What lies ahead?
Our scope explains what we intend to accomplish in the three months during our time in Kenya. This section will briefly explain what we intend to do after; what is our plan for the future?
Personally, we have decided to continue this project and take it beyond the minor. This section may be the most relevant to our overall project and business plan, as we intend not to leave this project behind after leaving Kenya. In fact, we are currently already undertaking actions that go beyond the minor program. We are designing a label, doing market research and approaching possible costumers to create a market here. Nevertheless, due to time constraints and the minor being our priority we are limited to what we can do now.
During our stay we intend to simultaneously send home some prototypes of belts and some that can already be sold during the Christmas period at Christmas markets for example.
It is most relevant to us that the production in Kenya runs independently from our work here in order to make the youths more responsible, to undermine dependencies and to avoid disappointments if the business does fail. Nevertheless, as business partners between the production segment in Kenya and the sales segment here, we intend to do our best so that our business does not fail based on our mistakes.
Thus, if we manage to set up the production during the three months in which we are in Kenya we will prepare to finalize market research, our marketing strategy in February and approach possible sales groups, markets and shops within our reach as soon as we are back.
In conjunction with Belts&Buckles (the production Company in Kenya) the key is to balance our demand and supply. Most start-ups fail so early because they either grow too quickly or grow too slow. This will be our biggest challenge in the future.
Some of these tasks that we will undertake involve:
- Researching the costs of importing the belts
- Creating business cards
- Finalizing our online sale platform; creating a website in which people find out about our product and the story behind the product
- Approaching realistic sale opportunities within our reach, as we are still students, and retailers could increase our prices too much.
- Registering as a company within the chamber of commerce
- Mobilizing friends and spreading information about our business on social media
Overall, it is important that we maintain realistic. Thus, we remain students and are limited to the time we have and have to consider that our university courses remain a priority. We need to address shops and markets in which we have a good potential of selling the belts but also not reach beyond our production capacity or our maximum price.