Fashion Buzz

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Table of ContentsExecutive Summary. 2Company Description. 3Market Analysis.. 4-5Organization & Management 6Products & Services. 7Marketing & Sales. 8-9Funding Request. 10Appendix I 11-12

Executive SummaryTricia Simmerman and Miranda Patton co-founded Fashion Buzz. Tricia Simmerman has experience with external communications and will aid the company when working closely with the marketing consultant. Miranda Patton has experience in news writing and will work closely with the writers and editors to ensure quality content is being produced. The price comparison feature was an add on to our fashion news site to help draw in our younger demographic. Tricia will work with potential companies to enter into an agreement that would allow us to use their products in this feature and advertise for their store on our website and refer our consumers to their online stores. The need we are addressing in this market is the ability to find affordable clothing quickly and efficiently. Instead of browsing through several clothing websites or retail stores, we congregate all of the information for our users to compare prices all in one web browsing window. Women control two thirds of the buying power in households within the United States. We plan to target the demographic of women aged 18-30 years old with an emphasis on college students with our special discounted subscription rate.

Company DescriptionNature of Business:

Fashion Buzz is an online magazine that offers fashion news in a new entertaining way. Fashion Buzz will feature different categories of news including: Weird trends, Ethnic Trends, Latest Fashion, and Throwback Fashion. The main goal of Fashion Buzz is to provide fashion news and entertainment.

Products and Services:

Fashion Buzz will also include a unique feature. Similar to comparing ticket prices for travel (i.e. Kayak), we will compare clothing prices so our users can find the best deal for what they are looking for. This will be achieved through partnerships with clothing companies. We will also produce a smartphone app for consumers on the go.

Market Place Needs for Products or Services:

We offer easy online accessibility, how to find the lowest prices and discounted sales from different apparel companies, the newest fashion and celebrity news, free apps and update availability.

Target Audience:

We are catering our content to women ages 18-30. To do this we will focus our marketing on the social media platforms Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram. With our price comparison feature, we are specifically targeting college-aged women.

Competitive Advantages:

Our advantage over our competitors are customer benefits to find the lowest and discounted fashion, new novelty for pop culture enthusiasts, a wide variety of fashion outlets, and interactive fashion community at your fingertips via computer or smartphone.

Market AnalysisAccording to adweek.com estimates from 2012-2017 for the online magazine market will decrease. Many retailers have entered the online territory to take back sales only exclusively online retailers have claimed. Here are some statistics for online magazine subscriptions revenue projected for the year of 2017: 2012 stands at $25 billion 2017 stands at $23 billion Expected to hit $3.8 billion -2017 from 2012s 2.4 billion on digital circulation Consumer spending will increase from $275 million to $1.4 billion

Target Market:

The target market for Fashion Buzz consists of apparel stores within the United States, particularly those who focus on womens fashion. This is the market that will make up the bulk of our advertising revenue. We will also enter into agreements with apparel stores to include their products within our price comparison feature. Also, when writing news updates on the latest fashion trends we will refer our readers to their websites.

Distinguishing Characteristics of Market/Audience:

According to comparemyspread.com, women aged 18-30 spend two-thirds of their disposable income to the pursuit of fashion. Also, according to catalyst.org, 74.9% of women were the making the primary purchasing decisions in their household. In the next decade, women will control two-thirds of consumer wealth in the United States. Womens buying power is increasing, therefore we can market our subscription feature to the many women that are interested in fashion and want to stay up to date with the latest fashion trends. College aged women have less disposable income. We will market to this group by showcasing affordable clothing brands and websites. While they have less buying power as college students, as they graduate and become employed we will continuously grow our subscription amounts and focus on brand awareness with the younger market. Currently, there are 98, 767 clothing stores in the United States according to the Business Census Bureau. The average revenue apparel stores make is around $1.5 million per store.

Size of Primary Target Market:

All statistics were obtained from statista.com: The value of the United States apparel market is $225 billion The sales from womens apparel markets amounts to $110,826 million There are about 100,000 apparel stores in the United States.

Market Share:The companies making up most of the online magazine market include: Amazon Magazine Magazines.com Vogue Magazine DiscountMags.com Subscription Addiction

Based on information obtained from adweek.com, the average subscription price for online magazines is $10. Since our main source of revenue will be with advertising and no cost for print production, we can fluctuate our subscription price to decrease as our company grows and gains more revenue.

Competitive Analysis:

There is high competition for news fashion information. Most trends on fashion news sites have more than fashion news information for a reader to access on their site. On elle.com their site offers horoscopes, health & wellness, and life & love tabs available to discover. Another fashion news site that offers more information other than fashion news is glamour.com, they have a similar set up of information compared to cosmopolitian.com that offers a wide spectrum of categories for consumers to interpret.Even though there will be competitors of fashion information, our niche is focused on several different apparel sales and discounts for consumers to reach which is the uniqueness of our site that is not offered by other competitors; while also competing with an alternative, trendy wide range of fashion news for viewers to choose from.

Regulatory Restrictions:

Government restrictions for our online business will comply with E-Commerce activities. Federal Trade Commission enforces companies privacy policies about how we will collect, use and secure consumers personal information. With our online site, it will protect the consumers: Privacy Security Copyright Taxation

While retaining personal information to process purchases customers and also employees will be protected from exposure of their: Names Addresses Social Security Numbers Credit Card Numbers or other Account Information

Organization & Management

Management & Organization

Fashion Buzz will be co-owned by Tricia Simmerman and Miranda Patton. The two will manage the business on a daily basis. Tricia possesses strong interpersonal communication skills, media innovation skills, and social trend knowledge. Miranda possesses marketing and public relation skills, knowledge of website success including search engine optimization and user experience, and strong written communication skills.

Board of Directors

Tricia Simmerman, Co-Owner Responsible for external communications with potential company partners and working with the marketing consultant t.simmerman@fashionbuzz.comMiranda Patton, Co-Owner Responsible for internal communications with the editors and writers and working with the marketing consultant m.patton@fashionbuzz.comEMW

*Resumes can be found in Appendix I

Employees

Executive Accountant Responsible for all finances flowing in and out of the companyMarketing Consultant Responsible for organizing marketing campaigns and increasing brand awareness for our company Purchasing advertising according to budget annuallyWeb Designer Creating and maintaining website maintenance Tracking SEO and conducting UX tests continuously Updating website as needed Creating price comparison feature for our websiteEditors Responsible for ensuring all content published to our website is free of grammatical and spelling errors Promotes content through the company's social media networksWriters Responsible for creating content for our website Also responsible for promoting their content through their personal social media networks

Products & ServicesDescription of Products/Services:

Fashion Buzzs main product is subscriptions. In order to access the full content of the website the purchase of a subscription is required. Subscriptions will start on a ten dollar per month basis and fluctuate as needed according to the revenue collected from this service. Our secondary product will be marketed towards clothing businesses. This company operates a dual product market. Through our feature that allows users to search and compare different clothing products, we will establish agreements with these companies.

Details of Products:

Subscriptions will be renewed every month. The user has the option to opt out of a certain month. This halts access to special edition news content Fashion Buzz provides as well as the discounts we will provide through our clothing comparison feature. The subscription feature will also include a student discount; three free subscription months. This is an effort to draw more out of the demographic of 18-22 year old women which comprises a third of our market. A current, valid, student ID is required to access this feature.Through our agreement with the clothing companies, we will establish exclusive discounts on clothing found through this feature.

Intellectual Property:

Fashion Buzz respects intellectual property rights of others and ourselves. Because of that respect we protect ourselves with licenses and copyrights of our work. When users click on our own website and see text, images, software, trademarks, service marks or other material obtained from our site, they will not be allowed to copy or transmit unless for personal, non-commercial use on a personal computer. The use and access of our website does not designate any license or right to use any marks obtained from our site.We will seek copyrights and patents for our price comparison feature so that other companies cannot enter the market and use this feature that makes us unique from the rest of online fashion news magazines.

Research and Development Activities:

Some Research and Development we have planned for Fashion Buzz consists of following the latest, most popular trending fashion stores for our website to sponsor. This helps anticipate high customer attendance for our site. Also continuously searching for apparel outlet discount deals to publish on our site for customer use. Our main focus for research and development will be our price comparison feature. We will work closely with the web designer to create a feature that compares clothing prices of similar items from different stores. We will conduct user experience tests continuously throughout this process to ensure that this feature is easy to use and navigate.

Marketing & SalesOverall Marketing Strategy: Market Penetration Strategy Through our agreements with the clothing companies, they are required to mention our website on their own site and provide a link for users to find Fashion Buzz. We will also advertise on their website. We will only advertise discounted clothing available from the host advertising sites inventory and not mention any other companies we are in agreement with. Fashion Buzz will advertise our subscription feature through other news sources a high count of readers from our target demographic. Our main focus for the market is top fashion retailers such as Forever 21 or American Eagle. These retailers are especially popular with the college demographic, where we would like to focus the bulk of our marketing efforts. Growth Strategy Market Penetration Fashion Buzzs market penetration strategy will be through our dual market model. Our affiliate companies that we enter into agreements with will help spread the word about Fashion Buzz. Our subscription model will ask users to recommend our site to their friends -primarily through Facebook and Twitter-. Market Development Our market development strategy will be accomplished through our student discount option. *See Products & Services section for description We will also open corporate offices based in Kansas City Missouri for the handling of website development, content development, financial organization, and marketing strategies. Job openings will increase as the company progresses. Channels of distribution strategy We will distribute our marketing efforts through social media platforms. Primarily focusing on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Facebook will be used for announcement about special deals and exclusive news content Twitter will be used to quickly inform followers of content updates to the website. It will also be used for more interaction with our customers Pinterest will be used to draw in our target demographic of women ages 18-30. Communication Strategy Communication with our customers will primarily begin with social media. We will also have a contact email setup for customers to send in their inquiries. Our goal is to build positive customer relations emphasizing one on one communication.

Overall Sales Strategy: Sales force strategy Our sales force will be independently represented We will hire sales representatives through sales outsourcing This way it is cheaper for us instead of hiring and training a whole team of sales people to recruit fashion retailers. To begin with were starting small. With an estimation of five salespeople representing Fashion Buzz. Will recruit sales people by their intelligence in fashion sales, with a positive attitude and people smarts. Since its a new business the sales representatives will be trained to go for the easier sales rather than the complicated ones. Were doing this with the hopes of creating relationships through the sales we make toward more benefits. Payouts to the sales representatives will be on commission

Sales activities List of Prospects: PacSun, Forever 21, American Eagle, TJ Max, Target, Francescas, Nordstrom Rack, Marshalls, Macy's, GAP, Urban Outfitters, H&M Highest Potential to Buy First Number of Calls- Target 60 dial outs with 3 hours of talk per day.*- TJ Max- Forever 21- American Eagle- PacSun- Francescas- Marshalls- H&M- Nordstrom Rack- Urban Outfitters- GAP

*Dial outs are calls to companies

Funding Request Our funding request is broken down for the first month of operation. We took into account salaries of our employees, insurance, building costs, equipment costs, and office supplies. Here is the list of the costs broken down: Miranda and Tricias Salary: $4,800 Accountants salary: $2,400 Marketing Consultants salary: $3,200 Web Designers Salary: $5,000 Writers salary (10 writers, part time): $3,100 Salaries in total: $13,500 Outsourcing Sales Work on commission Building Rent: $1,225 This includes initial down payment and first months rent Computers: $16,800 For 12 MacBook computers at $1,200 each. Office supplies: $900 12 desks and 12 chairs Business license: $0 (In Kansas City) $36,545 total cost for the first month of operation Estimated cost for the first year: $438,540

Future Funding over the next five years: Funding will be obtained for the first five years through business loans. Debt retirement will be achieved through advertising and subscription revenues and will begin to be paid off at the end of the five-year loan period. We will expand the amount of employees we hire as the revenue increases. We plan to take on more writers, web assistants, and social media consultants. Our acquisitions will be from our agreements with the apparel companies to advertise their clothing within out price comparison feature. These agreements will be our largest asset in the company.Our planned expenses that are expected to yield benefits in the future for Fashion Buzz will updating our technology equipment every few years (computers, office machines, etc.) as the budget allows as well as increasing our office space facilities.

Appendix I: Resumes