Adversity
Adversity strikes once!
After a much upsetting bad business decision, i had to start all over again, but this time completely by myself.
SUPRISE!
My circumstances, were surprising and extremely challenging to say the least. i found myself, in a position where broke, unemployed and demotivated.
These circumstances, tapped into my creative and lateral thinking — and bang, turning adversity into success, is what i learnt. Because of these extreme conditions, i had to rethink my business strategy, there are three things that i did strategically, and did them over a period of time. these were, decrease my purchasing price per item purchased, increased my selling price and last but not least — increased my retail brand value. in fact once i had made the decision, i was able to do all three with a matter of less than 3 weeks.
i searched, for different suppliers throughout south africa and the world, looking at price and quality over a period of 4 months. In this way i was able to decrease my purchasing price from these new suppliers, at the same time by as much as 30% — 70%.
Increasing my price, i created different price ranges for each product. So for example with my ostrich leather wallets, i now had 4 different wallets, which were different in styles, and were all at different price ranges. I stepped my pricing, whilst looking at my cost price.
Increased my perceived value , this was merchandising towards a more sophisticated retail store and created descriptive price tags for each and every product.
Books that i read to help, were: Profit First; Boutique Management; Behaviour Psychology.