Columnists

Failure to plan killing many startups

entre

Repercussions of such ill-informed assumptions often lead to businesses crumbling. FILE PHOTO | NMG

Entrepreneurship thrives as a growing concept in the Kenyan market as more young people open their eyes to the manifest benefits that come along with it with the hope of not being left out in the whole craze.

One specific field that underwent the highest growth rates is fashion entrepreneurship. Juxtaposed amidst increasing numbers of young people venturing into fashion, the market also encountered a reasonable number of such business ventures not surviving through the startup phase.

One therefore begs to ask the question, what is it that fashion entrepreneurs are not doing right?

Has the Kenyan market not advanced enough to understand this form of new venture? Is it that most of their ideas are not viable for our market currently?

Most fashion entrepreneurs enter the market with no plan of any sort. When getting into the market, they assume that their brilliant creative entrepreneurial ideas will suffice and everything will fall into place.

Repercussions of such ill-informed assumptions often lead to businesses crumbling.

Planning provides the fashion entrepreneur a trajectory that maps the growth of their ventures. Growth which ranges from idea generation to what kind of team players one’s venture requires, to the introduction of products into the market, and subsequently retaining clients.

Such processes give entrepreneurs a clear layout of how the venture will advance. In an event where a deviation from the established course occurs, it can easily be noted and rectified before it negatively influences the business.

The principal purpose of all fashion entrepreneurial ventures involves turning their client segments into sales, repeat business and thereafter referrals.

In order for the cycle to occur, there must be a logical progression of how a client comes to know, like and trust the business. Then, clients will follow a four-step behaviour process: decide to try, buy, repeat and refer the product.

Specifically, many young Kenyan entrepreneurs desire to enter the fashion space through blogging. Naturally, such concepts immensely apply to fashion bloggers.

Turning happenstance readers into repeat readers on one’s blog, the written content should build trust, exude excitement, and educate clientele on different topics.

The content one makes will therefore be the distinctive factor between the entrepreneur and other fashion bloggers.

Extensive research that gives entrepreneurs a better understanding of their ventures occur for them to fully understand the businesses they intend to run.

Unfortunately, similar to planning failures, such research also lacks among fashion entrepreneurs.

In most cases, the entrepreneur will move from idea generation to producing the actual product without considering what the clients actually deeply crave, desire and want.

The business hopeful usually assumes that they hold clear understandings of clients really want.

But entrepreneurs must survey and interview prospective customers to know their pain points and what solutions can be tailored to solve their issues.

Therefore, research on the entrepreneur’s part tries to bring a better understanding of the market.

Which competitors already exist in the market, what gaps exists where no solutions are currently offered, how unique does your product or service solution stand against others, do you hold a competitive edge?

Answer such salient questions and conduct proper planning and research before launching your fashion business.

A little planning on the frontend saves entrepreneurs from tremendous pain and disappoint down the road.

[email protected].