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Pet Retail Industry

Pet Retail Industry

About the Pet Retail Industry

The pet retail industry refers to the sector or market or businesses that deal in goods and services for pets or companion animals via retail channels, including both brick-and-mortar and eCommerce.

Common types of pet retail businesses:

  • Pet food and accessory stores (brick-and-mortar)
  • Full-service pet stores (brick-and-mortar)
  • Specialty pet stores (offline) / Niche online stores
  • Boutique pet stores (brick-and-mortar)
  • Online retail stores
  • Retailers on eCommerce platforms
  • Offline service providers (sitting/boarding, training, medical care and attention)

Common types of goods and services sold/provided by pet retail businesses:

  • Pet food
  • Pet toys
  • Pet-related accessories
  • Pet training services
  • Pet grooming services
  • Veterinarian services
  • Pet sitting services
  • Day-care services

As per a report by Grand View Research, here are some of the statistics on the global pet care market:

  • aluation of global pet care market (2021) = USD 150.67 billion
  • Expected market growth rate (2022-2030) = 5.1% (CAGR)
  • Projected market valuation (2030) = USD 236.1 billion

Challenges in the Pet Retail Industry

Growing Cross-Channel Competition

Before eCommerce, the pet retail market was dominated by offline retailers. As with other retail product categories, the brick-and-mortar market for pet products also began to experience competition from the eCommerce channel. The ability of big eCommerce platforms, specialised online brands, and retailers selling via the eCommerce route to offer competitive prices and more convenience to customers continues to pose a big challenge for traditional retail pet product stores. Even new small players in the online retail market face similar challenges from the bigger eCommerce players.

Big retail supermarket chains with their growing omnichannel presence make the pet retail market challenging for both offline and online brands and businesses with no omnichannel capabilities.

Brand Loyalty for Established Brands

When it comes to pet products and services, there is a strong tendency among customers to go for known and reputed brands in anticipation of getting better quality products and services. For a long time, there were only a handful of players with established reputations and popularity. Their market positions have remained solid for decades. It is difficult for new and emerging businesses to shake off the strong levels of brand perception mastered by these big brands.

Margin Crisis

A large majority of the retail businesses in local markets sell products of known brands. Considering their position in the supply chain, they operate under narrow margins. They have very limited scope to gain any pricing advantage over their local competitors. In pet retail consulting, YRC sometimes suggests its clients overcome this margin crisis by offering quality non-branded products and pet-related services.

Evaluating Business Prospects

Love and affection for pets and a good understanding of pet behaviour has very little to do with business acumen and planning a business for success or even evaluating the prospects of one. YRC strictly recommends that without thorough market research and solid business planning, entrepreneurs should not stretch themselves too far.

Aligning with Today’s Customers

Since time immemorial, humans and pets are known to have shared strong emotional camaraderie. To many, their pets are part of their families. People seek to provide their pets with the same level of care as they would for any human family member. There is a material side to it concerning products and services and then there is a side of empathy and understanding which retail businesses must have and show to resonate with today’s pet owners. This empathy and understanding allows pet brands and businesses to come up with and offer better products and services. This becomes a challenge for many retailers/retail businesses because of not giving enough value to customer perspective and not properly listening to their concerns and quickly jumping to offering them products and services.

The demand for natural or organic products is another emerging concern for pet retail brands and businesses as these products tend to be costly with fewer suppliers.

Also, there is a growing emphasis on the dietary needs of pets. Gone are the days when one or two food items were considered enough for pets. Today, pet retail businesses must maintain an extensive and updated range of pet food products.

Adherence to Regulations

Today, the laws governing animal care and welfare, food safety, product labelling, and pet-related services are more stringent than ever. Retailers must keep themselves updated on all those aspects which affect them directly and indirectly while selling/providing pet products and services. This also helps them to educate customers and make more relevant recommendations pertaining to pet care and maintenance.

Surfing the Tides of Social Media

Social media has played a big role in not just promoting the adoption of pet animals but also in spreading mass awareness of the conditions in which animals are living in human colonies without human support and care. Content related to animals (including pets) resonates strongly with people with genuine love and concern for animals. Social media can help connect these people with pet retail brands and businesses that have something meaningful to offer. Businesses should also bear in mind that negative publicity on social media can do long-lasting damage to their brand reputation.

Current Trends and Future Projections

Pet Humanisation

Pet humanisation is increasingly becoming an accepted phenomenon and it is likely to trend in the future. This is also going to lead to an increased demand for premium products and services, personalisation (curated offerings for pets as per unique needs), infusion of technology in pet care solutions, more efficient channels of distribution, and pet healthcare clinics and hospitals.

Premium Products and Services

In parts of the world, there is a growing market for luxury and premium pet products and services like:

  • Specific pet foods, personalised nutrition, organic food
  • Pet accessories and apparel of premium/luxury quality
  • Sophisticated pet healthcare solutions

Personalisation

The strategy of personalisation will continue to pervade further into the pet retail market. Services always tend to play a bigger and more effective role in personalisation than products in general. This brings into the picture the role of professional veterinarians and specialised pet care clinics and hospitals.

Omnichannel and ECommerce

ECommerce has already emerged as a dominating force in pet retail markets forcing many traditional brands and businesses to adopt the omnichannel route. While the inherent benefits of eCommerce will continue to woo customers, omnichannel expertise will enable retailers to deliver the best of both worlds to customers. Service elements like home delivery, click-and-collect, seamless shopping across channels, and subscriptions are going to remain crucial for omnichannel success.

Focus on Health and Wellness

The recent years have also been marked by heightened emphasis on health and wellness of pets. This has resulted in the demand for specialised products and services like nutritious food and supplements, safe toys and other accessories, and professional healthcare and wellness solutions. A little less-known trend is also the emergence of pet healthcare insurance.

Sustainability and Ethical Sourcing

Sustainability and ethical concerns were never far away from the pet industry in the first place. It is common to see that people who have a soft side for animals also tend to be environment-conscious in general. This opens up a new dimension of consideration for pet brands and businesses including manufacturers and supply chain entities. A few important standards and practices which businesses in the pet care industry should already focus on are:

  • Green packaging
  • Use of natural and organic ingredients in pet foods and supplements
  • Cruelty-free certification

Smart Products

Smart products like wearables, automated feeders and litter boxes, and GPS trackers are already in markets and used by a large section of customers in many parts of the world. It may not be a thing everywhere yet but companies are trying to reach out to their target segments in relevant markets with their smart products and services.

Niche Segments

With the growth and expansion of the pet retail markets, many new segments have surfaced in the niche category for pets with unique needs and requirements. So, we may have more pet businesses catering to niche segments like senior pet care, special support services, and premium pet supplies.

Data-Driven Decisions

Like other retail businesses, pet retailers will also have to adopt more data-driven decision-making and strategy formulation for streamlining and optimising their inventory management, customer experience and CRM, personalisation, product development (for manufacturers), and other important areas of business.

Why YRC as Pet Retail Business Consultants

We are a retail and eCommerce consulting firm specialising in solutions for business set-up, business growth and expansion, and improved management. With more than ten years in business, we have worked with more than 500 clients of varying scale in over 25 verticals. Services we offer to pet retail brands and businesses are highlighted ahead.

Market Research

In market research for pet retail businesses, we deliver comprehensive market insights with actionable inputs and CTAs on a wide range of parameters:

  • Market gaps and potential
  • Market classification and segmentation
  • Identification of strong value propositions
  • Defining consumer behaviour and buyer personas
  • Market entry and exit
  • Opportunities for growth and expansion in future
  • Pricing
  • Channel and distribution
  • Advertising and promotions

Business Model Development

As highlighted earlier in the previous content sections, the pet industry is undergoing many developments affecting all businesses in supply chains that deal with pet products and services. In light of these developments, pet retail business model development can no longer be approached with the same fundamentals that worked five years ago. Also, there is increasing cross-channel competition that makes deciding on value propositions very trickier.

In business model development, our experts deploy features of contemporary elements like omnichannel, personalisation, localisation, sustainability, dynamic pricing, customer experience, niche positioning, and digital transformation.

Omnichannel Consulting

In any industry, retailers can no longer delay adopting the omnichannel way of doing business. Pet retail is a relatively new form of business in many parts of the world. It can take months or even years before a retail enterprise begins to get closer to the right omnichannel set-up. An early start on the right foot can give a competitive edge to your pet retail business.

YRC has been a veteran advocate of omnichannel and in its more than 10 years of experience (and counting), we have worked with numerous clients in strategic planning and implementation of their omnichannel endeavours. Our expertise in both retail and eCommerce channels gives us an upper hand in coming up with better omnichannel solutions on shorter timelines.

ECommerce Consulting for Pet Retail Businesses

As going omnichannel is increasingly becoming a necessity in the pet retail business, startups and existing businesses in the brick-and-mortar format must incorporate eCommerce with a strategic and planned approach to build or convert into a feasible omnichannel enterprise.

In eCommerce consulting for pet retail businesses, YRC offers an extensive range of solutions for setting up businesses and planning for and implementing growth and expansion projects. These solutions include market research, business model development, development of business plans, formulation of functional strategies, SOP development and implementation, defining the business-IT systems, SOP-IT integration, franchise execution and management, and audit programs. Our objective here is to analyse, improvise, and implement effective solutions in a planned and systematic manner.

Functional Strategies

Having the right strategies for each business function acts like doing the discrete things correctly so that the enterprise-level strategies work as intended. For example, hiring people cannot be independent of the skill requirements put forward by other departmental heads. Similarly, a departmental head cannot commit something to a candidate that the HR policies of that organisation do not permit. Our service objective here is to make sure that the functional strategic framework is carefully defined and aligned with the broader business goals, objectives, and strategies.

Location Analysis

Decisions related to the locations of business units have far-reaching implications in both brick-and-mortar and eCommerce.

In brick-and-mortar, the location of stores affects the following (the big ones):

  • How effortlessly customers can reach/visit the store
  • How efficiently home delivery services could be completed
  • How quickly inventory replenishment could be done
  • How easily employees and service providers can reach the store
  • Profitability (as the cost of leasing or renting a commercial space in a decent location tends to be high)
  • Achieving the objectives of branding
  • Ability to capture market share (avoidance of market saturation)
  • Alignment with community engagement

For eCommerce brands and businesses with their own/outsourced distribution capabilities, the most important factor that shapes their location strategy is achieving efficiency and effectiveness in replenishment, shipping, and order fulfilment (including return/exchange operations). Order fulfilment is the heart and soul of eCommerce. Everything else in a value chain is rendered meaningless if order fulfilment is not what it is promised to be to key customer demographics.

In location analysis and strategy formulation, our experts work on the same from the very beginning. We understand that location decisions are not stand alone and that these are affected by both operational conditions and broad strategic objectives.

Layout Planning

Most of the traditional pet retail stores used to be small and compact in terms of their spatial dimensions (many of them still are). The emphasis on visual merchandising or customer experience was not as profound as compared to today’s pet retail stores. Today, pet retailers are not keeping things confined. There is a heightened focus on store layout aspects like zone classification, navigation, visual appeal, operational efficiency, safety, and quicker checkout. In developing pet store layout planning solutions, YRC’s approach is to let the layout speak for the brand while securing superlative customer experience and operational excellence.

SOP Development and Implementation | SOP-IT Integration

YRC maintains that in modern-day retailing, irrespective of the industry, the implications of the quality of operations planning are not limited to operations alone. It also touches on customer experience, customer acquisition, customer retention, profitability, and the operational prospects of business growth and expansion in the future.

SOP development and implementation is one of YRC’s flagship competencies. Our experts define the operations framework with an inside-out approach while acknowledging that SOPs reflect only surface-level operations planning. Our goal is to help businesses become process-oriented from the core.

We also offer expert assistance in identifying the compatible business-IT solutions for operations management followed up with the necessary SOP-IT integration. Here, we help in vendor search and selection and coordinating the support services from them in the customisation and deployment of the IT solutions.

For additional information on Pet Store Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), please visit YRC’s website.

Financial and Commercial Planning

Financial and commercial planning is one of the most important areas of deliberations in giving a sustainable shape and direction to a business idea or decision. The lack of it does the opposite – endangers commercial feasibility. Without a roadmap for securing financial and commercial stability and sustenance, the very existence of an enterprise remains always questionable.

With more than 10 years of experience, YRC is acquainted with the standard as well as the veiled aspects of financial and commercial planning in retail and eCommerce. Here, the major elements covered include:

  • Assessment of capital requirements
  • Assessment of operating expenditure
  • Projection of demand
  • Estimation of sales and revenue
  • Estimated cash flow
  • Preparation of estimated profit and loss statements
  • ROI and break-even analysis
  • Presentation of financial ratios

Franchise Consulting

Many startups and small and medium pet retail and distributor businesses see a good opportunity in associating with big brands of the global pet retail industry. It gives them instant brand recognition of their own and helps attract customers in their respective local and regional markets. The question then arises as to how to go about it. Who can address their business needs and prerogatives for a successful franchising arrangement?

In pet franchise consulting services, YRC maintains that it is very important to build productive working relationships between franchisors and franchisees. Our role here is to help pet retail brands and businesses engage via a defined framework of business relationships with the due incorporation of individual and mutual interests of the parties involved. Our services cover:

  • Franchise expansion strategy
  • Franchise business model development
  • Franchise business plan
  • Franchise associate selection
  • Franchise operations planning (Franchise SOPs)
  • Franchise agreements

To know more about YRC’s retail pet store business consulting services encompassing new business set-up, improved management, and franchise adoption and expansion or to speak to one of YRC’s pet retail business consultants, please visit the company’s website: https://www.yourretailcoach.in/contact/

FAQs

How can I attract new customers to my pet retail store?

Before anything else, it is important that you accurately identify your customer base, know the characteristics of your ideal customers, and understand their needs and expectations. Without knowing who your customers are or what they are looking for, you could be shooting in the dark. Here are some strategies for customer acquisition:

  •         Invest in developing a more attractive storefront.
  •         Extend your range of merchandise.
  •         Promote your business on relevant social media platforms (e.g. Facebook), choose your target demographics after careful deliberations.
  •         Listen to/monitor in-store customer feedback to understand what additional value propositions could be brought.
  •         Find out a few specific physical locations in your city/town where the chances of your advertising banners/posters getting noticed by the right customers are high.

·         Encourage customers to leave a positive review on search engine listings if they had a satisfactory experience.

How can a traditional pet retail store adopt omnichannel?

Here are some strategies for your consideration:

Build an online presence of your business on popular search engines (make sure all important details are filled in like distinct store name, a couple of phone numbers, website URL (if already have one), location details with coordinates, working hours, localities served, etc.)

Start small – open online sales channels by taking orders over the phone. This experience will help you in building and running a full-fledged eCommerce channel over your online store (website/app) in the future.

Integration of in-store operations with online fulfilment operations (remember that customers expect a smooth shopping experience whether they are buying online or from the store, so your store operations must accommodate both online and offline sales).

How can my traditional pet store compete with online giants and other online retailers?

Traditional retailers often undermine that they are endowed with an understanding of local markets by default. This understanding gives them a unique advantage over their online competitors for exercising dominance on the grounds of localisation and personalisation. For example, a local pet retail business can make changes in its offerings more promptly based on changes in the local market conditions. Local retailers also have the advantage of first-hand dealing experience with customers that can be used for better personalisation. The experience and expertise of localites are two of the prime driving factors for big brands to expand via the franchising route.

What should be the staffing strategy for my pet retail business?

The answer to this query rests on the size and magnitude of your business.

For micro or small businesses with limited resources, an efficient staffing strategy is – business owners managing the business with the help of their family members. Hiring an employee immediately brings in a fixed operational cost. Unless there is any regulatory stipulation or there is any technical expertise involved which is not available in-house, self-staffing is a good idea.

If your business is bigger than anything that could be called micro or small and you think you have a sound budget to fall on, having staff could help you focus on broader business goals and objectives as well. It is also very important that you know the role for which you are hiring an employee. Before finalising staffing decisions, you should also bear in mind that you might have to pay salaries even during dull periods of business.

Always be in the know of the applicable rules and regulations governing employment and ensure that you consistently adhere to them.

Close to staffing decisions, pet retail training for your employees is also important to deliver a quality customer experience.

Let’s Talk!

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    We work only for Visionaries.

    CONTACT

    PROCESS AUTOMATION

    The idea of having Ecommerce Consultants on-board from the beginning itself points towards reducing the involvement of the promoters in daily operations. Ecommerce Businesses willing to be a brand reaping profits & sustaining the competition must ensure that most of their processes should be automated. The more the manual intervention, the more would be the errors.

    In Ecommerce business, you get only 1 chance to impress the customer & if you mess up there, you lose the customer for long.

    Process automation in respect to all the activities pertaining to customers from order receiving to order fulfilment is a must for a seamless experience for the customers.

    Task Management is another grey area where most deadlines fail as 90% of the tasks are assigned manually & are forgotten, unheard, misunderstood or mistaken.

    YRC Team of Ecommerce Management Consultants helps to make maximum of the processes system-driven to ensure minimalistic manual intervention.

    VIDEOGRAPHY & PHOTOGRAPHY

    No matter how good your product is, the customer would know only if it looks good.

    Photography includes the following steps:

    • Cataloguing your products
    • Cataloguing your images
    • Backup your images (A few cloud storage solutions include Dropbox, Google Drive, Bitcasa, Apple’s Cloud Storage etc.)
    • Choose the right camera & lens (You may also outsource the photography to a third party agency)

    DIGITAL MARKETING

    Digital Marketing includes SEO & SMM. SEO i.e. Search Engine Optimization includes activities like back-linking, meta tags, blog-writing etc. to ensure your website ranks on the 1st page on Google Search.

    Next comes SMM i.e. “Social Media Marketing” which as the name suggests including promoting your products on all the social media sites, email marketing, influencer marketing & several other BTL activities.

    These activities are going to be recurring & would decide the traffic on the website, the conversions, whether the right target market is tapped, the likes, the views, the orders, the reviews & much more. YRCs Ecommerce Consultants create a budget for digital marketing right from pre-launch to launch & for each month thereafter.

    Building digital marketing strategies in coordination with the agency, selecting them to signing them off would be the role of YRC.

    This ensures seamless coordination, detailed interactions & desired execution as it is always advisable to work with a single agency than multiple of them.

    IT INTEGRATION

    Selection of the right software for smooth functioning of back-end operations right from production to webstore display would be suggested and integrated by YRC Team.

    YRC’s Team defines SOPs of Product Movement, maps it with the locations & people. They then create a blueprint of all the features required in the software & help in shortlisting & selection.

    IT Integration involves connecting your offline inventories with real-time online webstore so when a sale occurs, inventories get deducted real time across offline as well as online platforms.

    This helps in accurate inventory management, maintaining the MOQs, re-order levels & achieving the optimum inventory levels.

    Some popular software include unicommerce, viniculum for your front-end website management & Genisys for your entire back-end Purchase, Production, Accounting, Invoicing etc. management.

    WAREHOUSE & LOGISTICS PLANNING

    • How many cities or countries you wish to sell in?
    • Where should your Warehouse be located?
    • Should you have one warehouse in each country or city?
    • Should you be having your own delivery team in your base city?
    • Would the 3rd party vendors be reliable? What happens when they lose or misplace your product during delivery?
    • How should I manage the logistics if my goods are coming from different countries?
    • How should the goods be stored and barcoded?
    • How much space do I require for warehouse?
    • I am sure several such questions must be haunting you while you think of starting your own fashion ecommerce brand.

     

    At YRC, our warehousing and logistics experts can help you devise a strategy for all of the above mentioned queries and much more.

    We design the layout of the Warehouse considering the inward, goods processing, software entry, barcoding, outward, goods return, scrap storage, goods stacking & much more.

    Logistics route plan is devised considering the manufacturer to your warehouse and from there to last mile delivery locations.

    UI & UX DESIGNING

    This Step involves 03 distinct parts:

    Part 1: Choosing the right Platform:

    From several platforms available in the market right from Shopify to magento, woocommerce, prestoshop, wordpress etc. you must choose the one that fits best for your business

    Part 2: UX Designing:

    “UX” denotes User Experience, which if put in simple language is building the functional requirements of the website.

    UX Designing includes designing the features required in the website, customer journey map, website features, the browsing features, navigation features, ecommerce order management process flow, checkout cart features, catalogue management, ecommerce payment system, cross selling features & much more.

    “As per statistics, 68% of the customers abandon the carts before payment”

    An interesting UX ensures the customer sticks on to the website for a longer time.

    Part 3: UI Designing:

    UI stands for User Interface, which means designing the look and feel of the website. UI includes using the right colours, elements and the entire aesthetics of the website.

    A good User Interface ensures the user completes the task that he has come for. It navigates the user through the journey of the brand in the simplest but most effective way.

    The UX designer maps out the bare bones of the user journey; the UI designer then fills it in with visual and interactive elements.

    If User experience is the bare bone, user interface wraps it up with an attractive cape.

    At YRC, our team if experts can help you develop the entire User Journey to ensure it is engaging!

    SAMPLING & PRODUCTION

    This step follows the “Designing” Phase, whether you have an in-house design team, freelance designers or an outsourced design company. It is one of the most exciting phases, as here you see your designs turning into products & your ideas turning into reality.

    In most start-up cases, production is outsourced i.e. brands tie-up with the established manufacturers/ job-workers to get their products manufactured.

    Sampling involves multiple 04 Stages, Fit-Sample, Prototype Sample, Pre-Production Sample & the Production Sample.

    Prototype Sample is the first sample provided to the buyer. It can be in any fabric/ colour. This sample is just to understand whether the product design looks equally great in reality.

    Fit Sample, as the name suggests is prepared to check the fit of the garment i.e. the various sizes, length, width etc.

    Pre-production is made by the actual production line. Here the stitching quality and other aspects related to manufacturing are checked. This is the last stage where rejection can be accepted.

    Production Sample is made before the production which is the replica of what is going to be finally produced.

    Once you are through with all this, you are good to go ahead & get your goods manufactured.

    PRODUCT DESIGNING / SOURCING

    Product Designing or Sourcing is the heart of the Ecommerce Fashion Brand.

    Product Designing / Sourcing can be done in several ways, as follows:

    • In-house Design Team
    • Freelance Designers
    • Outsourced Design Team
    • Ready Product Sourcing (From Manufacturer or Wholesaler)

    At YRC, we evaluate your business strategy & business model to arrive at the decision, which of the above ways would be best-fit for your business. In certain cases, product sourcing may be a combination of the above.

    These are the people who are going to build your brand! Whether they are the designers or merchandiser, your brand look is going to be in their hands.

    If you are designing each garment from the scratch, the sourcing would play crucial role in developing design identity of your brand.

    Sourcing includes fabric, trims, lining & all the raw material required to build the garment.

    BRANDING

    Branding is the “Look of the Brand”, right from logo to tagline, the colours used, the brand story, the brand communications on social media, the packaging & all the other aspects which speak directly or indirectly to the customers. Branding constitutes the look & feel of the brand & hence must be thoughtfully planned to match with the product that we are selling.

    Branding must appeal to our target audience. Example : A golden colour logo depicting finesse, art, richness, premium, however beautiful it may be individually cannot go with a brand selling affordable kids wear products. So, your logo must be in-line with your brand positioning, whether you are an expensive brand or a luxury brand or a value for money brand, it must be depicted from your “Branding”.

    It is an integral part to attract the target audience.

    ORGANOGRAMS & SOP’s

    Organogram is the “HR Blueprint” of the business which is created at the onset, to map out the team required across each function at various stages of the business. At the launch, only key people need to be got on board to ensure the project gets started & at this stage, all of them need to multi-task. Similarly, certain financial as well as operational goals are set for addition of the further team. Example, for the operations team, we hire 1 operations manager during the pre-launch phase & we add 1 more only when the business kicks-off & we reach a volume of selling more than 1000 pcs/ month or a turnover of more than 0.1 million USD.

    SOPs are Standard Operating Procedures, a bible to run the entire organization right from Sales, Purchase, HR, Order receiving to Order fulfilment, Inventory Management, Accounts, Warehouse, Logistics, Supply Chain, Production & all the other relevant functions for the business. Business must be organized from its first day of operations; only then the tasks can be delegated.

    At YRC, we design the organization structure, the processes, and approximate time taken to execute each process, job profile of every member within the organization, their KRAs, KPIs & the Reporting Structure.

    CRITICAL PATHWAY

    Critical Pathway Analysis (CPA), is a project management technique which cannot be overlooked while launching an ecommerce fashion brand. Brand launch process is cumbersome with multiple inter-dependent & time-bound tasks involved, which need to be tracked to ensure the project remains on track.

    CPA outlines key tasks across the project, their turnaround time (TAT) & the dependencies of tasks upon each other. It identifies the sequence of tasks, their interdependent steps from inception to completion, their criticalities, and their dates of onset, target dates of completion along with the key responsible person for the respective activities. Critical Pathway helps in understanding the unimportant & not urgent tasks which may jeopardize the execution of the project because of an unexpected snag! It also maps out the potential bottlenecks which might be posed because of the dependencies of tasks upon each other & cases where the next task cannot be commenced before the completion of the previous one.

    CPA detects the minimum & the maximum time involvement of a particular individual or team to execute the task, thereby arriving at the overall deadlines associated with the project.

    At Your Retail Coach, we design the Critical Pathway & review it periodically to ensure the project is on track & the progress is measurable.

    BUSINESS STRATEGY & BUSINESS PLAN

    Business Strategy includes the vision, mission, goals, business model, business plan & strategy for all the functions within the organization.

    Business Strategy is a well-defined plan that outlines who, what, where, why, how & when for the company; for example, who would be the target market, how to attract the target audience, when to launch new products, where to operate from, how to handle competitors, what would be the USP, what would be long term goal of the organization & several other answers to the 5Ws of Strategy.

    Business Strategy aligns the organization towards a common goal. Business SWOT helps company to identify & overcome their weaknesses & focus to sharpen the strengths. Business strategy forecasts future risks and helps business in building skillsets to overcome the potential threats.

    YRC’s Business Plan focuses on creating a “Blueprint” of the business, thereby deriving the feasibility of the concept & gauge whether the opportunity is lucrative to invest time, energy & effort. Business Plan creates cash flow understanding i.e. building inflow & outflow cash projections from Week zero to week 60 i.e. 05 year projection. Business Plan calculates the capital investment, operating costs, one-time costs, recurring costs & all the other numbers relevant to obtain the breakeven sales, return on investment, return on capital, internal rate of return & several other ratios. Business Plan is also one of the important requirements if you are targeting the “Investor Route”. Fund raising becomes extremely transparent & channelized. With business plan panned out clearly, the business will know until what point must it be stretched & where to stop, which reduces the probability of unplanned investments.

    MARKET RESEARCH

    Starting the concept of Ecommerce Fashion brand with Market Research ensures we get detailed understanding of the industry & this research report also acts as a social confirmation for your concept. Market Research helps in understanding the target locations, their population, potential online buyers for your product, competitors for each category, and top selling products of the competitors, competitors’ price range, offers & their responses & much more. Market Research helps in thorough understanding of your brand position as compared to our competitors. It helps in identifying gaps in the market, in your category along with the scope of the said product in the desired market. This will help in validation of your concept & prevents you from making the same mistakes as your fellow brands, eventually saving your time, energy & efforts. This phase is also a make or a break phase, as the market research study may at-times come up with some eye-popping numbers & statistics which might compel you to re-think on your product or category that you are planning to sell or alter your entire concept itself!! Market Research Reports analyse the competitors’ webstore for their traffic, conversion & sales. This is extremely valuable information to derive our inventory budgets & projections, which takes us to our next phase.