Carnegie Mellon University: Inzuki Designs e-Service Strategy Project

This project examines the e-service strategy for Inzuki Designs, a Rwandan-based enterprise specializing in jewelry, accessories, and interior design. The project begins with an executive summary, followed by an introduction that provides company background, problem statement, and key findings from external and internal research. The research includes a customer survey and interviews with management to identify challenges such as expanding market reach, growing the interior decor business, tracking artisan performance, and addressing the diaspora market. The project then delves into strategy development, presenting alternative e-service strategies benchmarked against the pret-a-porter jewelry industry, including social media marketing, online stores, and CAD software. A SWOT analysis is included. Key findings from the customer survey reveal the importance of social media presence, personal recommendations, unique products, and customer care. The project proposes strategies to enhance customer experience, improve online presence, and provide after-sale services. The final sections include an implementation plan, a summary of the strategy, and a list of references.

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e-Service strategy for Inzuki Designs
Thesis · November 2016
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e-SERVICE STRATEGY
FOR
Prepared by:
Batanda Kayondo
Jeanne Yamfashije
Vincent Barigira
November, 17 2016

1
Executive summary
Inzuki Designs is a Rwandan-based enterprise, located in the heart of Kigali city that specializes
in the design, manufacturing, and sales of jewelry, accessories and interior design (decor).
Founded in 2010 by self-taught designer Ms. Teta Isibo, Inzuki Designs is part of the enterprises
leading the growing Rwandan cultural renaissance through creating products that fuse traditional
craft and contemporary style. Inzuki’s vision is to grow into a global brand serving a global
market.
So as to achieve Inzuki Designs’ vision, we have carried out a study on how to enhance
processes and operations at Inzuki through the use of e-services. We conducted interviews with
management, carried out a customer survey and analyzed insights from Inzuki’s social media
pages so as to uncover key findings on Inzuki Designs’ operations. Some of the key findings
include a need for an online shopping portal, providing customers with after-sale services among
others. Using current practices in the pret-a-porter jewelry industry as a benchmark, we were
able to suggest a number of strategy alternatives that leverage e-services. These strategies are
aimed at offering Inzuki Designs the ability to scale its operations beyond the boundaries of
Rwanda. They too offer a competitive advantage over its competition.
We offer various key performance indicators (KPIs) as metrics of evaluating the performance of
the proposed strategy.

2
Table of contents
Title Page number
1. Introduction 4
1.1 Company Background 4
1.2 Problem statement 4
1.3 External research and key findings 5
1.4 Internal research 6
2. Strategy development 12
2.1 Strategy Alternatives 12
2.2 Evaluation and prioritization of alternatives 13
3. Summary of strategy and rationale 16
4. Implementation plan 20
5. Summary 23
6. References 24
Appendix 25
Lists of figures
Caption Page number
Figure 1: What customers would like Inzuki
Designs to maintain
8
Figure 2: Means how customers got to know about
Inzuki Designs
9
Figure 3: What inspires customers to buy from
Inzuki Designs
10
Figure 4: Customer propositions to Inzuki
Designs
11
Figure 5: Strategy implementation plan 20
Figure 6: Timing of plan (high level) 21
Figure 7: Sample question to use for NPS
survey
23

3
Lists of tables
Caption Page number
Table 1: SWOT analysis 7
Table 2: Prioritization of strategy alternatives 13
Table 3: Resource requirements 17

4
1. Introduction
1.1 Company background
Inzuki Designs is a Rwandan-based enterprise, located in the heart of Kigali city, that specializes
in the design, manufacturing, and sales of jewelry, accessories and interior design (decor). Inzuki
products are handmade by local artisans from locally-sourced raw materials, with a blend of
contemporary design and traditional African craft. Inzuki’s vision is to expand its "Rwandan-
made" brand onto the global landscape, with an online store in its later stages of development.
Inzuki Designs was created in 2010 by Ms. Teta Isibo, a self-taught designer out of passion for
design, style and everything Rwandan [1]. Inzuki works with women’s cooperatives around
Rwanda to create products that fuse traditional craft and contemporary style . It is proudly part of
the growing Rwandan cultural renaissance that is seeing growing innovation and an increasing
number of young entrepreneurs and trendsetters propelling the country to the next level [2].
Inzuki Designs’ products are aimed at providing a specific touch of fashion with its bright colors
and customizable items. These items are unique, custom-made and beautifully crafted for the
global market. Inzuki’s customers include Rwandan professionals, expatriates, tourists, Africans
in the diaspora among others. They share a love for handmade, bold and unique products [3].
Currently, Inzuki serves its customer base through the store located in Kigali and third party
outlets situated in Kampala and Nairobi. It aims to develop into a global brand, with its market
reach extending beyond the African people and African continent.
1.2 Problem statement
The following are some of the challenges that Inzuki Designs is experiencing as of today:-
● Expand on its market reach beyond Rwanda and the African continent.
Inzuki is now targeting international markets including the rest of Africa, Europe, Asia and
North America through distributors and an online store [4]. As of today, clients can only
reach Inzuki Designs at their physical store in Kigali city.
● Growing the interior decor business

5
There is a rising demand for more housing in Kigali city, given a growing middle class
population, as the city is experiencing a growth rate of 15% with estimates pointing to 35 %
by 2017, according to Rwanda Development Board (RDB) [5]. This in turn creates business
opportunities for interior design. Inzuki seeks to establish itself as a key player in terms of
interior decor.
● Tracking performance of artisans
Keeping track of the day-to-day operations of the local artisans has deemed to become a
challenge given these artisans are located away from the Inzuki headquarters. This, in turn is
affecting the delivery time of products to customers, which in turn hurts the Inzuki brand.
● Dealing with the market in the diaspora
In order to reach its market beyond Rwanda, Inzuki deals with a few third party stores that
sell Inzuki products. This requires Inzuki to ship out products in bulk ahead of time.
However, Inzuki is not sure of what products and in what quantities, should they send out to
these outlets since they aren’t always certain about what these customers want.
1.3 External research and key findings
The global pret-a-porter jewelry industry consists of players that sell products in a finished
condition, in standardized sizes. This includes fashion powerhouses such as Chanel, Bayco, Etsy
among others. As of late, there has been an evident rise in the use of e-services by these players
[6]. The majority use e-services for marketing via the different social media platforms. For
example eTurner Couture uses Pinterest to post images of different design concepts. They embed
links in the images that redirect customers to their online store [7]. Etsy uses Flipboard, a social
platform that aggregates content from social media and news feeds, to advertise and also educate
its customers on the different fashion trends [8]. Fashion designers that don’t own online stores
use e-commerce platforms such as eBay [9] and Amazon [10] among others to reach their
customers across the globe.
Other fashion houses are also using e-services for manufacturing jewelry, with the aid of
Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software for example Matrix 7.0. CAD is used to create designs
and this gives designers an advantage of work faster, easily create different variations of a theme
and the ability to copy and paste design motifs with ease [11]. An extra advantage that CAD
offers is the ability to zoom in the design and thus, the ability to pay attention to detail.

6
Laser sintering is another technology that is being adopted by some designers in Europe and
North America. A laser beam is used to melt the raw material for example gold, layer by layer,
into the shape of the end product. The shape is designed using CAD software. A designer can
move from design to finished product in a few mouse clicks. The technology is still in its infancy
and is quite expensive [12].
1.4 Internal research
1.4.1 Methodology
As a means of collecting data, we carried out a customer survey using SurveyMonkey (see
Appendix) to learn about the Inzuki customer. The survey had close to 200 respondents. 68% of
the respondents have bought products from Inzuki prior to taking the survey. In order to
incentivize the respondents we organized a draw where 3 lucky respondents would win Inzuki
shopping vouchers.
We carried out interviews with executives at Inzuki Designs. These are the founder and
managing director Ms. Teta Isibo and the business manager Ms. Aneth Batamuliza.
We also looked at the insights produced from the Facebook and Instagram pages of Inzuki
designs.
We chose the above methodologies to collect data because they best suited our work timeframes,
which was a maximum of 12 hours per week. These methodologies also suited our data
analytical skills.
1.4.2 Data analysis
We subscribed for the SurveyMonkey SELECT premium service [13] which gave us access to
premium services such as downloading survey results into spreadsheets so as to create custom
charts and reports with ease. We were also able to analyze individual responses in order to:-
● know where the respondents are located by looking at their IP addresses;
● how long a respondent took to complete the survey; and
● how many respondents completed the survey.
We used a free online word cloud generator [14] to visualize customer comments from the
survey.
For the insights from the Instagram and Facebook pages, we used Microsoft Excel to generate
charts and carry out statistical analysis such as average number of followers per age group,
gender among others.

7
We carried out a SWOT analysis in order to identify the internal and external factors that can
affect Inzuki Designs’ future performance.
Strengths Weaknesses
1. Social media presence
2. Personal recommendations
3. Unique products
4. Customer care
1. No online shopping
2. Expensive pricing
3. Customer retention
No records of customers
4. Don’t maintain inventory of copies of their
earlier designs
5. Indication of the store location on different
social media platforms
6. Lack of online directory of items in stock
7. delivery time
Opportunities Threats
1. Online store “Jumia”
2. Rising demand for interior decor
3. Rising demand outside Rwanda
1. Shops are now using online stores like
Jumia
2. Meeting the demand of the growth number
of customers
Table 1: SWOT analysis

8
1.4.3 Key findings
Figure 1: What customers would like Inzuki Designs to maintain
These are some of the key findings we saw from analyzing the aforementioned data sources.
(i) Social media presence
Inzuki has a significantly strong social presence with over 16,000 followers on Instagram and
over 1000 people liking their Facebook page. Social media has also served as the main
advertisement platform for Inzuki as over 60% of the respondents cite social media as means
of getting to know about Inzuki designs.

9
Figure 2: Means how customers got to know about Inzuki Designs
(ii) Personal recommendations
Over 40% of the respondents cited friend recommendations as what drove them to knowing
about Inzuki’s products.
(iii) Unique products
Inzuki Designs is famous for its beautiful products, marked by its ingenuity and uniqueness
in design. While analyzing what influences the customers to buy from Inzuki, customers’
purchase decisions are highly influenced by the African and Rwandan heritage that inspires
the design.

10
Figure 3: What inspires customers to buy from Inzuki Designs
(iv) Customer care
Over 50% of the respondents appreciated Inzuki’s customer care and would like them to
maintain. However, this indicates a need for Inzuki to improve on their business - customer
relationship.
(v) Need for an online store
The majority of respondents want Inzuki Designs to provide an online store and to make its
products more affordable and accessible.