For the beginning half of the week, we attended a lecture on Product Lifecycle, Business Plans, Design Process and a Summary of Roles within our company.
'The Product Life Cycle. A new product progresses through a sequence of stages from introduction to growth, maturity, and decline. This sequence is known as the product life cycle and is associated with changes in the marketing situation, thus impacting the marketing strategy and the marketing mix.'
This is basically to teach us about the different stages that a product goes through in order to be manufactured and taken out into the industry. As you can see, there are a lot of steps involved. The Concept is all about the initial idea. Think like feasibility (whether it is possible to make and whether it will sell), target market, competitors , USP (unique selling point) and research needs to be considered within this step.
It then moves onto Definition which is focus on what the product will be and what it's purpose is. A business plan is also created at this point which I will talk about later. Development involves prototyping, which means to make practice or hypothetical versions of what it is you're making- whether it be an app, a product, a store etc. This needs to be tested to see if it works.
New Product Introduction: 'To provide rapid R&D, Prototyping and Production Planning Services - on time, on budget, with the highest level of quality to minimize our Customers' time to market and ensure reliable future production.'
Production: A production plan will include plans for manufacture, pricing, availability of supplies and fabrication, and a time plan that considers the amounts of products being produced in a specific time frame that lies alongside profit.
The End Of Life is the 'final stages of a products' existence'. 'For the manufacturer, EOL concerns involve not only discontinuing production but also continuing to address the market needs that the
product addresses -- which might lead to the development of a new product. For the business using the product, EOL concerns include disposing of the existing product responsibly, transitioning to a different product and ensuring that disruption will be minimal.'
The design process talks us through the steps of designing a 'product' for a brand. Step 1. Initial Research is about looking at existing stores and products that already exist to both use as inspiration and to note as competitors. By knowing who your competitors are, you can assess what it is that they do that makes them so successful and assess what it is that they're missing or lacking. Both these things can really help your brand become successful. It is really helpful to always be looking at trends and to collect fabric/ paper samples, trims, shape ideas and layout inspiration.
Step 2. involves looking at ideas for new products by searching for gaps in the market. If there's a gap, it means that you can cater for needs of customers that no one else can. This means that customers will buy into your brand.
Step 3. is really about developing the product and really thinking about every aspect of it. Creating different variations and options means that you can discuss them in a group meeting and talk about what works best.
Step 4. Alterations and suitable changes are made to the product to ensure that it is perfect. Costings are now considered at this point- is it affordable and do your pricings fit in with today's market?
Step 5. Costings are now finalised and given to the following group of people that will carry out the next steps.
Within our group, we have all decided on different roles that we will be carrying out. These roles all work together but work independently on specific areas and everything is decided and finalised as a group.
Jasmin and myself are Design/ Product Development Managers so our job entails;
- Researching anything relevant to our brand, i.e. competitors, gaps in the market, what's current.
- Looking at trends in order to ensure our brand is always current and keeping up with the industry,
- Designing; colour pallets, collections, illustrations, mood boards.
TREND RESEARCH
My job as Design Manager involves looking into trends so I used WGSN to reseach the latest colour pallets and textures. I then used these moodboards to come up with my colour palette for our collection.
On the following session, we met up in the morning for an informal meeting about our progress. We talked about the age range we wish to cater for, the plans for our store, the use of social media and went back over our roles as designers and managers. In the afternoon we used the session to try and come up with a name for our brand.
This is basically to teach us about the different stages that a product goes through in order to be manufactured and taken out into the industry. As you can see, there are a lot of steps involved. The Concept is all about the initial idea. Think like feasibility (whether it is possible to make and whether it will sell), target market, competitors , USP (unique selling point) and research needs to be considered within this step.
It then moves onto Definition which is focus on what the product will be and what it's purpose is. A business plan is also created at this point which I will talk about later. Development involves prototyping, which means to make practice or hypothetical versions of what it is you're making- whether it be an app, a product, a store etc. This needs to be tested to see if it works.
New Product Introduction: 'To provide rapid R&D, Prototyping and Production Planning Services - on time, on budget, with the highest level of quality to minimize our Customers' time to market and ensure reliable future production.'
Production: A production plan will include plans for manufacture, pricing, availability of supplies and fabrication, and a time plan that considers the amounts of products being produced in a specific time frame that lies alongside profit.
The End Of Life is the 'final stages of a products' existence'. 'For the manufacturer, EOL concerns involve not only discontinuing production but also continuing to address the market needs that the
product addresses -- which might lead to the development of a new product. For the business using the product, EOL concerns include disposing of the existing product responsibly, transitioning to a different product and ensuring that disruption will be minimal.'
The design process talks us through the steps of designing a 'product' for a brand. Step 1. Initial Research is about looking at existing stores and products that already exist to both use as inspiration and to note as competitors. By knowing who your competitors are, you can assess what it is that they do that makes them so successful and assess what it is that they're missing or lacking. Both these things can really help your brand become successful. It is really helpful to always be looking at trends and to collect fabric/ paper samples, trims, shape ideas and layout inspiration.
Step 2. involves looking at ideas for new products by searching for gaps in the market. If there's a gap, it means that you can cater for needs of customers that no one else can. This means that customers will buy into your brand.
Step 3. is really about developing the product and really thinking about every aspect of it. Creating different variations and options means that you can discuss them in a group meeting and talk about what works best.
Step 4. Alterations and suitable changes are made to the product to ensure that it is perfect. Costings are now considered at this point- is it affordable and do your pricings fit in with today's market?
Step 5. Costings are now finalised and given to the following group of people that will carry out the next steps.
Jasmin and myself are Design/ Product Development Managers so our job entails;
- Researching anything relevant to our brand, i.e. competitors, gaps in the market, what's current.
- Looking at trends in order to ensure our brand is always current and keeping up with the industry,
- Designing; colour pallets, collections, illustrations, mood boards.
TREND RESEARCH
My job as Design Manager involves looking into trends so I used WGSN to reseach the latest colour pallets and textures. I then used these moodboards to come up with my colour palette for our collection.
On the following session, we met up in the morning for an informal meeting about our progress. We talked about the age range we wish to cater for, the plans for our store, the use of social media and went back over our roles as designers and managers. In the afternoon we used the session to try and come up with a name for our brand.
This proved to be quite difficult! We started off with key words that summed up our brand and using synonyms or mixing words together but we didn't come across anything that we ALL loved so we decided to call it a day.
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