An Interview With An Entrepreneur

One person that inspires me in fashion is Anna Wintour. Sure, it’s completely cliché of me to look up to her versus everyone else who adores her. However, my admiration for her is so intense. Her poise and demeanor is so incredible. She’s the complete master of her craft and she holds class while doing it. Growing up I’ve always wanted to be in the rim of fashion. Weather it was designing or just being the boss in the world of fashion. Moreover, as I got older my passion grew more so in magazines and I loved to read and write. My friends would always say they loved my style and where to get this piece from. I’d always been such a modest person when it comes down to people complementing me on my style. Soon I noticed that I always cared more

Lisa was formerly a Fashion Design Director working and living in New York City traveling to France, England, Italy, the Netherlands, U.A.E., China, India, Taiwan & Pakistan ferreting out the latest designs and working with the factories creating beautiful textiles in woman’s fashion at Fortune 500 companies.

As two separate companies, they have established a different approach towards the market, however with the right research and evaluation, Rousteing and The Bay have beautifully managed to make both sides collide with success. They have managed to design ready-to-wear for different target groups, for example, women’s outerwear shoes, men’s business attire, jewellery, as well as the latest Balmain Army collection inspired by Rousteing himself. They have made the price range of the products in the listed categories reasonable and affordable for premium quality clothing, accessories and footwear for both genders that are quality and price conscious. Also, in Toronto and Vancouver, The Bay has launched a showroom called “The Room” that features some of Balmain’s hottest but not-so-retail-friendly designer clothing from Rousteing’s runway collection. With the stratospheric prices, these items are obviously in display for the more sophisticated young female adults that completely disregard the price tag when they see something they genuinely adore. However, this was also an intelligent way for Rousteing and The Bay to promote their collection by giving the people of middle-class families to feel and take a closer glimpse of some high-quality handiwork. This makes the women of the demographic target market want to know what else Balmain has in store at The Bay, that is of similar quality, but with a more affordable

My love affair with fashion started years ago, but over these past 2 years it has grown into something so beautiful. Fashion made it’s grand entrance in my life when I was looking over a Chanel catalog along with a few other designers. For example; Vera Wang, Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Marc Jacobs, Phoebe Philo, and many more. The designs caught my eye and I was just mesmerized by it all. It literally took my breath away! I always told myself and my family that I will grow to be an amazing fashion designer and sell beautiful, elegant clothing known to man. A worldwide known designer.

There was a great team work and lots of energy towards employees to become LuLuLemon a billion dollar company.

If I were to look up, down, left, or right, I knew I was going to find a different style on everyone that were in front of me. Fashion itself is a manifestation of social, economic, political, and cultural transformations upon a community. Being part of the fashion community involves having a collective interest in fashion, but to also have the awareness of your own style that is separate from the others. I have been playing dress-up ever since I can remember with my sister and performing fashion shows for all of my family to see, which has grown into working New York Fashion Week in the summers when I’m not in school. I have never lost my interest in fashion, despite moving out of the city to go to college.

The Lululemon brand ranked highest among their competitors for “luxury fashion apparel”. Organizing a like-minded community for body-conscious and health-aware as well as fashion-pursuing female customers is one of the most fundamental parts of Lululemon’s marketing strategy. Lululemon is the first mainstream clothing company to really put the “salon” business model into every detail of their business management. Resembling the core of Apple’s retail strategy, in which like-minded thinkers came together to share their own opinions, culture, and theories. Customers go to the Apple store and salesmen will teach them how to use the products. Lululemon will do the same thing, they could teach customers. In recent retail environment, buyer and seller are put on the same sides under the effect of this strategy. Both are focused on an idea of self-betterment that overshadows the commercial transaction itself. This ethic strategy transforms the stores into a space for personal communication with low pressure. The employee have the chances to talk to the customers about their passions and pursuits, and customers will select the ideal garments with the help of the employee. The final purchase transaction comes to be an investment in customers themselves, representing their own ideas and goals. In fact, Lululemon keeps setting goal behind the counter to make customized service to guests. Salon-model strategy is a trend to interest consumers overtook the desire to just own or consume more

The interview process is the gateway to basically fill a position from a company. The function of an interview is to assess candidate’s skills to pertinent questions that are necessary to fill in the needs of an organization. Fact of the matter is, structuring an effective and efficient interview process is not really basic, for it entails ethical, legal and moral considerations with each question asked. Since we would cover up ten questions in this elective, the two criteria’s that I am going to include as a ranking score would be a confidence rating scale in which to scale the level of confidence the way each candidate answers the question and a question satisfaction rating scale in which for each person that conducts the interview will also rank the level of satisfaction on each question that had been answered by the interviewee (Pulakos, 1997). Both scales would be scaled from 1 to 5 in which 1 would be the lowest attainable score and 5 would be the highest. This then would make up a perfect score of 100 points as confidence would make up a total perfect score of 50 points for ten the questions and also the same with satisfaction. In the end of each question there would be a space provide to write any important notes on why or why not they are the best candidate for the position.

Susan Gregg Koger is the co-founder of ModCloth, a simple online shop where she sold the vintage finds she could no longer fit in her closet. She made a sale her first day. Today, ModCloth is one of the fastest-growing fashion and home ecommerce ventures to emerge in the past decade. The company did more than one hundred million dollars in sales last year, and is growing at a rate of 40 percent annually. The story of ModCloth begins when Eric, Susan’s then boyfriend, started a development business in 2000. They went to Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburg, and Susan stumbled over all these amazing pre-worn items at vintage sales. Eric had all of the technical skills to help Susan launch an ecommerce site. They thought they would get all of these gems

1. What is your story and how did it led you to create your own business?

“I think I see myself as someone who wants to be into fashion. In a sense of knowing what the fashion world is like,” said Maass. “I find myself following fashion twitter pages and think I'm knowing what I'm doing. I try to be knowledgeable about the world of fashion.

Lululemon is a large company, making clothing for athletic activities, not only are they in the women’s athletic range, but they have hit the men’s market and youth range as well. A SWOT analysis will be used to break down Lululemons strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to the business. Strengths which Lululemon have achieved include multi-faceted and community-based approach strategy, making customers feel part of a community through marketing strategies like there “ambassador program, social media, in-store community boards and grassroots initiatives” (Lululemon, 2016 Annual Report, 2016, p. 3). Touchpoints which have been a part of this multi-channel include Lululemons websites www.lululemon.co.nz and ivivva.com which is based around female youth active ware. With Lululemon having 12,500 full-time employees worldwide (Lululemon Athletica Inc. (LULU), 2017) with 406 stores (Lululemon, 2016), their large market capital of $8.33 billion (Lululemon Athletica Inc. (LULU), 2017), shows the total value of Lululemons shares of stock. Lululemon having $581.1 million in net revenue, this is an increase of 13% while their gross profit increased by 17% rising to $297.4 million. (Lululemon Athletica Inc. Announces Second Quarter Fiscal 2017 Results, 2017). This shows a steady increase in profit for Lululemon for 2017 which is a strength for them.

The entrepreneur that I interviewed was Lydia Patterson. In 1989, Lydia and her husband, Lou, decided to start planning to open up a new Italian restaurant in Virginia. The restaurant industry, especially in the Washington DC area is very competitive. It is highly competitive with respect to price, value and promotions, service, location, and food quality.  There are a substantial number of restaurant operations that compete for customer traffic, some of which have significantly greater resources to aggressively market to consumers, which could result in losing market share.  Consumers are highly focused on value and if other restaurants are able to promote and deliver a higher degree of value, guest traffic levels

Zappos.com, established in 1999, has rapidly become a strong competitor in online apparel and footwear sales. With the original corporate vison of offering the absolute best selection in shoes; the vision has evolved over the past several years to include the goal of being the retailer that “provides the absolute best service online -- not just in shoes, but in any category” (Zappos, 2014). The online retailer stocks millions of reasonably priced footwear products; carrying thousands of hard to find brand named shoes, handbags, apparel and accessories via the company website and 7,000 affiliate partners. In recognizing their rapid success, Zappos credits it to their commitment to the customer, stating,

Taking this entrepreneur course has been the best thing I could do for myself. Not only did it grow my mindset, but it taught me how to focus and concentrate on meeting my goals. At the beginning of this semester I could not let go the negative self-image I had of myself. Since I have been able to reflect on who I am I am slowly able to let go of that past image. I now know that I am more than able to reach my goals with the proper mindset and skills. I have come a long way since the beginning of this course. At the beginning of this course we were asked what is most important in life, and when I chose myself I knew after that reflections that I was off to a great start. Putting myself first these last few months has been the best thing I