Developing an E-commerce Venture for Apparel Brands

This article discusses the steps involved in developing an e-commerce platform for Apparel Brands, including developing a new brand, setting up the platform, and marketing it effectively. It also covers corrective actions to take when team performance issues arise.

ASSESSMENT TASK 1
Value proposition: What will you offer consumers? What products? What price? What
quality? How will the products benefit your customers?
Apparel Brands Pty Ltd will offer consumers a wide variety of clothing products in an e-
commerce platform. By using the organization’s website, consumers will be able to look up
their best choice of clothing and make an order. In addition, the e-commerce platform will
enable consumers to make specifications to the kind of clothing they want. The company will
strive to ensure that customers are satisfied through the provision of high quality products
which will also place the organization in a strong competitive edge. Customized and quality
products will benefit the consumers by satisfying their needs for clothing.
● Who is your target market: What are the characteristics of the people who will buy
your products? What do they need or desire?
The company’s e-commerce platform targets the literate people who are able to use online
shopping platforms to make their orders. In addition, young people offer the largest market
for the company since they have a high taste and preferences for clothing which has been
customized for their needs.
● How will you gather necessary information for setting up the venture?
To understand what will be required to set up the online shopping platform, I will inquire
renowned companies on how they were able to set up their online platforms. By looking at
their displayed online assortment of clothing, I will understand what I should expect in my
online store website.

 Who will you consult or network with to benefit from others’ expertise?
To benefit from other people’s expertise, I will have to network with website
developers who have a history of developing successful online website stores and
inquire for their services. In addition, I will consult top managers of other companies
who trade online in other goods apart from clothing and ask for their advice on how
to successfully set up my e-commerce platform.
● What steps will you need to take to set up the e-commerce venture? This will range
from website design, to ensuring a system for payment, to establishing an online
presence through web search engines, etc.
To set up the e-commerce venture, I will take various steps including choosing the
products that I will be selling, develop a business plan, set up the e-commerce website,
inventory and shipping plans, market my website and maintain the business.
● How will you determine the benefit to Apparel Brands: What is the benefit? Reduced
costs? Increased productivity?
Apparel Brands Pty Ltd will benefit from the e-commerce platform in various ways. For
example, the e-commerce platform will give customers the flexibility of shopping from
their beds hence reducing the need for walking to a physical store. In addition, the platform
will reduce the need to hold lots of physical stock as the company will make clothing as
per order. Currently, consumers have embraced online shopping thus it will be a benefit to
the company. Lastly, with the technological revolution, internet is widely used thus the
company will tap into a large pool of customers from around the world.

● How will you determine cost?
I will use cost-based pricing to determine the cost of goods in my e-commerce platform.
Cost-based pricing is the most simplistic method of determining prices for an online store.
The method recommends defining the cost to a particular product and then defining a
target margin which will be added to the cost thus leading to the price tag of the particular
product.
Performance Plan
Action 1 Action 2 Action 3
Description Marketing Setting up the e-
commerce platform
Develop a new
brand
Dependencies Marketing strategy
which is effective
Good presentation
and design to ensure
attractiveness
Products of high
quality
Timeline Three months One and a half
months
Four months
Responsibility Marketing team Information
technology team
Team for the
development of
products
Resources Human resource, Human resource, Human resource,

time, money time, money time, money
Review dates 28/12/2018 29/12/2018 20/12/2018
Measurement:
KPI’s; Outcomes
Sales
Market Share
Clicks
Sales
Sales
Reputation
ASSESSMENT TASK 2
Now that your team has completed individual performance plans, your new task is to carry
out all the actions contained in your performance plan to enable the team goal of
developing an e-commerce venture proposal for presentation to the board of Apparel
Brands.
You will need to meet to discuss achievement of individual goals and provide feedback on
others’ work. You will need to work through and resolve any issues with your team in
order to achieve your team goal/s.
Action 1: Developing a new brand
A company’s brand refers to the way people perceive the company wherever they interact
with the company and include both the impressions which the company can control and the ones
that cannot be controlled. To develop a new brand, I will consider what it should look like, how
it will make people feel and whether it will resonate with the targeted customers. I will first
research my target audience and my competitors, pick my focus and personality, choose the

business name, write the slogan, identify the look of my brand including colours and fonts,
design my logo and apply my branding across all business activities as the business evolves and
grows.
Action 2: Setting up the e-commerce platform
According to Trusov, Bucklin and Pauwels (2009 p.93) choosing the best e-commerce
platform is important to the success of the online business brand. Therefore, it is critical for a
business wishing to set up an e-commerce platform to employ the services of qualified web
developers for their project. Since Apparel Brands Pty Ltd already has a wide assortment of
clothing and footwear to sell, I will start by determining the pricing for the online store. An
online store is meant to provide goods to consumers easily and cheaply thus choosing the best
prices of the products will be important. I would then figure out my options for shipping the
products to the customer. In this regard, free delivery will be done for customers around
Australia CBD and a flat fee for customers in other regions since most customers avoid online
purchases due to high shipping fees.
I would then choose my e-commerce web hosting platform by employing the services of
competent and renowned website builders. I will provide the domain name and brand to the
website builders for them to build the e-commerce platform. After the e-commerce platform has
been developed, I will set up a merchant account which will enable customers to make payments
to the products they purchase. After the SSL certificate has been added to the website, the e-
commerce platform will now be ready to start selling.

Action 3: Marketing the e-commerce platform
Marketing an e-commerce platform assists an organization’s online presence to be felt
thus leading to driving more sales (Hsieh & Li, 2008 p.29). To market the developed e-
commerce platform, I will use word of mouth advertising, personalize my content marketing,
launch a loyalty program, motivate consumers to write reviews of the company’s products,
implement an SEO strategy, expand my presence is social media by hiring the services of social
media influencers, build a better mobile experience, optimize the checkout process, sell the
products across many channels, adopt tools for reducing the abandonment of carts and create an
automated email marketing campaign.
ASSESSMENT TASK 3
Your manager has asked to meet with you to discuss issues regarding achieving team goals.
1. Consult with your manager (your assessor) to discuss issues and corrective actions.
After discussing with the manager, we found out that the team has been underperforming
throughout the activities of developing a new brand, setting up the ecommerce platform and
marketing the e-commerce website. The underperformance has resulted in activities and goals
taking too long to be done and achieved. For example, developing the website has been very
slow. The manager advised that rebuilding a team which is underperforming is difficult to
managers hence it is important for the manager to track down the problem to an individual
member of the team who is performing below expectation or causing conflict within the team.
We unanimously agreed that tracking down individual team members causing underperformance

within the team will be the best corrective action. The underperforming employees would be
additionally trained or reassigned their duties.
2. Meet with your team to resolve team performance issues and to implement corrective
actions.
I met with my team where we discussed various issues that were leading them to
underperform. I found out that the lack of proper communication was causing problems within
the team since instructions and directives were not being properly communicated. Team
members were also not communicating as required which led to a slowdown of activities. The
inability of team members to settle conflicts by themselves was also a major challenge which
caused problems. The corrective actions suggested included creating an action plan which must
be vigorously implemented with the results being measured on a periodic basis. Indulging in
team building initiatives was also presented as a viable method of solving the problems within
the team such as corporate activities and events. The program will enable to come out and get
along with each other and assist them to improve their communication and respect each other.
3. Write a report to your manager describing the corrective action you have taken to
resolve the performance issues. Explain the rationale behind your actions.
After conducting investigations and consultations, I found out that the team was
underperforming which led to slowness in realization of the goals and objectives of the team.
Therefore, I met with the team to ascertain the cause of the problem since we needed the e-
commerce project implementation to be realised within the shortest time duration. After listening
to the issues brought up and discussed in the meeting, I found out that there were communication
problems within the team. In addition, the team was also unable to settle conflicts by themselves.

The corrective action I took was the implementation of an action plan which should be
implemented rigorously to ensure that the team learn how to settle minor disputes by themselves.
I let the team choose a member who would act as a minor leader so that they can forward their
issues to him and solve conflicts at the ground level. In addition, I also organized for team
building initiatives which would assist the team members in getting to know each other better
and assist them to improve their communication and respect each other. Team building initiatives
like corporate events and activities would assist the team to appreciate the diverse culture in the
workplace and enable them to learn and embrace the effectiveness of working as a team for the
achievement of given goals and objectives. When teams understand the importance of team
work, they will be able to improve their performance thus effectively realizing the goals and
objectives of the team.

References
Hsieh, A.T. and Li, C.K., 2008. The moderating effect of brand image on public relations
perception and customer loyalty. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 26(1), pp.26-42.
Trusov, M., Bucklin, R.E. and Pauwels, K., 2009. Effects of word-of-mouth versus traditional
marketing: findings from an internet social networking site. Journal of marketing, 73(5), pp.90-
102.