presented new retail concepts involving  technology, while the presentations themselves were interesting the groups received a lot of questions from Sir Philip Green regarding costs and how the concept would work in store. I liked one of the group’s ideas on using custom styling service for people and I stood up and asked a question and pledged my support for the idea after the group had been a little disheartened by the criticism from the retailers.  Sir Phillip liked my response and singled me out at being a good speaker and had proposition for the FRA students in creating a new group for the world retail congress so I am now a part of that as Sir Phillip has stated about “the blonde boy had a good point”. So that is very exciting I was concerned that it may interfere with my FMP work but this is not case as I will be focusing on congress over the summer. I also attend careers day and got a lot of positive feedback from that event and got some good contacts which is important as I am very keen on getting a BAA role so soon as possible after college, so overall I had a very successful and progressive week in many ways. 

Brand Values:
This section is dedicated to my brand values and what I feel they should be for the HAUS brand, they are:  Personality, Creativity, Individualism, Style, Quality, Technological and Universal. Again while I am happy with the values and the wording itself I am unhappy with the layout and will improve it later on the project.

Journal:

Week 5: This week was when a lot of the different elements of my project came together and different areas more developed then others. One of the areas that I completed was the product development side of the product. This led me to complete my garment technology area of the project as I had finished my range and had chosen the product I was going to use for the subject. I spoke to my garment technology tutor and showed her what I had completed so far and she said that it was good and the thought process was clear. Although I did well in my garment technology assignment last term the only point I received about areas that needed improvement was my costing sheet for the garment, so I made sure that checked the calculations and  used the template of formulas I was given. My tutor then reviewed the sheet and said what I had to do to ensure it was correct for the project. This also gave me some perspective as I took a look at the feedback I was given from my pervious assignments and made sure that the areas that said I needed to improve I focused on the in my FMP to ensure the best grade possible. 

Customer Profile Pages:


These are my customer profile pages I have been working on. I developed the graphs from various different online resources across the web.

Plan-o-grams and marketing:

Below are the pictures of my plan-o-grams and marketing Photoshop work. The marketing includes the advert I made for the tube and magazines as well as the Facebook and Twitter pages. The two plan-o-grams I have created are for Haus smartphone application and the website.

Sourcing/PESTEL: 

This is my completed sourcing strategy work, this is an example of one the areas I ran into issues with with formatting as when I first completed these pages the feedback I got back was the font on the pages was to small due to me placing in the form of text boxes directly from word. So i spaced them out to make them easier to read and flow better. The same issues occurred with my PESTEL page so I spread it out as well.

Garment Technology Work:

This is my Garment Technology work, this subject developed over the time of my FMP but I could not fully format until I had completed my product development and decided upon my garment from my range. I used my previous assignment as guidance which I found very useful as it gave me an idea of how to layout and justify my findings and processes for the garments production.

Range Plan and other mood boards:


This is a collection of my mood boards and range plans. I am very happy with the overall them and feel that it flows very well. I will go back and make some edits to these, as well the range plan needing more information and pricing (which I am working on at the moment along with the critical path). I will go back to these blog posts later on in the project and tidy them up at bit as much like my project different things are being completed in different stages, but still with the same end goal in site!

Weekly update:


In terms of how I am progressing with my FMP I feel that it is going well. I completed most if not all of my photoshop work such as my range plans, customer profiles, mood boards and product design. I aimed to complete most of my photoshop work before the level 3 group returned due to them taking the computers for there FMP. With my laptop hooked up to the FRA internet this has allowed me to use it to focus on my other areas such as sourcing and garment tech and type up my analysis reports in my project. I am also progressing well with my merchandising which was of concern before but now I understand how to fill it in. So overall I well over half way through the project and feel very happy with how it is progressing and I am glad that now I only have to focus on justifying my project concept through my written work.

Journal:

Week 4: This week was very challenging as my main focus was on completing all of my merchandising and sourcing excel work. This is an area that I know struggle with so I felt that it was important that I got the most out the tutors help as possible. I managed to complete a lot more merchandising than I would have thought I could. But after discussions with my tutor I found that actually due to the nature of my project this meant that a lot of elements of merchandising would not be relevant, this included things such as space, and unit plans. The similar case was with my sourcing work; while I am happy to analysis and explain my strategy in detail I was concerned over things such as the critical path and the line detail and the fact because I am manufacturing my garments in UK means that there is no FOB etc this means I will have to explain the sourcing structure more so that it makes sense with my range.  I have also began to create basic templates and styles for my projects different areas, as well completing areas such as mission statement and brand/competitor analysis and begin to understand where my brand concept would fit in current market and where it can progress to in the future. 

Merchandising/Sourcing Excel Sheets:


Below are a few of merchandising and sourcing excel sheets so far, I still need to do tweaking to them to make them fit the brands financial requirements.

Swot: HAUS Fashion

This is a SWOT I created for HAUS, I thought that it was important to create one for the brand even though it just a concept It gives me a chance to analysis my overall idea and look at its strong points and its weak points.

Strengths: unique concept, being online only allows large reductions in costs due to not having to pay for space, incorporates many aspects of internet marketing i.e. applications, websites, videos and social media (facebook, twitter), a strong PR and marketing campaign. Higher margins on products due to lack of store running costs.

Application for smart phones, ‘Prosumers’ have creative control over product development and gives an indication as to the direction the fashion going in. 

Weakness: lack of store misses out on the possibly of passing trade and brand promotion through word of mouth. Higher margin increases prices on products as well as the products not being sold large quantities to make up production costs. Customers not being try on garments could result in a slightly higher level of returns.

Opportunities: creating a small pop up shop, or space within an urban outfitters store so sell the product and the brand. Look to sell the brand as a concession onto other retailers that are associated or have a similar customer demographic as Urban Outfitters i.e. ASOS, Net-a-porter for online.

Threats: The increase of online retailers such as ASOS and other independent clothing sellers such as eBay and small online boutique markets, As well as the growing online presence of major fashion brands such as Topshop. 

Comp Shop Explanation:

For analyzing my brand and how it want it to be presented and come across I have decided to do a competitive shop in detail on two online retailers as I feel that it is important to look at these as to give me an idea as to how I want to create my detailed customer profile which I will be working on this week.

I may go into further detail with regards to the comp shop and look at other brands later on in the project to give me more inspiration with regards to creating the website.

Competitive shop:

For my competitive shop for the Haus brand I have decided that considering that my business is an online business that I should look at other online fashion business websites that my customer demographic would shop at. I have also taken into consideration what other sort of product and places they would shop and socialise in the UK this gives me an idea of how the brand should be presented from a visual and marketing stand point:

Websites:

Urban Outfitters.co.uk:

Brand Brief: A quote from Wikipedia gives about the origin of the brand states: “Urban Outfitters originated as "The Free People's Store" in 1970 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, focusing on "funky" fashion and household products. Shortly thereafter the owner and now Chairman, Richard Hayne, changed the name to Urban Outfitters.

The Customer: There main customer is from 18 to 30 year old. A good example of the brand influence was when in 2009 urban outfitters decided to sell limited editions of the Polaroid ONE600 instant cameras as well as the Type 779 instant film in the form of a partnership with the Austrian entrepreneur Florian Kaps, who acquired the rights to manufacture 700 copies of the out of date product after he saw the growing market for vintage or retro products and lifestyle. 

Website Layout: The website itself is laid out in a very basic form with a lot of use of visuals and product advertisement but yet it does not bombard you with too much information. All areas are accessed through the use of the main navigation bars.  It allows you to browse via category, brand, style or trend. With a wide range of areas from women’s, men’s, home and gifts, brands, sale as well as looking for product directly through use of the traditional search engine mode.  One of the unique aspects of the website is the UO community page which links to a wide variety of brand social media sites, interviews, inspiration, music, places we love, wallpapers and more. This page really expresses how the brand wants to come across on not just a marketing side but also from a customer side. With their links to their flicker, twitter, facebook and youtube pages this page will be great inspiration for when I create my website and marketing strategy.

Product: Urban Outfitters has been described as selling hip, kitschy, and ironic merchandise, for example, T-shirts emblazoned with the words "Jive Turkey" or "Atari".

Their product style has evolved from vintage, bohemian, retro, hipster, ironically humorous, kitschy apparel and furniture and started to include luxury brands and a number of different designer collaborations.

Overall impression: With Haus being a subrand of Urban Outfitters (UO) this research on this website gives me a very clear idea of how I will create and layout the website for the brand and connect it to UO in a similar so that is appeals to the customer demographic. 

ASOS.com

Brand Brief:  Composed as a series of quotes from Wikipedia about “ASOS.com  is the UK’ s largest online-only fashion and beauty store and offers over 50,000 branded and own label product lines across womenswear, menswear, footwear, accessories, jewellery and beauty. Sales for the financial year ending 31 March 2011 were £339.7 million. ASOS has websites targeting the UK, USA, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Australia and also ships to over 190 other countries from its central distribution centre in the UK.”

Layout:

In terms of layout the website itself uses a plain format and relies upon product and promotion advertisements as the strongest aspects of the visual stand points. It also advertises it student discount area which is a unique feature of the brand and appeals to the customer market well and shows that it understands its target customer. All areas are accessed through the use of the main navigation bars.

One of the unique areas of the website is their ASOS blogs area, Wikipedia sums up the page well by saying: “ASOS Life, which launched 13 April 2009 in beta and officially launched to the public 6 May 2009, is a section of the ASOS.com site which allows users to create their own profiles and communicate through forums, blogs and groups. The pure-play retailer announced the launch of the ASOS Life community through Twitter and Facebook.

Existing customers have the same login for the e-commerce and community site, but a username has be chosen to gain access to ASOS Life.

The site features blogs from members of employees, and a help forum that allows customers to answer each other's questions. In addition, an 'ideas' section permits customers to submit suggestions for site improvements and rate each other’s suggestions.”

The Customer: The customer base for ASOS is very wide, considering first of all, that the brand is a global business means that there is a huge range of customers. There target age group is between 16-34 men and women. They have broad interest in different areas of fashion. With customers taking inspiration from both designer, high street and social trends as well creating their own looks or style. With regards to price they can be broken down into how much spend on products with some buying a large amount of high street products while some spend more on one luxury product such as shoes or a dress.

Product: Product browsing on the website has a mixture of browsing via category, brand, style and price as well as the traditional search engine mode. High street and branded and luxury product will be placed together into areas and included together, this makes the website and some of the more luxury brands more accessible to the customer who traditionally not look at these type of products and the same situation with the more higher end customer. For example by looking in the jewellery section it allows you to break down the product and isolate your search into areas such as price (through the use of price scroll bar), colour, brand, ASOS own brand and product type.

Overall impression: ASOS is the most versatile of the websites due to the fact that it sells both luxury and high street retail products and presents them in such a way they complement each other and increase the variety of customers on the website. The ASOS look pages are a perfect example of the sort of way I would want the Haus brand to be presented to on the website with regards to uploading your own images and the voting for the most popular look. The ASOS blog area as well is a very well presented in how it incorporates the brand and its style all together through its social media pages and inspiration and is a great reference place to use for my plan-o-gram of how my website is going to look. 

Bibliography: 

http://www.slideshare.net/Spyder0216/converse-consumer-profile-3164190

http://www.asos.com/?r=2

http://community.asos.com/

http://fashionfinder.asos.com/

http://fashionfinder.asos.com/fashion-trends

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASOS.com

http://www.urbanoutfitters.co.uk/

http://www.urbanoutfitters.co.uk/scat/community/

http://www.urbanoutfitters.co.uk/scat/community/&temp=community_archive#music

http://www.urbanoutfitters.co.uk/womens/icat/womens/

Journal:

Week 3: My main focus for this week was to complete the majority of my Photoshop work as in two weeks the Level 3’s return from their work placement which means that computers throughout the academy will be booked up far in advance.  I have also ensured that I have installed the trial version on my laptop which gives me the chance to work on documents at home and will be useful later on in the project with regards to formatting. In terms of what I completed this week I have finished all of my mood boards and range plans. I also started work on my customer profile and the basic layout of the pages as the brands customer is very important to the overall concept. I feel that I am progressing well and by getting ahead with Photoshop work has meant that I can focus on extra work such as my marketing and plan-o-grams (which will be in the form of a website). Please see the next post for pictures of my progress with work.

Research: Viral Videos:

These are some of the video's that inspired my focus on technology, the concept of how the future will evolve due the internet and the new market called the "Prosumer": 

Prometheus-Media Revolution:  

While this video is from 2008 it is amazing accurate with regards to how technology

is progressing, such as the breakdown of copyright and clash between the old media and the new.

Viral Inspiration: 

When coming up with the concept for my project, I was inspired by a number of different things. I have always been loved Andy Warhol and the idea of his factory. Recently I saw the film 'Factory Girl' staring Sienna Miller which was about the socialite Edie Sedgwick she was one of Warhol's superstars, the film told the story of her life in the factory her relationship with Andy and coping with the pitfalls of fame. After seeing this film I feel in love with the style and look of the 60's underground scene and Edie herself, her style and look inspired many girls at the time with Vogue heralding her as the new 'it' girl. This lead me to come up with the brand concept for HAUS, as well as growing market for technology and Warhol's art house style lead me to the development of the brand as it is today.

Factory Girl Trailer:

One of the many films that Andy Warhol did about people was Ciao Manhattan one the features about Edie Sedgwick the film showcases her in an art house style in which her comments on her life and her views on fashion, fame and art. 

Ciao Manhattan: Edie Sedgwick 

The new 'it' girl.

Range Plan Garments; Mondrian Inspiration:


For my range plans I based the garments and there organization through assigning a theme or a look to each of the girls; below are an example of some of my favorite looks that I have completed as well as a small section on where I got my inspiration from:

Bebe's Looks:
This is one of the dresses from Bebe's collection. When I was coming up with the ideas for one of the looks I was inspired by the 1960's and the art movements. Originally I looked at a colour scheme that was   similar to that of Clarence Cliff with the orange, green and yellow but then I remembered the similar style of dresses that YSL did famously back in the 90's. Inspired by this I looked in the name of the artist; Piet Mondrian. Vogue also did a small piece on Bauhaus design school which he was one of the inspirations for there unique design style with the use of colours and summitry. So I combined the 60's style dress with the prints to create the looks, throughout Bebe's collection the garments are inspired by Mondrian's art. I plan to use this collection as on of the centre piece looks for the range.

Scan from "Communicating with pattern (squares) Mark Hampshire and Kieth Stephenson 2007 " showing an example of Mondrian's art being used in design.

Below are some great links I used to research Mondrian's designs and style for the collection:

• http://www.pietmondrian.com/ 
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Plasticism
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_Mondrian
• https://www.google.co.uk/search (image search Piet Mondrian paintings)