DEVELOP A MARKETING PLAN Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

DEVELOP A MARKETING PLAN - Essay Example However, the entrance of smaller companies that offer the same diversity in design and high class quality is forcing to reinvent itself. This paper will explore the marketing opportunities it can tap in order to reinvent its image to a flexible label that is essential to every fashion genre. Situation Analysis Internal Environment One word. That’s all it takes for a person to know someone inside and out, its history, its sensibilities, its personality, and its relationships. That word is the brand name. Coca-Cola. iPod. Nike. Google. Their identities are so strong and so embedded to the minds of the consumers that no single study, perhaps not even a compound of a thousand, can comprehensively explain how each company built it. Cotton On, despite being a young label, has experienced a certain amount of success in positioning themselves in the market and securing a loyal consumer base who identifies them with the same laidback, simple, and organic image of the country where it o riginated from, Australia. It is, despite possible apprehension of the fashion elite a brand that exudes style. It started in 1991 in Geelong, Victoria, Australia. Twenty years is considered young in the fashion retail business. Yet, it has expanded to more than 600, employing more than 4,500 people in the same countries where it distributes - Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and the US. Its success may be credited to the same formula that casual brands like Roxy and Target has (Grail, 2009). It has managed to become an accessible brand but its lines were never tacky or common. By not emphasizing its affordability and flaunting its quality in both engineering and aesthetics have allowed it to develop a stylish image that cuts across all segments age, gender, and social class. External Environment The cards the Australian fashion industry has are not good ones. It seems easier to fold than to call it. The geography itself is a disadvantage of epic proportion. It is more than 20 hours away by plane from all of the major fashion capitals such as Paris, London, and New York. The time difference also means contradicting weather. When it’s summer in Australia, it is winter in Paris. To any fashion expert, that’s a recipe for disaster. The international economic crisis also damaged the value of the Australian, from 53 to 106 Australian cents to the US dollar. Any fashions sales expert will tell you, that’s setting yourself up for suicide and mutilation because it makes any exported product from Australia expensive (Gay, 2010). Juxtapose this with the continuous birth and growth of many other labels from or manufactured in Asian countries where labour and raw materials are affordable and you have a losing formula. The disadvantages don’t end there. The local market is small. There are only 23 million people in a country that highly penetrated by international brand whose volume of production allow them to sell products at a much lower price. The only way for any brand to grow is to go out of the Australia. The complexities continue. Unlike other secondary fashion markets like Brazil, India and China which is difficult because