Categories
Innovation

Business Model Innovation: DIY Bakery

It’s the third post of the Business Model Innovation series and also the third post of the year! In this new normal, the traditional bakery businesses have been hit very hard. While there is less people out on the streets, which means less customers, how can bakery businesses cope? This is where your opportunity lies! You can start your own bakery business right here and now!

As usual, we will be doing our analysis with the business model canvas. Also, we would like to thank one of my colleagues, who always bakes and brings her best creations to share, which inspired me to write this post! There’s no hard and fast rule to run this bakery, so get innovative in the comments below!

Unique Value Proposition

We provide you the freshest baked artisan bread and pastry, right in the comfort of your homes!

We deliver this UVP through a DIY kit of ingredients. Furthermore, this kit comes with a recipe, so you can replicate the best bakes, right in the comfort of your own kitchen.

Customer Segments

Younger people, who have picked up the hobby of baking, while they spend more time at home, are our potential customers. A large proportion are likely females, who may value surprises a lot.

Key Partners

The core partners of the business are Bakers, Patisseries and Chefs, whom we can co-innovate with. These partners will be key to develop the recipes which are not only wallet-friendly, but also easy to execute in the kitchen.

Key Activities

Some key activities includes prospecting for sales to customers, as well as enrolling more professional F&B veterans onto the platform.

Key Resources

Online channels for enablement and distribution of recipes.

Supply and logistics network, which impacts the fulfilment of the orders.

Customer Relationship

We may want to consider having a platform, which is necessary for customers to stay excited and expressive. Therefore, creating an Instagram page where customers can showcase their best bakes weekly might be one way to go about it. Furthermore, we can run contests on the Instagram page, for customers to showcase their own creations, stand a chance to be featured on our Instagram, and win exclusive prices.

Channels

An omni-channel approach could be taken, which consists of both online and offline channels.

We could have a website and application for e-commerce transactions. This can be supplemented with Instagram, which trends among the young people.

We could do offline marketing at partner bakeries, where there may be foot traffic but not too many buyers due to hygiene concerns. By including a QR code to purchase our baking tools and ingredients online, the expertise in the physical bakeries will not go to waste.

Cost

You will incur the following costs:

Cost of goods sold, basically to simply put it, the cost of the raw materials in the ingredients.

Platform fees to maintain your website.

Transportation and Supply chain, which is essential in bringing your products to the consumer.

Marketing expenditure is also one of the costs which are incurred.

(Rental does not apply in this case, as this business is more logistical and taps on the capital investment of existing F&B establishments.)

Revenue

You can consider these revenue streams:

Per Unit Sales Model, where customers can order through a system.

Subscription model, where customers enrol in a monthly membership to be surprised with new recipes every week!

Advertisement revenue, which can be gotten through sponsored recipes with larger businesses, for instance Gardenia or Sunshine Bread factory in Singapore.

At last, this is a DIY Bakery business summarised in one page! Do let us know if this worked for you!

Are you interested in exploring other business ideas? Please drop us a note at businessmodel@tanweixiang.com.

If you liked reading about this post, do follow us on our LinkedIn Page. You may also like to build your own ramen restaurant, hair salon or photo studio!

Image Credits: Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash

Categories
Innovation

Business Model Innovation: Photo Studio

For the first post in this Business Model Innovation series, I was inspired by a photo studio which I came across last week, I found the small business concept extremely innovative and decided that I would write the first post based on this. I’ll be analysing the business based on the Business Model Canvas. There may be many ways a business can be run, but I hope that this post can serve as a basis to explore your creativity.

Unique Value Proposition

To create and document unforgettable memories for (our customers).

To strengthen the Unique Value Proposition (UVP), there will be a need for a clear definition on the customers.

Customer Segments

There are a few customers who will document important memories, to list a few important life events:

  1. Birth of a Child
  2. Graduation
  3. Wedding
  4. Other memorable events

Based on this our target audience will be different. This is a segmentation by life cycle stage.

Other possible segmentations can be geographic, psychographic, behavioural segmentation.

Key Partners

For the ease of analysis, we have chosen the customer as graduates and next we can think of potential partners. A key question is where the customer comes from, secondary school, polytechnics, university. In order to reach the customer, we establish some partners. Potential Partners can be the Ministry of Education, the various higher education institutions, special education institutions, the various student clubs.

Key Activities

Some key activities in this business value chain is lead generation, sales, the photography services, editing, finishing, as well as packaging of the final product.

Other activities can include business functions like marketing, procurement, and other support functions.

Key Resources

The key resources of the business come from the partnerships, where you want to have exclusive rights to the customer, as well as potential incentives which you can offer. Having enough cashflow would also be important to ensure that the high overheads from studio rental. The staff would also be essential in securing sales and carrying out the business activity with standard.

Customer Relationship

The customer would first need to be baited in with something. A loss leader can be used or even offered for free to up-sell to different photography packages.

The customer can also have loyalty benefits, early discount to lock them in and returning benefits, referral discount, etc. This is also the place where you can exercise your creativity.

Channels

The channels for your photo studio can be offline or online. The offline channels which could be explored includes booths at the locations offered by various partners, where the customer will be at. For graduation, the added benefit would be also schools will usually have designated vendors for the various segments in the event, every student who wants to attend the graduation will likely take notice of your business.

Online channels through google AdWords or SEO can also generate potential leads to your website.

Costs

To list a few possibilities:

  1. Rental
  2. Salary
  3. Cost of Materials (Photo Frame and Photos)
  4. Cost of Capital (Photography Equipment, Photo Printer)
  5. Cost of Freebies
  6. Other Business and Support Costs

Revenues

To list a few possibilities:

  1. First Photo Sales
  2. Subscriptions
  3. Deposit for Advanced Booking
  4. Lifetime Membership Fee for future discounts
  5. Additional Add on Packages (e.g. finishing, larger photos, repeat prints, embossing, waterproofing, soft copy)

That’s a photo studio business summarised in one page, do let us know if it worked for you and do let us know the other business models you may be interested in!

Interested in exploring other business ideas? Do drop us a note at businessmodel@tanweixiang.com.

If you loved our post, follow us on our LinkedIn for updates: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tanweixiang

Do look at our analysis on hair salons too! You can also read our analysis on DIY Bakery.

https://tanweixiang.com/business-model-analysis-hair-salon/

Photo by Sven Brandsma on Unsplash

Categories
Analytics

General and Unrestricted Electives Guide – From NBS Business (Business Analytics) Graduate

You have read about what to take in the Business Analytics Specialisation in NBS, you would also notice that there is a lot of General and Unrestricted Electives which would need to be done as part of the curriculum. There are many choices and it might be difficult to make a choice. (I experienced this first hand and ended up overloading unrestricted electives to more than twice the requirement.) I am here to help you plan your electives.

Study a Minor

One of the things about studying in a leading university like Nanyang Technological University is the chance to take a minor programme. As of writing, there is over 40 minors for students to choose from. Here are some minors which I feel would be complementary to the Business programme at Nanyang Business School.

Minor in Entrepreneurship

To complement my Business Analytics degree, I decided to take up a Minor in Entrepreneurship programme, where I was given the opportunity to start my own business with a team consisting of students from both Business and Engineering. Business and Entrepreneurship is complementary as there is a slightly different perspective when working for a business and running your own business. A key takeaway which I had was the ownership of the outcome of business decisions which my team and I had to make over the course of the whole minor. It was especially satisfying to make a profit after overcoming many hardships.

Minor in Environmental Sustainability

I did not manage to take this minor but it was one of my minors in consideration. In this world where sustainability is growing in importance by consumers, an environmental sustainability minor would expose business students to ethical decision making, and taking into account the true cost of business decisions. I took one module in this minor, AB0502 MANAGING SUSTAINABILITY, where I had the chance to come out with a business plan to revive the dying Peranakan culture in Singapore.

Minor in Strategic Communications

I was a bit too late when I wanted to do this minor, it was only offered at the point of admission to NTU. This would be a very useful minor for those who have to deal with interactions with people (basically most business majors have to.). Would not elaborate too much on this as I did not get exposed to any of the modules, do comment below if you took this minor and would like to share you experience!

Study Related Modules

Another way you can use your electives is to study modules related to your major. As a business student, there is only 6 specialisation modules which you are required to take on, which may not be enough knowledge, especially if you want to learn the many other aspects in Business. As a Business Analytics Student, my interest in management has prompted me to take on electives in Marketing, as well as Programming, as I feel that these would aid me in being a more rounded business graduate! No matter what your specialisation is, I strongly encourage you to at least try a module or two outside of the specialisation. For all you know, you might realise that the other specialisation may be more interesting to you!

Do Modules on Exchange

If you had the chance to go for exchange, you would realise that the lessons conducted while on exchange may be in an entirely different format from how lessons are at NTU and NBS. Some schools have specific specialties, for instance in ESSEC Business School where I went for exchange, there was a strong focus in marketing and entrepreneurship, therefore I decided to take up related modules to gain a world view in the world class institution for the subject matter. Engaging with the foreign students on exchange also challenged my perspective on things and developed me as a person.

Try Something Different

If the former three options don’t suit your taste, why not try something different? You could learn a new language, play a new sport, or take up art classes. With so many schools in NTU, I’m sure you will find electives which will interest you!

[NEW] MOOC Courses

Recently, Nanyang Technological University has allowed for credit transfer of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) from e-learning content providers like Coursera and EdX. I have personally tried some e-learning from them but not the approved courses for NTU. For more information do refer here! Do read about my MOOC experience here:

If you liked this post, you might also need help with an analytics module choice:

Otherwise, here is a general picture of why I took up a specialisation in business analytics:

https://tanweixiang.com/three-reasons-why-i-picked-a-specialisation-in-business-analytics-at-nanyang-business-school/

Do read other Analytics related posts here!

I have also come out with a Tier List of Modules in NTU NBS on Youtube, do take a look here!