Style Lend City Expansion Marketing Plan

STYLE LEND CITY-EXPANSION MODEL Prepared for: Lona Alia Duncan Prepared by: Alamo Square, Team 11 Saemi An, Manuela Barcelos, Kaan Korkut, Brett Ruffenach, Larissa Schneider, Lisa Stokkan November 23, 2014

STYLE LEND CITY EXPANSION REPORT

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Style Lend is a peer-to-peer fashion rental company, aiming to reach 200,000 customers by 2015. This report covers research conducted around five criteria for designing a city-by-city expansion of Style Lend's services throughout the U.S. Based on research around the female population ages 25-44, student population size, average gym spending, local events, and job growth in the tech industry, we found seven cities that would be ideal to expand to. These cities include: Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Houston, Dallas,, and Seattle. Through following a general framework of physical and online promotion, we’ve calculated a rough estimate as to how much must be invested to reach our calculated target reach of 7.5 million impressions. We believe that it this goal is met, Style Lend’s 2015 goal of 200,000 customers could be attained. If this marketing strategy were successfully implemented, we calculated Style Lend would have a customer acquisition cost of $8.13.


TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 4------------------------------------------------COMPANY OVERVIEW 5----------------------------------------GROWTH STRATEGY 6------------------------------------------LOS ANGELES 8--------------------------------------------------CHICAGO 9-------------------------------------------------------PHILADELPHIA 10-------------------------------------------------BOSTON 11--------------------------------------------------------HOUSTON 12------------------------------------------------------DALLAS 13---------------------------------------------------------SEATTLE 14--------------------------------------------------------CITY LAUNCH STRATEGY 15------------------------------------PROJECTIONS 17-------------------------------------------------CONCLUSION 19-------------------------------------------------APPENDICES 20---------------------------------------------------REFERENCES 21-------------------------------------------------


Introduction Objective After first contacting Lona at Style Lend, we were given specific questions that she would like answered:

• How can Style Lend get to 200,000 customers by end of 2015? • How can Style Lend implement a city-by-city roll out? • What is Style Lend’s customer acquisition cost?

The objective of this report is to answer these questions, and identify a realistic way for Style Lend to expand its presence and increase sales.

Goals The goal of this report is to propose a practical, financially viable model for Style Lend to expand its sales activity. This model was born out of research within other successful companies in the rental market and peer-to-peer industry. Through creating a set of criteria around specific growth engines – target market size, student population, average gym spending, tech industry growth, and nightlife – we were able to identify seven cities we believe Style Lend would be able to successfully expand sales to.

Report Outline This report is split into six sections:

• Company Overview: its products, target market, competitive environment, and challenges • Growth Strategy: A breakdown of the factors considered when researching which are the best cities to

expand Style Lend to. • City Overview: An overview of our seven identified cities, with basic information and suggestions for

places and channels to promote Style Lend. Cities include: Los Angeles,Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Houston, Dallas, and Seattle

• City Launch Strategy: An overview of the activities we believe would result in the impressions needed to reach our target customer acquirement goals.

• Projections: Costs, Goals for impressions, engagement, and projected customer acquisition cost. • Appendix: A complete breakdown of estimated costs and projected reach for each activity in each

proposed city • Conclusion • References

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STYLE LEND CITY EXPANSION MODEL

Company Overview Products and Services Style Lend is a peer-to-peer fashion rental company that was founded in 2013 by Lona Alia Duncan. The success of the company all started when the idea was presented at the Startup Weekend's Fashion and Technology hackathon in San Francisco, CA, which they won. Today, Style Lend has offices and showrooms in San Francisco and New York, NY, and are planning to expand to new locations nationwide.

The company has two types of customers; lenders and borrowers. The lenders select dresses from their closets which they then ship to one of Style Lend's offices, and whenever a borrower rents their dress, they get 50% of the rental price. The rental price is set at 10% of the retail price of the dress. Style Lend offers dresses to all kinds of events; everything from cocktail dresses, casual dresses and gala dresses. They also have a smaller selection of handbags and jewelry.

TARGET MARKET Style Lend targets fashion interested females between 25-44 years of age. The target customer has at least a college degree and works in tech where she earns between $50,000 to $80,000. She is friendly, chic, knowledgeable and positive. She knows what she wants and is considered a cutting edge go-getter. Besides from fashion, she values aesthetics, beauty, trends and finance. She is usually busy focusing on her career and social life. She also enjoys traveling.

COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT The peer-to-peer fashion rental industry is fairly new, therefore there are still not many big competitors. Rent the Runway is a well-established competitor that has the largest market share within the online dress rental market. The company was established in 2009 and has 287 employees today. They have stores in Washington, Las Vegas and two in New York. Rent the runway differs from Style Lend by not being peer-to-peer oriented, instead they have an inventory of thousands of dresses in all sizes (Rent the Runway 2014).

Style Lend should also consider all dress stores, both online and brick-and-mortar, as competitors as they would be natural picks for the target segment whenever they need a dress.

CHALLENGES Style Lend faces two main challenges; distribution and reaching new customers. When it comes to the distribution, Style Lend has as a goal not to be a middleman in the distribution process between the lender and the borrower. By not being as involved as they are today, they lose control over the quality insurance, and risk having more unsatisfied customers even though it would save the company time and money. Reaching new customers is a challenge as their exposure is not optimal yet due to limited resources.

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Growth Strategy Criteria for City-to-City Launch The growth strategy for Style Lend consists of a set of marketing activities based around a seven-part city-to-city launch. These cities have been identified based on our five growth engines:

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Events and nightlife information about each city is absolutely necessary. Knowing the approximate number for each city’s fashion related events, such as fashion shows, galas, charity events, holiday parties and the hottest nightclubs, will boost up Style Lend’s ways to reach their potential customers in different cities.

NIGHTLIFE

Knowing the student population of target cities is another way to reach Style Lend’s new customers, because female students from undergraduate and higher education will constantly be invited to parties, nights out, sorority events and conferences and so on. However, as students, they tend to have a limited budget to spend on nice dresses for different occasions. Furthermore, girls do not want to dress up with same outfit twice, even though it is for different events. Knowing the student population of each city is an essential growth engine tool in order to expand Style Lend’s customer base and increase sales.

STUDENT POPULATION

We decided on consider the amount of jobs in the tech industry as one of Style Lend’s growth engines because Style Lend consider women in these positions as a part of their target customers. We consider tech employees as Style Lend’s early adopters because they usually want to be the first to try out new and innovative apps and services like Airbnb and Uber.

TECH JOBS

Gym spending is set as one of the five growth engines because nowadays, many women are interested in fashion, beauty and health. They are not only concerned about what they wear but also into their physical appearance . We believe that knowing about the major cities with the highest expenditure rate on gym spendings, will be another way to discover potential customers for Style Lend.

GYM SPENDING

Considering the female population as Style Lend’s core growth engine is obviously natural. Style Lend’s basic target customers are females who want to look amazing wearing dresses that was rented from the credible peer-to-peer fashion rental service, Style Lend. Knowing the number of females for each city and analyzing the population number related to Style Lend’s new approach will be necessary.

FEMALE POPULATION Ages 25-44

Though our research, we ranked the top cities within these growth engines:

Additional data that breaks down the data used to rank these cities is included in the appendices.

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Female Pop. Gym Spending Student Pop. Tech Jobs Events FinalL.A. Charlotte L.A. Boston Chicago L.A.

Chicago Boston Detroit Dallas L.A. Chicago

Houston Seattle San Jose L.A. Houston Philadelphia

Philadelphia Austin Jacksonville Chicago Dallas Boston

Phoenix Chicago Philadelphia Philadelphia Boston Houston

San Diego L.A. Indianapolis Seattle Philadelphia Dallas

Seattle

los angeles CITY OVERVIEW One of the largest, most productive cities in the United States, Los Angeles is the center of the U.S film, TV, and music industries. Ranking #1 in female and student population alone, L.A presents itself as an absolute must for expanding Style Lend’s presence. Additionally L.A’s fashion and arts driven culture present many opportunities for Style Lend to be a viable choice for many women. From Fashion Week, to it is seemingly endless list of hot nightclubs, to fashion trade shows, and extravagant balls and galas, Los Angeles is undoubtedly a key city for Style Lend to expand to (Wikipedia 2014c).

FORMAL EVENTS Los Angeles has a seemingly endless series of events going on related to fashion and entertainment. Some events in particular that would fit Style Lend’s target market is Designers and Agents, which takes place is a massive, city wide fashion week that aims to connect up and coming designers with boutiques and agents. Additionally Fashion Week L.A happens in mid-March each year, and features top stylists and designers from all over the world.

NIGHTLIFE As one of the cultural centers of the United States, Los Angeles has a seemingly endless choice of nightclubs and districts to go to for an exciting night out. Places like Area Nightclub, with its modern decor and spacious design, tend to draw the more elite crowd of Los Angeles. For a more laid back atmosphere, Hyde Lounge is a smaller club that attracts a similar class of people. However, if the goal is to get the paparazzi to snap someone in a Style Lend dress, then Opera in Hollywood is the place to be.

BLOGS With a considerably different aesthetic from that of the east coast of mid-western U.S, California is home to many unique fashion blogs. Sites like Streetgeist capture L.A’s more causal, street-style fashion with simple, candid photos of all types of styles. Fashion Squard, on the other hand, brings a different, more chic L.A perspective. No matter what type of fashion blog sought after, there certainly is one to fit the need. Every year, Lucky Mag has its own Fashion and Beauty Bloggers Conference, in which the top bloggers from around L.A get together. Blogs in Los Angeles should be a top priority for Style Lend to communicate with, as their influence over consumer behavior in Style Lend’s target market is significant, compared to other, more traditional forms of marketing.

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LOS ANGELES

Chicago CITY OVERVIEW We took into consideration the growth engines that we have outlined in previous sections and observed that Chicago, IL, one of the top three biggest cities in US in terms of population and market size, stood out as a very enticing market to unlock for Style Lend. Windy city, has the second highest overall ranking in our research: we specifically observed that Chicago was one of the two best cities in terms of having Style Lend’s designated target market (25-44 years old female population) with a whopping number of approximately 460,000 potential customers. Chicago also stood out with its vibrant night life consisting of numerous large scale events that offers various guerrilla marketing opportunities, especially due to the city’s nature being one of the fashion and entertainment centers in the world.

NOTABLE EVENTS Chicago is characterized by its countless fashion events, making it one of the top fashion cities in the world. The biggest event out there in Chicago is the Chicago Fashion Week, which is spread to five days, making it a huge event that helps create an ideal environment for Style Lend to promote their concept and network with people from different sides of the fashion world, such as designers and big name people from local fashion industry. 77312: Second Biannual Fashion Show, (Eventbrite 2014i) taking place in late December, is another fashion event that provides great networking opportunities as it features Chicago based artists and designers, and it is centered around Spring/Summer trends in Chicago. Another show that is worthy of interest is Victorious Force VI" Youth Fashion Show (Eventbrite 2014k), where activities like discounts on prom dress rentals are already being promoted, which Style Lend could easily take part in and promote themselves.

NIGHTLIFE As stated in the overview, Chicago provides colorful nightlife options, attracting both residents and tourists. Windy City has countless clubs that are worth visiting, including: • Sound Bar, which attracts people who go for a fashionable look for a night out of dancing • The Underground, recently dubbed as the one of the “sexiest places in the world” by Cosmopolitan Magazine,

which boasts numerous high profile live acts and celebrity appearances such as Kanye West, Katy Perry and Robin Thicke,

• Primary Nightclub, which has multiple reviews from satisfied customers for providing an intimate, stylish clubbing experience

BLOGS Being one of the fashion centers of the world, Chicago is home to many fashion bloggers who attract a lot of attention thanks to their huge reach. These are just a few of them that have a local following: • Jag Lever, a fashion and lifestyle blog based in Chicago which has been featured in many noteworthy

publications around the world, including German Vogue, Vogue Korea, Teen Vogue, Refinery 29, CosmoGirl Indonesia, Sofi’s Mode and more. (Iwanyszyn 2014)

• Possessionista, a Celebrity style and fashion blog, which has been published in big name magazines such as People, In Style, TV guide, US weekly and so on. (Weiss 2014)

• ChiCityFashion, described as a blog about “All things Chicago, fashion and Chicago fashion”, has been published in magazines such as Timeout, Elle and Teen Vogue just to name a few (Gambaccini 2014).

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CHICAGO

Philadelphia OVERVIEW OF CITY Philadelphia, PA is the biggest city in the state of Pennsylvania, and the fifth most populated city in the USA with a total of over 6 million people in its metropolitan area which stretches over parts of four states. (Wikipedia 2014a) The city is known for its art, culture and cuisine which is influenced by the ethnic variety in the city. Philadelphia’s fashion scene has blossomed over the few decades; designers like Tory Burch, Ralph Rucci and Danny Noble all have roots in Philadelphia. There are a total of more than 230,000 females between 25-44 years old. There is a huge student community with almost 150,000 students studying in schools such as Temple University, University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University. It is a city with a lot of parties and events. In the written moment, there is more than 200 public event invitations on Eventbrite (Lonely Planet 2014a).

NOTABLE EVENTS There is a variety of different events going on in Philadelphia each year. Events like New Years Eve at the Piazza, Borgata Nightlife's new years eve party, Opera Philadelphia Gala and Fuel the Cure's Winter Gala all attract thousands of well dressed attendees. Philadelphia Fashion Week was in 2014 held successfully for the eleventh time. Each year they have a few thousand attendees, and several thousand follow the event through social media. There is also several wedding related events happening in Philadelphia that could be interesting to Style Lend such as The Philly Bridal Show and Expo, The Greater Northeast Philly Bridal Showcase and Bliss Philly Bridal Expo (Eventbrite 2014e, Eventbrite 2014f).

NIGHTLIFE Philadelphia might not be most known for its nightlife but it actually has a really great and diverse nightlife scene. There is something for everyone but the hippest clubs are G-lounge, Zee Bar, Whisper Lounge, Rumor and Ladder 15. The latter is predicted to be the hippest club for the upcoming year. These are the clubs where the girls dress up and you do not want to be seen in the same outfit twice.

BLOGS The Clothes Horse is a personal style blog by Rebecca S. Her blog reaches more than 12,000 people on a daily basis (Rebecca 2014). She has been featured by numerous blogs and magazines like Elle, Glamour and Vogue. PhillyFABB is a network of fashion bloggers established in 2012 that is dedicated to support Philadelphia bloggers and their brand, and grant inside information into fashion, beauty and events (PhillyFABB 2014). Philly360 is a online magazine that writes about music, events, design, art etc to thousands of readers each month. It is one of the go to channels to keep yourself updated on what is going on in the city (Philly360 2014). PhiladelphiaStyle is a similar magazine that is both available online and in paper format.

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PHILADELPHIA

BOSTON CITY OVERVIEW The capital and biggest city of Massachusetts, Boston is also one of the oldest cities is America with a population of more than 617,000 people. The historical legacy and its diverse neighborhoods makes it a cultural city that also have a strong sport’s presence (City of Boston 2014). Boston has a student population of around 127,000 (Forbes 2014) and hosts a great number of higher education institutions and was elected the 2012-2013 first city on the Innovation Cities Global Index (Innovation Cities 2014). Therefore, Boston has a big international community and is attractive to young professionals, specially in the technological sector, that currently has about 191,000 jobs (Sun 2014) in the city. Boston also has a great number of nightlife options as clubs, parties and events.

NOTABLE EVENTS/TRADESHOWS/CONFERENCES Boston hosts a large number and variety of events. The Boston fashion week generally happens at the beginning of October together with the Emerging Trends Runway Show. The Fierce Styles 7 Fashion Show is also an important event in Boston`s fashion scenario. The wedding industry promotes countless events every year in the city and attracts numerous people. Some examples of these types of event are Boston Wedding Show, The Great Bridal Expo-Boston, The Lovesick Expo Boston and Baystate Bridal Expo.

NIGHTLIFE Boston has some great nightclubs, like Venu, Royale and The State that are constantly hosting parties. For example, at New Years Eve some of the most important events happen in clubs. Therefore, in the writing moment, Boston has 42 galas and 250 parties at Eventbrite (Eventbrite 2014c, Eventbrite 2014d). Thus, as these events usually has a formal dress code, the city has a constant demand for new cocktail dresses, since women does not like to be seeing many times wearing the same dress.

BLOGS There are some fashion bloggers from Boston that reach a great number of people and are fashion and style references for the women. The most recognized is Allie W. from “Allie Wears”, a personal style blog named Boston's best fashion blog of 2014 (City Voter 2014), which was also recognized by Vanity Fair at International Best-Dressed Challenge (Vanity Fair 2014). Also, Jessye Aibel and hers style blog “Citytonic” also stand out from the fashion blogs, since it has more than 4k followers on Instagram. The third one is Michelle Pan and her beauty, lifestyle and fashion blog (Michelle Pan 2014) that has more than 3 million likes on Facebook.

TRADITIONAL MEDIA Boston Magazine is a traditional publication from Boston. It has countless awards and is recognized between the best ones of its type in the U.S. With around 500,000 monthly readers (Boston Magazine 2014), this magazine describes what of the best happens in Boston.

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BOSTON

Houston CITY OVERVIEW Houston is one of the largest cities in Texas. Although the fashion industry is relatively quiet compared to other major cities, there is a growing interest towards Houston by many fashion related companies, designers, and bloggers. The reason why we put Houston as our consideration is due to our statistical research, saying that Houston has high number of jobs in tech field (about 120,000) and also its relatively high female population. Fashion bloggers in Houston are actively bushing round in fields of fashion activities, and their numerous events are boosting Houston’s fashion industry effectively.

NOTABLE EVENTS In Houston, fashion related events and trade shows are actively going on right now. As the most populous city in Texas, a large number of fashion people in Houston are sharing their events and updating upcoming gathering news or events. Occasionally, many fashion events and beauty pageants are hosted by fashion designers and bloggers. Further more, there are large number of Annual gala shows and conferences hosted by fashion people through different medias. Multi-day fashion events, such as 'Houston Fashion Week' and 'Houston Ultimate Women's Expo' (which will be held on April 2015) are also splendid fashion events in Houston (Eventbrite 2014j).

NIGHTLIFE Nightlife in Houston is pretty much same as any other cities but more with beautiful ladies with their sparkling outfits. Houston has many live music bars, clubs and laid-back lounges. The hottest clubs in Houston are 'Red Door', 'Drink Houston' and 'Hughes Hangar'. However, these three clubs are only the tip of the iceberg of Houston's nightlife hot spots. Not only clubs but also cocktail bars are also popular spots to women between middle 20s and early 30s. Most of these nightlife hot spot dress codes are typical evening dresses, cocktail dresses or mini dresses. Style Lend will strike the Houston ladies fancy about their new night out dresses which won't be same as any other night out outfits in their wardrobe.

BLOGS Three fascinating fashion blogs in Houston that brings absolute attention to ladies are “Houstonista”, “We wear things” and “Southern Chic Style”. They consistently host holiday parties, gathering events and annual Houston fashion bloggers' anniversary events. 'Houston Fashion Bloggers' is the major way to come across to fashion bloggers. Initially this gathering idea was started from very small number of bloggers in the city for coffee but it became a huge organization that has grown exponentially (Houston Fashion Blogger 2014). 'Houston Fashion Blogger" became great to create a network of bloggers in Houston and fashion events. They provide huge opportunities to fashion bloggers to expose their deep interests in fashion and beauty. The way how bloggers interacting to each other and sharing the new fashion related information and organizing fashion events (parties) are progressing briskly compared to any other cities.

TRADITIONAL MEDIA As traditional fashion media, Houston has 'Houston Style Magazine', 'Young Houston Magazine, and many other radio channels that are related to fashion and beauty. Most of magazines in Houston features amazing models, designers, fashionistas and bloggers. They are constantly updating fashion related news, updated fashion information and things going on in fashion industry in Houston area. 'Young Houston Magazine' is actively accepting any fashion related features that can be added to next coming issues (Tim 2014). There will be many ways to utilize Houston's traditional medias to advertising Style Lend and spreading newly informations and upcoming events!

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HOUSTON

Dallas CITY OVERVIEW Dallas is a big, modern city in Texas, located in the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States and known as a large business location, for its popularity with tourist and as a major shopping and retail hub (Visit Dallas 2014).

FORMAL EVENTS Many formal events, receptions, annual military balls and charity galas are scheduled in Dallas all year round, including The Million Dollar Black & White Gala, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra League Débutante Holiday Party or the Cattle Baron's Ball. Especially during the festive season these type of formal events in the city and greater Dallas region provide the local socialites with opportunities to gather and present their latest designer gowns (Eventbrite 2014a).

FASHION INDUSTRY EVENTS Dallas is a renowned hub for fashion shows and fashion industry related events in Texas and the Southern United States. Events like Dallas Fashion Week, Dallas International Fashion Festival, the Dallas Apparel & Accessories Market and FIG Fashion Industry Gallery are held regularly and attract a large amount of visitors. These events cater for slightly different target groups but all of them focus on connecting international brands, designers, distributors and end consumers (Eventbrite 2014b, FIG 2014).

BLOGS The three most outstanding fashion-oriented blogs in Dallas, catering towards Style Lend’s target audience are “What Courtney Wore”, “Sea of Shoes” and “A Piece of Toast”. • Courtney Kerr is a well-known fashion and lifestyle blogger with daily posts, over 100,000 followers on

Facebook and well as her own Dallas local TV and radio shows (Kerr 2014). • Jane Aldridge is the manager and blogger of “Sea of Shoes”, a fashion and beauty site based in Dallas but

also covering nationwide and international fashion events and new designs (Aldridge 2014). • Sally Ann and Molly Bernadette are two sisters who manage their blog “A Piece of Toast” together. They have

established a great presence on social media as well as with various print and online media (Instyle, Elle, Stylelist, etc.) and international fashion and beauty brands (Kate Spade New York, Anthropologie, J.Crew, etc.) (Miller and Miller 2014).

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DALLAS

SEATTLE

CITY OVERVIEW Seattle is a city of diverse neighborhoods that has something to offer to anyone. It is the largest city in the state of Washington with around 4 million people in the metropolitan area (Wikipedia 2014b). The city is known for its music and coffee, but it is also a city for students. Big universities like University of Washington and Washington State University contributes to making Seattle a cool, urban city that has a lot to offer its young inhabitants like art, music, nightlife and of course fashion. There are more than 114,000 females between 25-44 years old in Seattle, and more than 70,000 students in Universities such as University of Washington, Washington State University and Western Washington University. Seattle has also a big tech industry with almost 130,000 jobs within the field (Sun 2014, Lonely Planet 2014b).

FORMAL EVENTS There are several events happening in Seattle every month, such as Seattle International Film Festival and Winterfest, which is a month-long celebration of holiday traditions from all over the globe. There are also more formal events like the Dream Gala, ALPFA Seattle's annual gala, The All White Party and Seattle Red Dress Party. All of these events are very popular and each year there are several thousand attendees dressing up in their most beautiful gowns to every occasion. Style Lend is the perfect solution, especially for events like the All White Party and the Seattle Red Dress Party, that requires a certain color or style. Another big happening of the year is Fashion Week at the Bellevue Collection (Eventbrite 2014g, Eventbrite 2014h).

NIGHTLIFE Seattle has a diverse and exciting nightlife with everything from dive in bars to more upscale clubs like Suite Lounge. Other popular places are Trinity Nightclub, Q Nightclub, Foundation Nightclub and Aston Manor. The dress code for all of these clubs is quite formal and most of the girls wear high heels and cocktail dresses. Several of these clubs are places to see and be seen. Not only for special events like Valentine's day party and all white party but also for regular Saturday nights, do some of these clubs have a photographer shooting pictures of the guests which is later posted on their website and social media. No girl wants to have her picture taken wearing the same dress on different occasions.

BLOGS There are several well-known fashion bloggers located in Seattle. Two of the most popular bloggers are The Moptop and Vicky's Style. Both of these girls have more followers on Instagram than on any other social media, and they both have their main focus on personal style with pictures and lifestyle articles. Seattle Boutique Blogspot is a great site to read about fashion news and local events. They also have local shopping guides for different neighborhoods in the city. The blog has been active since 2008 and covers important events such as Seattle Fashion Week. They have been covered in magazines such as The Guardian, 425 Magazine and Inspirare Magazine (Seattle Boutique Blogspot 2014).

SEATTLE

City Launch Strategy INITIAL PREPARATION In order to optimize the city performance, Style Lend should hire a local professional in each one of the cities, since this person has a previous knowledge of the market, nightlife, culture and other important aspects of the city and also an existing network to help at the events.

After getting hired, the city launcher should expend two weeks in the office at San Francisco or New York, to become an expert about the business: processes, operations, strategies and company’s culture and goals. Next, the professional goes back to the original city to better understand the market and its opportunities as well as build partnerships with other companies and bloggers to help at the events and promotion.

MARKETING ACTIVITIES Guerilla Promotion In order to create buzz and generate attention in the streets we recommend to organize regular promotional activities. The set up will include two models dressed in Style Lend dresses, holding branded air balloons, similar to the Dior Air Balloon campaign and distributing coupon cards to girls in the public. This activity can be held during the fashion weeks, fashion shows, conferences and on college campus locations. See appendix 1 for a detailed cost breakdown.

Style Soirées / Pop Up Stores In the past, Style Lend has very successfully hosted Style Soirées, where a limited number of women gather to try on Style Lend dresses, enjoy champagne and appetizers while being pampered by stylists and the Style Lend team. These events were also usually joined by a photographer to capture the best moments. We recommend for Style Lend to continue hosting these types of events either in partner stores, which could have a shared interested in the increased traffic in their store or in local bars or cafés that can be rented out for the night. Style Soirées can be organized for the general public during fashion weeks or other major events, as well as for specific target groups such as bloggers-only events or special on campus promotions.

Displayed Advertisement We recommend for Style Lend to invest in display advertisements in each new city leading up to their launch and post-launch for a period of 2 to 3 months in one or various locations depending on the size of the city. Doing so has a significant impact on the brand exposure and customer reach in the newly launched city. Depending on each city’s infrastructure we have chosen either digital billboard or public transportation advertisements.

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Nightclub Promotion After having identified the city’s hottest clubs and bars, which are regularly being visited by well-dressed women of Style Lend’s target market, we recommend for Style Lend to promote the brand in these venues. During special nights and with permits of the clubs’ managements, Style Lend should promote their brand, similarly to the balloon girl activity planned for street promotion, through two models in beautiful Style Lend outfits. The models will provide great photo opportunities for visitors of the clubs (Style Lend poster at the entrance of the club / posing with models), engage into discussions with them and distribute promo coupon codes to encourage new customers.

Launch Party The launch party will be the big kick off event for Style Lend in every city when operations there are officially being launched. This will be the first major activity organized by the city launcher after 4 weeks of pre-work and networking in the respective city. Business partners, important players in the fashion industry and Style Lend staff will be invited to these parties on the one hand and the remaining tickets can be purchased by the general population on the other hand.

Digital Advertising Due to the large internet affinity of the millennial generation, which presents an important target group for Style Lend, online marketing as an important factor to consider. We suggest for Style Lend to spend a significant amount of its marketing budget on Facebook advertisements as these have proven to be successful for the business in the past. Moreover, as they are highly targeted towards the local fashion oriented community in each geographical area, Style Lend can drive exposure to the right people at the right time, measure it and make changes accordingly if needed without a major risk.

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Projections Impressions, Signups, and Acquisitions The first thing we wanted to accomplish by our calculations was to estimate the city-wide proportions of the total number of women between ages 25-44 that we would need to acquire as customers. We decided to scale the already existing proportions between the total female population in the desired age range for cities, and found the approximate number of customers to acquire in each city, with the grand total adding up to 200.000 new customers. Another assumption that we made in this calculation was that approximately 20% of our new customers would be online walk-ins, not belonging to a city that we particularly worked on. This percentage roughly accounts for a number of 40,000 people that we will need to acquire through the viral effect and the word-of-mouth created by the marketing activities stated above.

Here is a breakdown of our city-based projections for reach, signups, and customer acquisitions:

We also assumed that the rate with which signups to Style Lend become customers would be around 20%, which led us to calculate the estimated number of signups - around 1,000,000 customers - that we would need to achieve the customer acquisition goals that were set for us at the beginning of the project.

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IMPRESSIONS AND COST OF MARKETING ACTIVITIES In order to check the financial feasibility of the project, we outlined specific marketing activities (refer to section 5), which are applicable in each city that we plan to roll out in. The next logical step at this point was to determine what the total reach, as in impressions, of these activities had to be in order to get the number of signups that we are aiming for.

After some estimations, we decided that the rate with which an impression turns into a signup would be around 15% in our case, since the marketing activities that we designed (such as guerrilla promotion, pop up stores and launch parties) are specifically targeted to people from our desired market, which in turn would help keep the signup per impression rate high. This assumption gave us a total number of impressions of 7,555,030 to be reached.

CUSTOMER ACQUISITION COST We decided to design six different marketing activities that would help us achieve our intended reach, and each of them had different costs associated with them. We derived the number of times we would perform these activities in each city from the number of days in which occasions such as fashion weeks, fashion shows, conferences and on campus promotion events could take place in those cities. We then multiplied the number of times we would perform an activity by the approximate reach that we are planning to accomplish by each activity, which gave us the total reach per city.

Here is a look at the total cost and reach of our activities: • Guerrilla Promotion: $536,316 for reaching 717,000 people • Style Soirees/Pop Up Stores: $386,088 for reaching 24,600 people • Billboard Ads: $185,354 for reaching 2,431,968 people • Nightclub Population: $367,812 for reaching 36,000 people • Launch Party: $150,000 for reaching 7,800 people • Facebook Ads: $98,550 for reaching 4,297,210 people

This means we will acquire 200,000 new customers with a total investment of $1,625,570, which gives us an average customer acquisition cost of $8.13 per customer.

A more detailed look at the costs incurred from each component of each activity is in the Appendix.

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Conclusion The objective of this goal is to help Style Lend increase its sales and achieve their goal of 200,000 customers by the end of 2015. Because of Style Lend’s unique product, it was essential that in each of our marketing activities, the target customer was kept in mind. Based on our analysis of various similar business model and customer experience, we believe their model of a city-by-city expansion was the most viable option. Through our own criteria and quantitative research, we narrowed down seven cities we believe would fit into Style Lend’s target market.

Style Lend’s peer-to-peer model must have a local presence to take off successfully. We believe our framework for a city-by-city expansion will help creating that local presence – through events, display advertising, guerrilla marketing, and combining that with a localized online marketing campaign. The local presence of Style Lend and its city expansion manager connection to the community will be key. With Style Lend’s product, and this type of expansion, we believe Style Lend will achieve its goal of 200,000 customers by the end of 2015.

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Appendices APPENDIX 1 – MARKETING ACTIVITIES COSTS BREAKDOWN Guerilla Marketing Promotion We did some research on how much models get paid for these kinds of activities and observed that prices varied generally between 50 to 100 dollars per hour, so we estimated a price of 75 dollars per hour, with the working hours being around 8 hours. We also assumed plausible prices for the custom Style Lend balloons that our models would showcase, $24 for 10 balloons and the coupon cards that they will hand out in the events, $1020 for 3000 cards. We assumed that there would not be a cost for the dresses as these would come from Style Lend stock.

Style Soirees/Pop Up stores $500 for logistics and transporting the dresses, $1500 for venue rent, $1000 for catering (assuming 50 people show up, $20 per head) $100 for photographer

Billboard Advertising We found how much it would cost to rent digital billboards in our target cities and how many impressions we would get from these locations.

Nightclub Promotion • $1200 for models • $1300 for coupons • $1000 as cost of getting the required

permission from the club These prices were then multiplied with the number of times we would opt to do nightclub promotion activities. Days were set with accordance to the liveliness of nightlife in each city.

Launch Party Based on city size and priority, we decided to allocate budgets of $20,000 to cities of San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Dallas, while allocating $10,000 to cities of Seattle, Boston and Philadelphia.

Facebook Advertising Looking at personal and professional experience with Facebook Advertising we calculated that every $10 spent on targeted Facebook advertising will give Style Lend a minimum reach of 436 people resulting in 14 new page likes.

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