HappyFresh Now in the Philippines

With the growing dismay over rush hour traffic and everyone is busy in their day to day affairs that the only time one can ran thru groceries are mostly during weekends or right after work, I am glad to learn that there is now a new application such as HappyFresh in Metro Manila.  Learned about this new online venture from amongst my friends who came from Lazada and had joined this new digital marketplace called HappyFresh.

After checking out the website, they have a personal shopper who will do your groceries based on the selections you have made in their mobile apps or thru their websites.  You can specify the time when you want it delivered, it’s like one part of your daily or weekly routines has been ease out from you time.

The best part is, you can pay it in cash upon delivery or if you have credit card, you can make use of your credit card.

HappyFresh is a one-hour online grocery delivery service based in Jakarta.  The service allows customers to order groceries, fresh as well as dried goods, via a mobile application and website. The company has partnerships with about 20 supermarkets across Indonesia.  HappyFresh sticks to its one-hour delivery promise by having personal shoppers and drivers based onsite in the various supermarkets.  The HappyFresh app is available in Apple AppStore and Google Play Store.

HappyFresh was founded in October 2014 through the funding from AVG (Asia Venture Group) and started operating in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Jakarta, Indonesia in March 2015.

HappyFresh delivers groceries in the next hour after placing an order – a significant change from the market standard of next day delivery. To select the supermarket to shop from, the customer can either select his location manually or use their current location. After selecting the preferred supermarket, customers can either browse different categories or use the search bar to look for specific products. In the App, customers are able to choose from a range of more than 40,000 items available across different stores.  After adding all the groceries to the shopping cart, the app offers various services before checking-out. First the customer is able to choose if items should be replaced if out of stock.The customer can then choose from various delivery slots, starting within the next hour, and up to six days later. Before completing the order, the customer selects his preferred payment method, either cash on delivery or credit card.

Personal shoppers are based in the different supermarkets and will pick the selected groceries. The items will be delivered by drivers using motorbikes, on which insulated boxes are installed to keep the purchased products in a good condition.

Currently the Philippines (Metro Manila) Happy Fresh Service only offers one supermarket chain, The Robinsons Supermarket, but watched out it will soon roll out more and more supermarket and neighborhood groceries that you are fond of.

Seven Marketing P's

Marketing Strategy

Every business management and marketing students knows that there are elements of marketing mix and it is better known as the 7 P's Marketing Mix.  Its common sense strategy to know these as an anchor in achieving an effective market penetration in any organization of business.  Be it a small mom and pop store, to online business, to big institutional businesses.  An effective marketing strategy will help you to define the overall direction and goals for your marketing. Your strategy should articulate how you are going to deliver your products or services in ways that will satisfy your customers.

Once you have defined your customers or target market, you need to start developing and implementing tactics or ways to reach them. The marketing mix will make up the tactical elements you will use to carry out your strategy and reach your target market.

Market Tactics

Identify the tactical action steps which will turn your strategy into a reality in your marketing plan, using the guide below. Here are the 7 P's of Marketing:

1. Your product or service

What product or services are you going to offer? Discuss the branding, the packaging (where applicable), and ongoing product or development. You should consider the features and benefits you offer, your unique selling points (What makes your product/service different from everyone else's) and what potential spin-off products of services might be.

2. The pricing of your product or service

Price is a critical part of your marketing mix. Choosing the right price for your products or services will help you to maximize profits and also build strong relationships with your customers. By pricing effectively you will also avoid the serious financial consequences that can occur if you price too low (not enough profit) or too high (not enough sales).

3. Your position (place) in the marketplace

Whether it's a retail store, online shop or on social media, 'place' refers to the channels and locations for distributing your product, related information and support services. This is how you will position your product in the marketplace, it's the location where a product can be purchased. Often referred to as the distribution channel, this can include any physical store (e.g supermarket) as well as virtual stores (e.g eBay) online.

Being in the right location can be a deciding factor in whether a customer buys from you or not. To find out where your ideal customer is buying from it's worth doing some market research.

4. The promotion of your product of service

How do you promote and market your business now (or intend to)? Regardless of how good your business is, if you don’t promote it and tell people you exist, it’s unlikely you will make many sales. Promotion is about attracting the right people to use and reuse your business. There are a number of techniques to use and they can be combined in various ways to create the most cost effective strategy for your needs. This can include online, branding, public relations and advertising.

5. The people in your business (e.g. salespeople, staff)

If you have employees in your business, they can influence the marketing of your products and services. Knowledgeable and friendly staff can contribute to creating satisfied customers, and can provide the unique selling experience that an organisation is often seeking. If an outstanding team provides a competitive advantage, then the quality of recruitment and training becomes essential to achieving your marketing objectives. Make sure you have processes and training in place to get the most out of your team.

6. The process represents the buying experience

Process represents the buying experience the customer gets when they buy your product or service. For example, the way a fine bottle of wine is presented and served in a restaurant, the reaction of a business to a complaint or the speed of delivery in a fast food outlet.A poor process can undermine the other elements of the marketing mix. Budget airlines, for example, may offer very competitive headline prices, but if the final price is inflated by additional charges such as baggage charges and administrative fees, customers may begin to feel they have been taken advantage of.

Try to document your key processes and procedures so your staff and suppliers know what to aim for.  This should include:

• financial
• information technology.

7. The physical environment where the good/services are presented

The physical environment where your products or services are sold and delivered can have a significant impact on how your customers' experience your business. The physical environment can be the quality of the furnishings in your consulting rooms, the design of your reception area or website.

Creating a positive physical environment doesn’t have to be costly – a vase full of fresh flowers or a creative window display can make a big difference.

Fast Fashion and the eventual demise of Aeropostale

Aéropostale Inc., announced early this month that they have filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and closing 20 per cent of its stores in North America.  It is closing down 113 of its 739 U.S. stores and all 41 locations in Canada.

So being in the retail business industry, I am quite curious why such a world-recognized brands such as Aeropostale would even go out of business and heres what I learned and I am sharing it to all of you.

Fast-fashion retailers have taken the U.S. apparel industry by storm, driving customers away from specialty casual brands with fresh-fashion being launched almost every week. Designers at Zara, Forever 21 and H&M consistently strive for new designs, conceiving new trends frequently, which subsequently become a must-have for fashion-conscious buyers. Casual apparel retailers like Aeropostale, who earn a major portion of their revenues from basic-logo merchandise, have suffered terribly at the hands of fast-fashion companies.

A lack of comparable innovation and diversity in products has driven Aeropostale’s customers to other retailers in the industry, leaving the company in tatters. Even buyers seeking basic merchandise have shifted their interest from specialty brands to private labels at general merchandise retailers, further adding to Aeropostale’s problems. Due to a significant decline in the number of customers and an increase in traffic driving promotional activities, Aeropostale’s comparable sales have come down substantially over the past four years.

Simultaneously, the retailer’s value has diminished by over 95% over the last five years, and is currently worth just over $120 million in the market. On the outside, it seems a paltry investment for a strategic or a financial buyer, who can revamp the company’s business model and revive its growth away from the investors’ eyes. However, despite long standing speculation around a probable buyout, no one has come forward with an offer. It appears that Aeropostale’s lack of cash, high operating lease and uncertain future have driven investors and potential suitors away.

Customers Will Rather Buy Apparel From Fast-Fashion or Department Retailers

Physical store retailing is declining in the U.S., with the exception of fast-fashion retailers such as Zara, Forever 21 and H&M, who have redefined the fashion industry. In order to attract new customers and convince the existing ones to shop frequently, these players have been proactively launching new designs and trends almost every week. This strategy has drawn the attention of customers, who are now spending more on fashion-forward merchandise from Zara and Forever 21, moving away from specialty brands such as Aeropostale and Abercrombie & Fitch, who mainly sell basic merchandise such as jeans and t-shirts.

Also, rather than spending on branded basic clothes, U.S. shoppers are buying private label basic apparel at department stores and supermarket chains, where they get cheaper prices and comparable quality. For basic apparel, U.S. consumers are no longer sporting the brand they wear, and hence there is minimal brand loyalty. Brand is a concern for them mainly when they go for fashion-forward merchandise. In a way, Aeropostale is stuck between the two worlds, not having enough in its arsenal to attract buyers from either side.

As Aeropostale’s stock fell below $10 towards the end of 2013, speculations of a probable buyout surfaced. Sycamore Partners, which is known to acquire troubled retailers, acquired an 8% stake in the company, referring to it as an attractive investment. An active investor began pushing Aeropostale’s management to consider a sale, after which the company adopted a poison pill plan to shield itself from a hostile takeover. Last year, Aeropostale signed an extensive agreement with Sycamore, that provided it with $150 million from the private equity firm in exchange of 5% of its shares. Aeropostale desperately needed the money as it was burning cash at a rapid pace and was finding it hard to raise capital in the public market. Following the deal, Sycamore’s stake in Aeropostale increased to 14%. Many believed that a buyout offer was imminent, but it never arrived.

Meanwhile, Aeropostale’s stock has hit a record low of $1.57. Its resurrection strategies have failed to prevent customers from shifting to other brands, which has led to significant losses. The company is even closing its underperforming stores to dilute these losses and reduce its operating lease liabilities. Aeropostale reported a total loss of $206 million in 2014, but managed to protect its cash reserves as it received a net of $137 million from financing transaction with Sycamore and borrowed $75 million under revolving credit facility.

However, it is evident that the company cannot sustain such huge losses for long, because it now has just over $100 million in cash and cash equivalents. Also, Aeropostale’s strategies to bring customers back are not working out, which negates the chances of any near-term turnaround. Therefore, a potential suitor might not want to lay its hands on Aeropostale, unless they see a possibility of significant returns on their investments, which seems unlikely at the moment.

Moreover, if strategic or a financial buyer acquires the company, it will have to deal with the retailer’s huge operating leases. Aeropostale currently has total contractual obligations of over $500 million, which is enough to explain why no one has come forth with an offer for the company, even when its current market cap is just around $120 million. Even the supposed savior for Aeropostale – Sycamore Partners – seems to be abandoning ship, as a key Sycamore board member declined his re-election to the board earlier this year.

Writing Awesome Book Titles

I have always been fascinated in reading books and interesting magazine articles.  But what really catches a reader to go and continue reading base on the article or book title description.  Just a little bit of work will give you a great description that piques a reader’s interest.  It’s always a good thing when you can pitch your story well. But so many authors settle for lame title descriptions, making their books or article a hard sell. You may have even looked at your description and thought it could be better, but you haven’t known how or where to start.

I want to just share in this blog what I think would best be an attractive and awesome title description.

Research… Lots of research

I’m a big fan of doing research the way successful titles are doing things. The process of writing a title description is no exception. You can learn a lot by spending time looking at the descriptions of other titles and what better way to start than at the biggest online book seller, Amazon.  Here you will find great titles and best seller books.

We may start finding a book’s category in the Top List section of the Kindle store and click the category link to see that Top List. Look at the list for the Top 100 Paid books in that category and choose some books to research. I’d recommend checking out at least the top ten titles on the first page, then maybe two or three that look interesting on the remaining four pages of results. That means you’ll be looking at around twenty to thirty books.

Take a moment to read through the descriptions of these books. Take note of what elements you see. Look at what displays as the description before the Read more link — often called “above the fold.” This may be the only text the reader sees, so it’s very important to make sure your key description points are included in this section.

You’ll want to do the exercise for yourself with your own categories. Different genres will often have different strategies that work to sell books. But to give you an example, here’s a list of some of the things I saw when I did this exercise with books in the Science Fiction Adventure category.

Bold teaser text with an eye-grabbing tagline. A vague statement like “humanity might not survive” doesn’t say much about the story details, but it sets the mood draws the reader’s eye to the description area.

Simple formatting, but a very compelling description in brief paragraphs.

A sentence near the top of the description that offers an interesting idea. Varying list will probably look a little bit different due to different genre conventions, but some of the elements should be similar. With the list, you can get started crafting a description that fills these parameters, which makes the job less daunting. Instead of approaching the task with the goal of, “I’m going to make a great book title description,” you can say, “I need a tagline, a compelling summary, and an interesting idea.” It’s much more manageable to take it one piece at a time.

Let’s take a moment to look at two keys that are important for any title description:  An intriguing summary and an attention-grabbing tagline.

Attention-Grabber

Many book descriptions use a bolded tagline that’s designed to stand out. It catches the reader’s eye and directs their attention to rest of the description. Get someone reading the tagline, and their eyes will often continue to the description on autopilot.

There are two ways to make an attention-grabber: Pull a quote from your book, or write a really great tagline.

Book Quote

Have you ever opened a novel and found a short paragraph from the book on the first page? That’s the idea here. Find an iconic, amazing section from your book, put it in bold or italics, and you’re done. Since every book is unique, I can’t tell you what to pick, but I can tell you that you may get some good suggestions by asking your readers what part of the book stood out to them visually or emotionally.

Tagline

A tagline is just one sentence. It’s typically something vague that sets a mood or tone for the description that follows. Again, I can’t tell you what would make a good tagline for your book, but if you’ve done your research into similar titles in your categories, you should already have a wealth of inspiration.

Make It Look Awesome

Now that you have an incredible description, you might want to think about making it even better by applying some basic formatting.   There you have it! You are now equipped to create an incredible title description for your book. It’s completely worth the couple of hours you might spend doing research and crafting your description. You’ll stand out from the crowd of inept descriptions and make your book look like a great buy for someone’s book shelf.