Business reporte

Business Report

Phua Jing Sern 0314572

Liew Yong Sheng 0315108

Daniesh Ashik 0314572

Peng Yap Seng 0315215

Executive SummaryThis business report includes the strategies used to achieve our goal of collecting RM2000 from not only Taylor’s University but also from, if possible, other areas. The target of RM2000 was divided into two targets. RM 1000 will be our goal of achievement through actual profit while the RM1000 will be another goal to achieve through sponsorship such as company, relatives or stores. This report includes our objective which is to donate to Second Chance PAWS Mission which is an organization that help abandoned animals such as dogs and cats. In this report, target market will also be included which, in our case, target students or couples. The report include discussing about the pricing, product packaging, management of product, our sponsorship, distribution and finally we will evaluate the results.

ObjectiveSecond Chance PAWS Mission is an organization which saves and provides shelter to homeless domestic animals such as dogs and cats. They hoped to educate pet owners to neuter the animals and prevent them from reproducing more homeless puppies or kittens to suffer the harsh world without the basic needs provided to them.

The reason why we chose this organization was because we believed that people focused more on human who suffered problem themselves such as orphans, victims to cancer, disabled and so on while those of different species are often ignored or isolated simply because they are not “one of us”. We, as the main dominant species of the Earth, should hold the responsibility to take care of not only ourselves but also other species as well and it should begin with domestic animals.

The least we could do is to donate money to the organization but it certainly benefit them to also donate assets to the organization as well. Therefore, we hope to not only donate cash but as well with assets worth of at least two thousand ringgit to Second Chance as a form of charity service and purpose. During the Charity Drive itself, we have a target of at least one thousand ringgit earned by selling products to the customers. We promised that every single cents and assets earned through charity drive or sponsorship will be donated to the poor animals through Second Chance.

Target MarketThrough experiments by selling our products partially to customers before the drive begin we find that college students are more prone to buy products by being aware of the fact that we are earning the money for Second Chance and also the fact that this is a business project.

Most college students are animal lovers. When they realize the purpose of the donation they easily sympathized the animals suffering behind the shelter. The least they could do for these suffering animals is to donate money to the organization that is taking care of the shelter.

Other than that, they also understand the hardship student will go through during assignments. For this reason, they tend to support students such as us so that we will help them in return when they are having a project which requires support from strangers. In other places, however, people do not feel the hardship and thus do not show any form of sympathy or cooperation. They are also uncomfortable when talking to us because they may suspect us as cheater rather than a student due to high crime rate in Selangor.

However, the students in Taylor’s University do not have high spending power. Most student haven’t started working yet which therefore limits their amount of spending. Due to this fact alone, we are forced to limit our pricing.

During the charity drive, we attempted to win the hearts of couples by selling cookies in Taylor’s University because we believed that Taylor’s University are filled with couples who would be interested in sharing cookies. Our belief was right but no couples are interested in cookies at all. With our target market failing for days, we decided to change strategy. From selling cookies, we switched to providing students service, which is pie throwing game. This game have a wider target market than selling cookies or Popsicle because student in Taylor’s University are normally playful and suffering stress from assignments by lecturers. Due to this, we intend to allow them to relieve stress by throwing pie at one of our teammates.

Competition AnalysisBefore the change of plans, selling cookies or any food and beverages is a real challenges because at least seventy percent are selling the same thing; few centimetres away you can see a bread store then another few you can see another group selling soya drinks, before that you may come across another chocolate store. Due to this amount of competition, selling cookies are extremely futile. The students would not be interested in our product eventually.

Their main strength is, what I believe, are in how satisfied the customer is after purchasing the product. One example would be the bread stall by Wen Jian Woo’s group. The bread provided to the students were satisfying and filling. Students and staff member enjoys the satisfaction the bread brings them. Cookies, however, do not provide such satisfaction. It only brings joy to the tongue and that is it. It does not makes customer feel full and there is a higher chance of people disliking cookies than bread.

It’s only function, to bring customer a tasty snack, was defeated by Ameera Perun’s group who was selling chocolate. Since both of them are considered as snack, the closest competition would be both chocolate and cookies. However, the selling point in Ameera’s group was the variety of chocolate they have instead of only two types of cookies. Customers also get to design their own chocolate if they want to thus customer would be more interested in visiting their stalls instead of ours.

Due to the terrible defeat we faced, we decided to change strategy. We decided to make a service stall rather than only product-selling stall. The strategy was switched to a pie-throwing game where students get to relieve their stress by throwing pies at our teammates who are willing to sacrifice himself for the job. The best part of the strategy was that there are absolutely no competition from other groups. Not a single person was doing a stress relieve service such as ours.

Ever since the change in strategy, the profit increases rapidly due to the high charging fees.

Product and PackagingAfter thorough discussion and consultation from Mr Joe, we decided to sell popsicles because it is very easy for us to produce. We made 100 popsicles (unfrozen) in four flavours within 2 hours. Popsicles are also cheap in making it thus increases our profit by a large amount. The method of packaging is as follows; first, we prepare the drink then we create an opening of the plastic package for the funnel to connect. Once done, we insert the flavours into the plastic package through the funnel. We made sure there’s a space worth 2 inches so that we can seal the plastic package up. Finally, the plastic package are placed in the fridge for approximately two days.

The cookies, however, was prepared by a friend of my teammate. 5 cookies were packaged into a plastic bag with a colourful ribbon tied on top of it. A small piece of paper were tied along with the ribbon with valentine’s wish written on it. The cookies were designed to attract couples in Taylor’s University. With a simplistic yet colourful design, we believe it would attract couples.

The pie-throwing service were simply prepared using a few cardboard we borrowed from Sunway Pyramid and an unwanted chair from Taylor’s University. We used two large cardboards and cover them with black eco-plastic bag to make them easier to clean up after one day. The first cardboard was placed behind my teammate to ensure pie do not splatter to the amphitheatre or anywhere further away from the stall. The second cardboard were placed directly below my teammate (on the floor) to avoid pie from dripping to the floor or splatting onto the floor. We prepared different sizes of projectile to throw ranging from small, medium, large. Small would be a simple paper cup used during parties, medium would be paper bowl while large would be paper plates. The wheat cream will be sprayed on these projectile by other member of the group so that customer will not overuse our product. The greatest benefit for this service is that it avoids competition from other group by at least 70 to 80% which is a great push in our marketing sales. Student would enjoy the game because it’s extraordinary from other groups and it’s a stress relieve game. Not just student, some people have problem dealing with stress due to our high expectation from our modern society. This game was designed exactly to relieve those stress which they will find the effect of their actions hilarious.

PricingAs mentioned before, popsicles are extremely cheap and easy to make. A popsicle out there worth about fifty cents to one ringgit. The amount of money we spent on popsicles are only thirty cents by the calculation of RM26.70/100popsicles, where RM26.70 includes the drinks we poured into the plastic bag. We decided to sell these popsicle at a price of RM2 per popsicle. The profit was seven times higher than the original amount which we believe is a great profit when it’s out of sold. However, customers are not interested in buying them because of how unattractive and expensive it is. Which we decided to directly tell them that a donation of two ringgit and above will give them a free Popsicle. Since then, student are willing to pay at least two ringgit or even ten for just one Popsicle. During Charity Drive, we abandon the strategy of selling Popsicle or even ask for donation as income of profit is too slow.

The cookies ranges from RM 2 per bag. We bought at least 112 bags of cookies to sell during the charity drive and price them RM 5 per bag. However, due to the great competition during the charity drive, we were completely defeated when we tried hard to profit at least RM 250 per day. In the end, we walked around with the cookies in a box and tried to sell them off. By the end of the day, we sold only RM70 which means we failed to reach our target. One of the main problem with cookies is that not only it is unattractive with its simplistic designs but also due to its lack of satisfaction as mentioned above. The combination in weakness causes cookies to sell terribly during the event.

The change of strategy, pie-throwing game, increases the profit quickly due to its great advantage during the event. One of the best advantage of this service is that it’s cheap since the board and seats were entirely from a trash bin. However, due to the great sacrifice in pride and the amount of money used to prepare the wheat cream, eco-plastic bag, protective glasses which costs about RM166.50, we decided to increase the price to RM5 for Large, RM 3 for Medium and RM 2 for Small. Thanks to its advantages, we successfully reach our target of RM1000 in one day.

PromotionOur strategy in promoting our business are simple and direct. We intend to “explain everything in just two or four pictures and get the money without the need of orally explain it.” Which we therefore agree to let one of our teammate to design four single-sided brochure which explains our purpose in starting the business and also tease those who do not donate. During the design, we also intentionally make the brochure very direct to the point of including phrases such as “give us your money” as a comedic similarity to that of robbers (of good intention). We find that the brochure are extremely helpful in explaining our purpose of this charity drive. Some of us do not have a very fluent public speaking skills and the brochure were there to back-up our explanation when customers were confused with what we were trying to say. Sometimes, the brochure is also there to help us find words we simply forgot at that particular moment, acting as an “awkward destroyer”.

The second tools of promoting our business would be our oral skills itself. Due to the fact that we were all loud people. We would normally yell to attract business. However, we noticed that the effect of such action does exactly the opposite effect. Rather than attracting customers, customers would think that we were desperate and tend to believe our product would be terrible to buy. One of our teammates would take two bags of cookies and dance in front of couples to get their attraction. He successfully grabbed their attention. However, he failed to make customers buy the product and instead repels customer from buying our product because they were intimidated by his courageous act. Despite how it doesn’t attract customer, he would still work hard enough to dance and attract customer because he believe it will become an image of our store.

SponsorsAt first, we attempted to send e-mail and call them to obtain sponsors. However, we normally get ignored or they would request for an official letterhead and then reject us. We attempt to obtain sponsorship from Nestle only to be rejected because of our late submission of our letterhead while the rest such as Red Bull simply ignored us.

Frankly, the best sponsors are our parents. Both of our teammates mother did not pay cash but instead sponsor products for us to sell. Both of our mothers gave us 7 crispy seaweed, 2 kueh ta pek and 10 pieces of butter cake to sell during the event. The sponsorship, however, do not gain us much profit but they at least some were successfully sold to customers.

We later discussed and decided to target pet stores to gain their sponsorship because they understand the problem abandoned pets. We also decided that instead of sending them e-mails or call them which have a high chance of not being able to contact the manager directly. We decided to drive to the pet store itself. We went from stores to stores, showing both our sponsorship letters and our student IDs at the same time introducing the event. In the end, we successfully gain sponsorship from Pets4U. They gave us RM1576.70 worth of assets (collars, poop scooper, hair brush, cat food cans) directly to Second Chance PAWS Mission.

DistributionWe started by making popsicles in one of our teammates house in Puchong. It took about 5 minutes to reach Taylor’s University provided that there is no jam. However, since one of our teammate live in Taylor’s U-Residence and happen to have a fridge. We decided to prepare popsicle in Puchong or Subang and transfer the Popsicle to Taylor’s and kept it in the fridge until the day comes. We kept it in an ice box when we were selling the Popsicles so that it will be kept frozen until the day is over. However, due to the fact that Popsicles are not selling well, we decided to stop making, transferring and selling popsicle.

Cookies were made and were transported from Damansara Utama to Taylor’s University. It will take about 15 to 20 minute if there is no traffic jam. Due to the fact that it’s very inconvenient to transport a load of cookies from Damansara Utama to Taylor’s constantly, we decided to store the cookies in U-Residence, Puchong or in Subang (because the room of my teammates are too full to add another box in his room). We planned that we will order another set of amount of cookies only when the cookies are near out of sold. Sadly, that is not the case, which we continue with the new strategy.

The new strategy, however, takes only a few minutes to reach the destination because we place our settings in Architecture Studio 2 for convenience (Also because none of us are able to bring it back home). The smaller things such as wheat cream and others are placed in Subang and Puchong.

Previously, we failed to obtain our target of sales which is approximately RM250 per day. This would mean we would need to sell at least 125 Popsicles or 50 cookies or 63 popsicles and 25 cookies equally in one day. However, we actually sold only 20 Popsicles and 20 cookies average in one day. This was far from our target and expectation and also an utter failure. The sudden change of strategy however, would require at least 50 splat to the face to reach RM250. Unbelievably, we successfully reached an average of RM350 a day. Thus we can assume that aside from donations and all, my teammates were hit by wheat cream for fifty times per day. It was a quick one.

Green MeasureIn our previous strategy, which is selling cookies and Popsicles, it isn’t entirely environmentally-friendly because it was wrapped in plastic and all. However, it does not causes any environmental problem if they are managed nicely. We ensure that the plastic tip for the Popsicle are thrown to the dustbin and constantly wiped the table and floor should there be any unexpected leakage. To reduce carbon footprint, we try to place our product in U-residence so that there is no need to drive all the way to Puchong, Subang or Damansara Utama. Even if there is a need to place our product in either one of those three, we try to carpool and transport all of them instead of taking them one by one. Due to the fact that cookies and Popsicle are mobile snacks, we could not control the waste management one by one but we try to minimize the waste by decreasing its size so that it’s easier to manage. The best part for our previous strategy is that we do not need to use electricity, water and so on to run the sales. As mention before, it saves not only the direct costs but also the electricity, water bill and so on.

The new strategy however, are made in an environmentally-conscious manner. We used unwanted cardboard that was thrown into the roro bin in Sunway Pyramid and unwanted chairs thrown simply at the fifth floor of Block E. We also made sure the wrapping of cardboard is environmental friendly and made sure that the cardboard is reusable after one day of business. The carbon footprint was greatly reduced when our settings were simply placed in Architecture Studio 2 which is extremely convenient to us during the day of sales. Like our previous strategy, this strategy requires zero use of electricity but unlike the previous we used a little bit of water to make the splash effect greater.

Organization Chart

dV

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PROJECT MANAGER[PHUA JING SERN]

FINANCE[WILSON LIEW]

SPONSORSHIP[EUGENE PENG]

ACCOUNTANT [WILSON LIEW]

MARKETING[PHUA JING SERN]

QUALITY CONTROL[DANIESH ASHIK]

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SALES EXECUTIVE[DANIESH ASHIK]

Human Resource PlanningPhua Jing Sern was chosen as the leader at the beginning of the assignment. Since then, he have been appointed as the project manager. Due to his high knowledge in digital literacy and marketing techniques learned from his mother. He is also appointed to be responsible in managing the marketing or advertisement of our group. Daniesh is not only daring enough to let people throw pie at him, he is also fluent in English and help explaining the reason of charity drive. He is also the one who came up with the idea of pie-throwing game which henceforth appointed as the manager in quality control because he vision most part of the game than us. In the meantime, Wilson Liew was known for his calculative ability. He volunteered to calculate the finance of the group as well as be the accountant of the group. Eugene Peng, however, is responsible in sponsorship because he have a lot of contacts in his phonebook.

Meeting will be held once per week to further discuss from ideas to the end product. During the event, we held meeting at least 2 times a day. The meeting are normally organized by Phua Jing Sern and Wilson Liew with Wilson Liew the one calling both Eugene Peng and Daniesh Ashik.

Evaluation of Results

IncomeSales Revenue RM 1000

Sponsorship RM 1576.70

Personal Budget RM 500

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Total RM2576.70

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Less: Operating ExpensesCost of goods RM369.70

Advertising Expenses RM 78

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Total RM 448.60

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RM500-RM448.6=RM51.4

RM51.40/4= RM12.85

Conclusion

By the end of the day, we successfully earned exactly RM 1000 (the reason why we stopped exactly at RM 1000 was because of the fact that we were busy with other assignments and hoped to close the store as soon as possible) and an assets of sponsorship worth of RM1576.70. We donated a total amount of RM2576.7 worth of cash in both cash itself and assets. The loss were successfully paid using our personal budget we prepared beforehand. All of us receive back RM12.90 after the event. The manager of Second Chance were happy to see the result and gratefully thanked us over and over again for our hard work.

The real problem with our sales is that we believed in our product for too long despite seeing its weakness for two days. By the third day, we decided to change our plans to a less competitive mode. Should there be another even as this. We will first observe what everyone was selling and would provide a service or product that are less competitive.

Appendix

Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WiL6oqdvYk&feature=youtu.be