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Testing our hypothesis

Hey!

New year – new challenges! In the previous blog post we have stated our main hypothesis, now it is time to make them real.

First of all, we put our clothes on sale in the online shop. Our online sales go faintly so till today we are still waiting for appearing of the first buyer. And then we will be able to make any decisions :)

Besides that we made a survey, which will appear in the nearest future.

We all understand that we need some changes (and some progress), that is why today morning we had one more meeting all together, so a bit of brainstorm and arguing leaded as to a new (a bit unexpected) idea. Why not to change the location of our market?

We decided to expand our market and try to sell clothes in Ukraine! A little research showed that there are a lot of vintage shops in the main cities of Ukraine. That is why we hope Ukrainian customers to be more sensitive to our hand-made clothes. Our Ukrainian team mates Olha contacted one of such shops so now we are in a process of discussion possible collaboration! The main problem is border, but we hope to overcome this obstacle!

Cheers,

your LACIS.

A brand new year!

Dear readers,

We congratulate everyone with the New Year 2013 and wish you all the best!

Year 2013 for LĀCIS started with the group meeting and with creating clothes for our brand. We once again gathered together in order to apply our designs to clothes.

We brainstormed, argued,discused, applied and created some of the cloth prototypes. We did our best to make clothes appealing to potential customers and clients. Now some of the clothes are published on the SS.lv platform. We are planing to publish them also on ebay.com or other online shops, where customers can easily order our products.

However, the main task for this and following week is hypothesis testing.

Our 3 hypothesis are:

1. Only hipsters will buy our products.

2. Sales through the Internet will give us more profit than any other sales.

1. 3. We will sell more redesigned clothes than the original ones.

So, for now on, we need to test these hypothesis and see what will work and what should be changed, in order to make our business idea successful.

Cheers,

Team LĀCIS

#loe2012 #report

We are on the way.

Dear readers,

First of all, we would like to tell you about how useful the meeting with our lecturers was; we got an opportunity to express our concerns and gain some piece of advice. We were concerned of lack of time and investment, but we forgot that this is a learning experience. Thanks for reminding. We got a new telephone number of another sewer Lauma and later on we found out about this Christmas market (participation for freeJ).

Our last week’s biggest accomplishment was becoming sewers ourselves. Not exactly what we expected when applied for this school. However, it was a valuable experience and a chance not to only hang out together but work. We met on Sunday and worked for couple of hours at school. Mostly we created some embroidery on clothes. Collars of knitwear were our concern. Both because it is cold outside and we have them a lot as resources as well. Clothes were already at school waiting for us and materials to work with we took from home. It is funny how much various things for sewing we have, although none of us are sewers. You can see both work process and the result in the photos. These clothes of course need to be washed and prepared for selling. It is still a thing on our concern to-do list.

Why such a rush? Well, we thought of a possibility selling our production during Christmas market, being real salesman and we said yes! Of course, we still need to apply, but as the products are ready it is the least thing to do. This we will do today after a morning meeting. During his meeting we decided that market time is not convenient, because we wouldn’t make it in time because of lecture graphic.

Girls came up with idea of selling the clothes on ss.lv. We hope to make our profit on that and test one of our test hypotheses that way.

Because of what we have done last week, this week there is even more work to do:

1) We need to get ready for potential customers on “ss” platform;

· Prepare clothes-washing, ironing;

· Price tags, packaging;

2) It is important to take pictures of our products to finally launch our homepage;

3) We need to structure our test hypothesis – this week is the start for testing it.

Although we thought of changing the idea, we will stick to this one, both because there are investments made and it is important to understand as much as possible and gain an experience of being in the clothing business.

#Report #loe2012

An important conclusion

Both good and bad things have happened since our previous post.

Let’s start with the good ones! Last week was we have celebrated the Day of Independence and Thanksgiving, as well as we finally finished Microeconomics course, which allows us to spend more time on developing our business idea. According to the task list in the previous blog entry we planned to develop our ideas further and so we did. As the samples of the blouses with detachable collars have been previously made we decided to go to the next step of idea development – real life application.

On Saturday one of the biggest fashion trading event organised in Riga called “Andele Mandele” took place in Paladium Cinema. (https://www.facebook.com/events/454490267937050)

Our course, we could not miss that chance and applied for participation, even though in the rules of the event it is written that “sellers could not trade not their pieces of clothes and pursue commercial objectives”, but this didn’t stop us, we applied for participation. After all, nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Without delay we prepared two more samples of our original blouses with detachable collars, because we wanted to sell as much samples as it is possible. Despite two sleepless nights we spent before the “big day of trading” on writing reports for Micro, our team was in full readiness on Saturday, at 9 pm in front of Palladium Cinema and here come the truth...

Yes, we sold all three sample blouses, but not for the price we wanted. A lot of people were interested in the idea of detachable collar, but nobody was actually willing to pay 20 lats as we wanted. You may say that the price is to high for a second hand blouse with “strange design”, but it is not. After investigating worldwide market we understood that and average price for a vintage piece of cloth with authentic design is way above 20 lats we charged for the blouses we made. But that is the situation in the world, unfortunately, in Latvia it is completely different.

Yes, we returned back those 5 lats we paid for participation and even end up with a little profit, but no matter how well it can be seen from the side...

...a big question hanged over our idea – is it worth to continue development or it is better to leave it now and move on something else when it is not to late? Or to put it more literary:

To be, or not to be, that is the question: 

Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer 

The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune, 

Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles…

#loe2012 #report

One week from Artish Team life...

Here the new week comes and we are ready to share our achievements from last week, as well as new bright ideas and some more precise plans. But let’s begin from the very beginning, namely most important events in SSE Riga life. This week was significant with HomeComing 2012, which included many smaller events, such as Change on Stage (alumni experience stories), Choir Concert in Jāzepa Mediņa Music School and the most pleasant one – HomeComing Party! What is important about the last one is that two Artish members (Maria and Olha) were volunteering there as fellows of Charity Club. The offspring of their work are 81 lats of donations made by Alumni and making a few useful acquaintances. We have no intention to reveal our secrets, but the results of our collaboration are likely to be seen in near future.

One more weighty event in our activity was team meeting, held as usually weekly. This is the time when we can have a rest from intensive and strenuous student life, have a cup of coffee and just relax in cosy little gathering of our best friends and colleagues at the same time. As a rule we share our own plans for this week, especially about studyingJ. Afterwards we brainstorm on new ideas related to clothes and accessories. The topic of this week was launching collection of accessories. The first idea is, as you may know, collection of collars, which tend to be a very trendy way to look unique and still be practical in your style. So the train of our thoughts was as following: why should we come to a stand on the only idea about collars? They are inexhaustible source of inspiration! So our move is...COLLAR BROOCHES!

Collar brooches are the sort of accessories which are obtaining recognition in USA and Europe, so now they come to Latvia. If you want to refresh your boring white blouse, we do already know what to offer you!

Thus let’s outline our drafts for this week:

1.As we have mentioned in previous blog entry, to find a photographer and models for our future lookbook.

2.To work on our clothes collection.

3.To develop our ideas of detachable collars and collar brooches.

4.To pass final exam and write our reports in Microeconomics as successfully as possible! (btw, guys, good luck! Brace yourselves and get your excellent result!)

Have a nice productive week and keep being ARTISH!

#LOE2012 #report

Achivments, Ideas, Plans ...

Shine, flashes, best designers…. What can be more desirable place to spread the information about our brand than Riga Fashion Week? Plenty of people who are keen on fashion, however, at the same time lots of those who want to be in style, but do not have enough money to afford a dress right from the fashion show; so here we are! Michelle as a representative of our company took part there together with her sister, one of the best Latvian designers Katya Katya Shehurina.„LĀCIS” gain a lot from this event! Besides the fact that lots of fashionists learn about our company, we get acquainted with new fashion brands, so we will be able to make our clothes more attractive and more desirable for our customers!

Moreover, as we planned the previous week, we found new shops that are ready to provide us with all row material we need. So now we are more than just ready for creating new stylish cloths! This week we cooperated with our sewer and provide her with our previous sketches.

She appeared to be a great professional and gave us plenty of useful advice. At a present we are “on peens and needles” waiting for are ideas to come true! Afterwards we will be able to make professional photo shoots with our first models and in that way diversify “LACIS” web-site, which is the main issue for today. As we all appeared to be creative people it sometimes difficult for us to see the same things done in one way (however, this allowed us to make different clothes, as we usually combine our ideas), so we have too many thoughts about this site.

Besides that, we had a significant meeting! We came up with a new strategy for future, indentified our strengths and weaknesses, and just found new incentives to work!

And what is more, an interesting idea came to our mind – we would like to make a special sign on our clothes (something like lacoste – crocodile) to underline our identity from those brands whose clothes we are renovating and for our customers to remember about “LACIS”! What about a little bear paw?

So the outline about what has to be done this week:

Brainstorming for new designs

Applying our ideas (make more clothes)

Making professional photos and developing a web-site

Yours sincerely,

Team Artish

#LOE2012 #report

New week comes with new challenges!

Here we are again with the weekly report.

Last week we decided to try out our new idea. Now we want not only to renew second-hand clothes, but also to make shirts with the convertible collars, which can be taken off and replaced by the ones with different kind and style. As the collar is replaced by another one, the style of the shirt changes completely. We believe that it is very fashionable and practical, because by changing only the collar you change your shirt completely, thus making your clothes unique. We made the first prototype of this kind of shirt:

The collar can be changed to different types, such as:

Moreover, we had a meeting with the new sewer and now we are ready to cooperate with her. As well as we contacted some girls, who are ready to be our first models and represent our brand „LĀCIS”. When we will have more clothes, we want to make professional photo shoots with these models.

This week is going to be really tough for us, as we are planning to do a lot of things. First of all, we are going to make one more shirt with convertible collar and then start to offer our products to the potential clients.

Secondly, we will work more on our website design and our website catalogue, as the Fashion Week is coming and we need to develop our website as fast as possible.

Moreover, we need to buy different raw materials in order to renew our clothes, thus we will look for other shops which can offer stylish fabrics. However, our main suppliers remain “Mežroze” and “Abakhan”.

Also we want to have a meeting this week concerning our business idea. We are eager to discuss our future plans, to divide tasks, to start preparing for the Fashion Week and to find what can be done better. In other words, we want to brainstorm a little bit ;)

So the outline about what has to be done this week:

Make one more shirt with convertible collar;

Work on website;

Look for material suppliers;

Have a team meeting;

Yours sincerely,

Team Artish

#LOE2012 #report

Welcome, welcome to new week and new ideas !

Dear readers,

Last week there was a turning point for both our team and business venture. We understood that idea itself asks from us not only a lot of time involvement, but as well relatively large amount of money, with no guarantee when can it be retrieved.

However, one of our team mates had a great idea, of changable details for clothing. These clothes we will offer both exicisting retailers, like “Nola”, as Michelle suggested. Thus there would be a possibility of pre-orders. Naturally then we will have to use new clothes, however the idea of sustainability remains, you change details, not clothing it self, thus saving both own money and overall resources. For this to happen we have set a meeting with another sewer, who studies at Latvian Academy of Art. Meeting will take place Tuesday afternoon. We will then propose sewer to create a sample of our idea, and our goal is to then contact companies, arrange meetings and offer our products. This depends on how fast sewer will implement the idea.

Furthermore, we will still work with used materials as well, as fast as the first sample is ready we will contact vintage shop owner in Berlin http://www.veistberlin.com/, who might be interested, if the quality of the good is high and idea promising. We will of course sell the used clothes on Etsy and Asos.

This week we also may use time to research the prices and producers of shirts, as we would work mostly with them.

This week we also continue on searching for necessary materials. We may use as the suppliers “Mežroze” and “Abakhan” to buy trimmings of fabrics, small pieces sufficient for our details.

So far, we unfortunately had to postpone the actions related to badges, we have graphical design already created, can be seen in our previous post, however it may be reasonable not to order them, as if supply for larger retailer it depends on whether the retailer would like to see our brand next to his, our maybe only our brand would be sufficient. It however depends.

We have also made the homepage, created the template. I would say, now we have to adjust it to our products by creating the catalogue and photo shoots that would be relevant to make it more personal, bring the production closer to the public. It will be done when some products are finally ready for selling, meaning that it is not the plan for this week.

But regarding photo shoots Michelle will start contacting girls who could volunteer as models for our project starting from this week.

So to outline what has to be done this week:

Meeting with sewer on Tuesday;

Searching for trimmings of fabrics in “Mežroze” and “Abakhan”;

Work on sketches;

Start contacting models;

Search for companies who could provide us with new shirts.

Fingers crossed and good luck to you and us!

Yours sincerely,

Team Artish

#report #LOE2012

Here comes the graphical design for our logo!

#LOE2012 #logo

Brand New Week Is Coming!

This post is dedicated to weekly report, which will take place in our blog every Monday during next 5 months. Let’s recur to what we have done and what we have been doing during this week. Afterwards we’ll mention a few things planned to do during this week.

First of all, our first blouse is ready-made, and in a very fancy way, which you can see at this picture:

As you see, traditional Latvian patterns were used. Our sewer did her best! We will be glad to get some feedback on the style, as we’re concerned on to do our best.

Secondly, we had meeting on Thursday, and the main topic on it was our unexpected homework. We looked through all the second-hand clothes we had to find out, which one to work over next. We have chosen 2 shirts, here you can see the photos.

Our homework was:

1.To make sketches of 2 selected shirts with possible modifications and altering, for example with collars, cuffs, sleeves, plastrons etc.;

2.To make approximate sketch of our future website appearance (We'll also refer to our website in this post a bit later) or to send via e-mail to all the members of ARTISH links to those blogs/online-shops/websites, which seem to be attractive and realistic to reproduce for Kalvis, our IT guy;

Next meeting was held on Friday afternoon, when every girl (Kalvi, sorry for that, you would get bored quickly) showed some sketches and we considered to sort them out and classify. This is actually what we’re going to do this week: to create a Google document, where all our ideas will be kept in handy way.

Also thanks to Anna we found our third collaborator, who is professional sewer and is going to work over our clothes from now. Our team is growing with every week!

Talking about plans, our website is being launched in some 3-4 days thanks to Kalvis. Also Olia is going to help him with appearance, classifying and filling up content.

So, to sum up everything said:

What we’ve done:

1.Chose next 2 pieces of clothes to alter;

2.Made photos of them;

3.Made some sketches on altering;

4.Discussed our website appearance;

5.Found 3rd sewer for our team.

What are we planning to do:

1.Classify and put in one online document all the sketches;

2.Work on website;

3. Work on next sketches.

Find out more about the process in our blog!

#LOE2012 #report

Dr. Bert Twaalfhoven

Tomorrow we will have an awesome guest!

Dr.Bert Twaalfhoven,former President of Indivers B.V. and founder of European Foundation for Enterpreneurship research (EFER) whose mission is to promote entrepreneurship at universities and business schools.

Bert Twaalfhoven is former chairman of Harvard Business School Alumni, received the Annual Alumni Award from the school for his activities stimulating enterpreneurship in Eastern and Western Europe. He also received an honorary doctorate from Fordham University for his achievments in the area of education and as an international enterpreneur.

Dr. Twaalfhoven through Indivers started 54 companies in 11 countries including Italy, France, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Holland, Belgium, England, U.S.A. Singapore and China. Most companies were successful, 17 ventures failed. Twaalfhoven was also co-founder of the first venture capital company in the Netherlands (Gilde) and has participations in several venture capital companies. In addition to being an entrepreneur, Dr. Twaalfhoven is active in many capacities in international networks of universities and entrepreneurs, especially the promotion of dynamic growth entrepreneurs.

So don't miss your chance to gain some knowledge of entepreneurship!

1. Have you ever considered launching a company in the Baltics and Latvia?

2. Do you look on non tech industry related start ups as a possibly successful business ventures?

3. How do you think England's higher education institutions will develop after the raise of tuition fees?

4. In Latvia we have possibility to launch a start up with costs of 1 Lat, do you consider it as an improvement?

#LOE2012 #report

First stage of LACIS

Our business idea is to create design for vintage clothes, adding newest fashion trends, and then sell the products on Etsy platform market place. How to do that? Well, here are our first steps already made and to be made.

We started to work on this idea as a team 2 weeks ago, so progress that is shown here is the progress we have made so far during this period of time.

During this time we have established brand name LACIS and created a graphic design for it. It was quite hard to choose from variants that actually looked very similar. We have also researched the suppliers that could manufacture tags for our products.

In order to put a brand on something, one have to create something. So far, we have gathered around 30 pieces of clothing from our family and friends, so that we wouldn't have to spend on buying them. We however realize that FFF won't be able to give away all off their clothes, so we have made market research about where to buy used clothes that we are going to transform. Mostly our second-hand clothes will come from "Humana" and "R.D.A.", where price per unit is from 0.5 up to 2 LVL. These shops are located in wide are, so that every one of us can go and buy goods needed for our business. There are 20 "Humana" shops in Riga and 2 in Liepāja which is a hometown of our group member Kalvis.

In parallel we have acknowledged, where to buy materials needed for these transformations. Our team Member Mishelle suggested "Auduma Supermarkets" which provides both quality and fair prices. There are no transportation costs. Actually it is easy to get there as it is located in the Riga city center.

We have created the design for all of the clothes we have so far and draw the guidelines for our designs, so that there would be a common trend in every one of them. These trends may differ as there are more than one of them - embroideries, knitted details of Latvian and other nationalities' patterns, reflectors used in the some cases when appropriate, neon colors, studs and imitation skin.

We have contacted three sewers. Two were from company MAMMU, with one of whom meeting have already taken place. Last Friday on 5th of October we shipped one materials needed, sketch to the third sewer in Tukums, in order to test how much time is required, to plan further expenses and test capacity. Order was ready on Monday.

We have bought our domain, in order to create a homepage, that will contain catalogue of our designs with links leading to Etsy Market place. We are right now testing the best pattern for our website, based on "less is more". Our aim is simplicity and clarity.

One of our team members have already talked about our idea with Latvia's fashion industry people. Fashion blogger Agnese Kleina have already offered to present one of our design in her blog http://www.whimsicalagnesiga.com/ if the quality is high enough. Further, we have established the design of piece of clothing one of our team members will wear to Riga Fashion Week, thus trying to get attention to our product.

Our outline for the next week are as following:

1. Contact company, who will create tags for us and order first 1000 units of them;

2. Set a both first and second meeting with MAMMU sewer to discuss further actions;

3. Continue on searching for more sewers as our capacity is highly dependent of amount of sewers working for us;

4. Include the item for Riga Fashion Week in the shipment to Tukums, as we will let the person work on it for a longer time than ordinary;

5. In order to make shipping we have to buy the supplies from "Auduma Supermarkets" after we have searched for them home and realized we don't have what we need;

6. Make another donation from our friends and families, as during autumn some wardrobe clearances may take place and we may take advantage of them;

7. Creating a basic outline for our website, however we will not launch until there will be an enough amount of clothing to make a catalogue, which is up to 10 pieces.

Time until Riga Fashion Week is going to be very stressful as both homepage and our Etsy Market place has to be ready in case people are interested in our products ! Wish us good luck!

Yours LACIS

#LOE2012 #report

Ragnar Sass

Tomorrow on our LOE lecture at SSE Riga all Y1 students will have an opportunity to listen to a great person called Ragnar Sass. Ragnar Sass, a person who can generate 10 ideas in a minute. Basically, Ragnar is a serial entrepreneur and currently he is promoting entrepreneurship and start-ups in different countries, including Estonia, several European countries and African countries. Moreover, he is actively involved in the competition called "Garage 48".

Definitely it is going to be a really interesting and whats more very useful and inspirational lecture. We are looking forward to getting inspired by Ragnars and his lecture, which will help us in our own business..... ;)

Questions:

1. What do you like the most about your job?

2. How do you manage your time?

3. What is the most important thing a young entrepreneur should think of before starting up his own business?

4. Should a young entrepreneur learn on his own mistakes or on the mistakes other people make?

#LOE2012 #report

Here we are!

Now when our business is in the start up process and we are working really hard to make it as best as we can, it is the time to meet our great "Artish" team!

Maria Azina - communication director, from Russia (St.Petersburg), the youngest team member. Her motto: "Be realistic - demand the impossible"

Ilona Koršunova - sales and finance director, from Latvia (Riga), motto: "Nothing is impossible if you work hard and stay dedicated to your dreams"

Mishelle Šehurina - marketing director, from Latvia (Riga), motto:"The world belongs to brave"

Olha Novak - communication director, from Ukraine (Lviv), motto:"Leave your comfort zone and keep on acting!"

Anna Plaudiņa - marketing director, from Latvia (Riga), motto:"It is all about not giving up!"

Kalvis Kalniņš - IT director, from Latvia (Liepaja), the only guy in a team. "I am a passionately curious guy that have the aim to change himself in order to make the world a better place"

We will keep you informed! Follow us on twitter: https://twitter.com/Artish_Store

#LOE2012 #report

CIVITTA

On our Laboratory of Entrepreneurship lecture we're going to make a presentation about our visit to Civitta - cool consulting company with the most awesome CEO ever - Adam Saulius Vaina. Our presentation will include (8 slides):

1. Idea of the company;

2. Business model canvas;

3. Organization Structure;

4. Value System;

5. Feedback on our company.

Looking forward to your questions:)

#LOE2012 #report

Meet our "Artish" team! Soon You will find out a little bit more about us....wait! ;)

#LOE2012 #report

Guest lecture by Krists Avots

As all teams are getting ready to start up their own companies and this time it is going to be serious, the lecture by Krists Avots on legal issues regarding company registration will be very useful.

Krists is a Business Development Lab Coordinator at Stockholm School of Economics in Riga and a Y3 student at SSE Riga. Moreover, he is a vice-president of Student Association and a project manager and event orginizer at "Garage 48".

Looking forward to Krists lecture! We are ready to discover new things, which will help us in our business!

Questions:

1. What is the best thing you like about SSE Riga?

2. How did you manage to become a Business Lab coordinator in SSE Riga?

3. What are your main duties?

4. Can you give any advice for Y1 students regarding start-ups?

#LOE2012 #report

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