IDENTIFY

Core Values:

WHY - Dumbgood captures the essence of pop culture in unique and exciting products, that link our customers to their favorite brands old and new.

HOW - Create fun exciting products that are unique, aspirational, fun to wear and capture the spirit of the license we design into.

WHAT - Licensed apparel, accessories and gifts, generate a fashion pop culture lifestyle following.

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Personas:

BRAND BASIC DEMOGRAPHICS:

• 91% customers are US based

• 50.69% men

• 49.31% women

• Age 18-24 largest age group

• Age 25-34 second largest age group

PERSONA 1:

Chris Miller - MALE, 29yrs old, Web Developer, NY

• ORIGINAL, UNIQUE, SOCIAL, ENTHUSIAST, COOL

• “Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?” ~ Frank (Donnie Darko)

ABOUT:

Chris is a web designer working for a boutique ad agency in NY. Chris loves the creative side of his work and enjoys seeing his work brought to life in the websites he helps design. He is not in a senior level position but hopes to move into a Senior Web Design / UX design position in the next few years. He draws inspiration from pop culture in his designs and his daily life and is an avid consumer of broadcast media. Chris does enjoy pop culture and sharing his opinions about it with his friends in person and online, but struggles to find ways to represent his fandom in daily life that doesn’t look cheap or juvenile. Chris is always looking for a way to represent his affinity through unique and cool products but struggles to find things that are not mass produced. Chris wants his peers to covet his taste in clothing and is always looking for items that can be hard to get and are semi exclusive.

GOALS:

• Being cool among peers real/virtual

• Representing brand interests through unique clothing / accessories

• Collecting coveted limited items

• Being in touch with trends

PAINS:

• Finding brand wear that has cool factor

• Having a retailer that makes branded clothing that is age appropriate

• Wearing the same thing as everyone else

• Find items that represent his favorite brands in a unique way

FACTS:

• Loves technology and tries to stay current on the most up to date tech.

• Loves to collect sneakers and likes exclusivity in clothing and accessories

• Follows current pop culture but is also aware of things he thinks were cool from his childhood

• Goes to festivals and shows to show off his taste in clothing and music

• Posts on social media to gain validation on his affinities

BRANDS:

Apple, New Balance, Supreme, Carhartt WIP, Pleasures, Stussy, Medicom, Patagonia, Nike

USER STORIES:

• As Chris I want tee shirt designs that are adult but also fun and limited.

• As Chris I want to rep my favorite movie like I would rep my favorite sports team.

• As Chris I want cool licensed merch that goes well with my other basic’s like jeans and shirt jacket.

PERSONA 2:

Allison Walker - FEMALE, 23yrs old, College, CA

• INDIVIDUAL, ORIGINAL, SOCIAL, NERDY, COOL, CASUAL

• “Dude, I never went to college and check me out. I'm kick ass!” ~ Lance (Orange County)

ABOUT:

Allison is a college student in her final year of a 4 year degree majoring in social services. Allison lives in San Diego CA and currently works retail to pay her bills while she finishes up school. Allison loves helping people and volunteers frequently with Big Brothers and Big Sisters where she feels like she can really help underprivileged girls. Allison hopes that once she finishes her degree she can gain full time employment with a hospital or possibly a health group where she can gain real world experience in her field and possibly continue her education towards a masters degree. In Allison’s spare time she enjoys music, movies, working out, fashion and trying new food. Music and movies are especially important to Allison as they provide an uplifting escape from what can sometimes be a very stressful job/field of study. She seeks out media that can be uplifting or bring back good memories of her teen years. Allison does keep up with trends but doesn’t always feel like she has to be wearing the most on trend items to be happy. When Allison wears licensed clothing it usually represents an affinity for a brand, movie or TV show from her teen years and she likes them to be conversation starters with people she interacts with. If she is wearing a licensed piece of clothing you can guarantee that she is a big fan and loves to talk about it.

GOALS:

• Meeting people with similar interests as her

• Representing brand interests that spark some nostalgia and make her feel happy

• Dressing cool but keeping it light and fun

• Being an expert in her interests

PAINS:

• Finding brand wear that isn’t too slutty or weird

• Having a retailer that makes branded clothing that is age appropriate

• Finding licensed clothing in things she is interested in that aren’t for men

• Being nerdy and cool at the same time

FACTS:

• Loves meeting new people with different points of view.

• Likes when someone compliments her clothing in an “insider” way.

• Follows current pop culture but is also aware of things she thinks were cool from her childhood.

• Enjoys art openings and movie screenings and small intimate live music shows.

• Seeks out social groups with similar media interests as her.

BRANDS:

Apple, LuLu Lemon, GAP, ASOS, SHEIN, Stussy, Patagonia, Nike, H&M

USER STORIES:

• As Allison I want clothing designs that spark conversation.

• As Allison I want to wear clothing that makes me happy.

• As Allison I want cool licensed merch that goes well with my other basic’s like baggy jeans or Patagonia shorts .

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Product Use Cases:

What is the problem Dumbgood intends to solve for the customer? These are key use cases for each persona. Persona  + Need + Purpose. The voice of the customer is at the center of design!

Chris:

• Sees favorite movie

• wants to show affinity for it

• decides on clothing/acc for way to show this

• searches internet for items

• searches social media for peer reviews of items

• formulates idea of item look they want

• eliminates potential retailers based on cool/exclusivity factor

• eliminates retailers based on pricing

• finalizes retailer they intend to buy from based on peer reviews and product design, availability and price

• purchases from retailer

• posts on social media wearing item

• evaluates peer response

• formulates opinion on brand and decides to shop there again or not

Allison:

• has conversation with friend about their favorite movie

• wants to show affinity for it

• decides on clothing/acc for way to show this

• searches internet for items

• formulates idea of item look they want

• locates several retailers that carry items from this movie with this look

• searches reviews of retailers online

• eliminates potential retailers based on customer satisfaction reviews

• eliminates retailers based on pricing

• finalizes retailer they intend to buy from based on peer reviews and product design, availability and price

• purchases from retailer

• posts on social media wearing item

• hangs with group of friends and shares her purchase experience with them

• wears item and evaluates quality and value for dollar spent

• formulates opinion on brand and decides to shop there again or not

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Success Metrics:

PRODUCT METRICS:

• Increase how often customers purchase Dumbgood products upon visiting the website.

• Boost customer satisfaction with products. Do they come back for new product drops and convert on the return visit?

• Larger amount of customers posting their purchases on social media. Are they telling their friends about Dumbgood?

• Increase our NPS.

COMPANY METRICS:

• Increase revenue.

• Gain market share through gain in new customer base.

• Reduce time to market.

• Increase sell throughs on inventory items.

• Decrease CAC, Bounce Rate

• Increase AOV, Conv Rate, Repeat Customer Rate, NPS

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Porter’s 5 Forces:

Threat of new Entry - high, licensors are looking to expand product offering and tap into new fans by collaborating with new and upcoming streetwear brands. They offer unique assets and more freedom to be creative to rivals, than what is given to Dumbgood. This could be directly related to competitors customer base and influence over new customers and their desire to be “first”. Dumbgood solution, better align with key licensing partners at the beginning of the development cycle to lock in key properties and potentially put an embargo on competitors ability to provide the same licenses in the same development cycles as Dumbgood. Using the Dumbgood established brand name could help to prevent new brands from making a name using the same properties to the same customer base.

Competitive rivalry - high, existing established competitors have access to the same licenses as Dumbgood and have the ability to create innovative products via global sourcing and a robust domestic supply chain. Dumbgood must deliver products first and be first to market with new licenses not yet saturated in their market. Dumbgood solutions, partner with existing competitors to leverage and share customer base, generate sales, garner more social media buzz and provide credibility to both brands. Dumbgood can also set itself apart by being sharper with product delivery times and bringing more innovative products to market, being first is very important to the Dumbgood customers and they share customers with their competition.

Threat of substitution - high, dumbgood customers are fickle and will move to competitors for better pricing, better quality or more unique product offering. Customers also do not want to be perceived as wearing a brand that is available at mass retailers and is perceived as being a “sale” brand or lower priced fast fashion. Dumbgood solutions, Dumbgood must constantly be looking at competitor pricing and comparing our product prices and assortment to these competitors. Analyzing the AOV over the past years should give insight into how the customer buying habits have changed for the brand. Dumbgood also should be looking at sale events and comparing the rate of sale promotions to its competition. The brand cannot afford to be perceived as a “sale” brand where the customer is being undercut by the retailer and making them feel like they are going to lose money by not waiting for a sale. Cusomters won’t buy full priced items from Dumbgood which will have a negative effect on AOV, CAC and return customer rates.

Buyer Power - high, the Dumbgood customer is the most important part of the business, if they are not happy the brand does not hit key success metrics. They have leverage over the brand with their voice on social media and will move to a competitor if they feel they get better value from the competitor. Dumbgood solutions, provide a diverse unique license assortment that appeals to a broad range of fans across all types of interests. This is the Dumbgood competitive advantage, having access to this broad range of brands to design into. Dumbgood must be “first to market” with the brands and provide intriguing, on trend product assortments. Pricing plays an important part in our customer role, but is less important than the customer feeling like they are getting a unique product with a point of view that aligns with their core values.

Supplier power -  high, Dumbgood over seas suppliers are the life blood of the brand, and have major leverage over the brand. Their ability to produce low MOQ items at a reasonable price is critical to the brand success. If the suppliers do not maintain pricing and on time deliveries they can ruin customer confidence and damage key success metrics such as CAC and return customer rate. Dumbgood solutions To fix this Dumbgood should diversify its over seas supplier list and also seek alternatives at a domestic level. Doing this will help reduce delays in deliveries and help Dumbgood hit key dates for trend and licensor partnerships.

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Customer Development:

• What is our hypothesis?

• Which customers are we designing for?

• What pain points do we plan to see?

• What goals do we plan to achieve?

Here Dumbgood would need a customer experience panel, this could take the form of a Dumbgood run blog or reddit where we share ideas on pop culture and opinions on pop culture and where the customers interact with each other and Dumbgood. This is where we can connect with our most enthusiastic, passionate customers and learn what they honestly think of licensed product and what they are willing to buy and wear in their daily lives. Dumbgood would need to formulate questions to spur conversation and validate or invalidate our hypothesis around new products and licenses.

This should be handled by an experienced CX person or someone with experience crafting questions that evoke usable responses from our customers. Responses that are insightful, contain analogies and allow us to form a story for better product development.

The CX person should also send out a Product Market Fit Survey to find out customer loyalty and if we are providing real value to our customers, this could be added at checkout as an option for customers who have real usage of our products. This could also be a follow up email or included on the order confirmation email.

SET GOALS

Opportunity Hypothesis:

What are Dumbgood’s company goals? Once we establish the company goals we can turn that into specific product goals.

What do we need to change to answer one or all of these hypothesizes?

• Can we make licensed merchandise covetable?

• Can we make licensed product fashionable?

• Can we make Dumbgood the market experts in licensed collab wear?

• How can Dumbgood bring product value to its customers through licenses and product design?

• How does Dumbgood carve out a new niche of licensed pop culture merch, and establish longevity and continued growth?

Hypothesis:

Dumbgood will be a brand that focuses on creating trendy, covetable, licensed merchandise for both men and women. Dumbgood does this through its unique relationships with licensed properties and visionary art direction. The ability to provide constant newness to our customers and by tapping into their favorite brands, we can establish Dumbgood as the leader in licensed merchandise retail.

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Product Market Fit (PMF):

PMF is critical for sustainable growth.

We need to define PMF to determine sustainable healthy growth vs unhealthy growth, this will help us determine if Dumbgood is working when measured against our success criteria, we have to create real value for our customers using the right metrics.

• Define product value, what is Dumbgood supposed to do? (Strategy)

  Dumbgood provides products that connect youth culture to licensed merchandise in a way that feels unique and authentic to its customers.

• Quantify it, how do we measure this? (Strategy)

  Dumbgood is gaining market share amongst its competitors, increasing its NPS, reducing its churn rate and increasing revenue. Dumbgood is also gaining traction on social media with customers talking about the product and sharing pictures wearing the product organically. Dumbgood should also see an uptick in blogs and media outlets reviewing the brand and its products, unsolicited.

• Create Thresholds, what are our success metrics around this value? (Strategy)

  Success metrics could include, but aren’t limited to; increased NPS, organic growth in followers online between 2-6%, healthy sales growth YOY 10-25%, keeping bounce rate between 26-51%, reducing CAC, increasing return customer revenue.

• Roadmap, what ideas do we have to reach these thresholds? (Execution)

  Being consistent on our product release schedule, targeting keywords on our site and hashtags on posts on social media, keeping UX easy to navigate on our website, brining to market licenses that resonate with our customers, stay on trend with designs, stay on trend with marketing photography, provide excellent customer service

• Fail Fast and Iterate (Questions)

  Will a license be able to scale to a larger collection investment? Can we test a property before investing in inventory? Can we test a silhouette or new product category by using proven properties and see if it sells? Do we have a valid way to run these tests?

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Business Model Canvas:

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Value Proposition Canvas:

Customer Jobs:

Represent their favorite pop culture brands in clothing that isnt mass produced or cheap. Be unique, fashionable, cool amongst peers

Products & Services:

Pop culture licensed apparel and accessories. Online community for pop culture fans (doesn’t exist yet)

Customer Segment: Pains

• Uncertain about quality, buying online

• Unsure if product trend is correct

• Pricing seems high compared to what they are use to for lic merch

• Doesn’t have brand trust, doesn’t know Dumbgood

• Orders shipped incomplete

• Products not looking like what’s purchased

• Not able to order due to out of country

Customer Segment: Gains

• Wearing unique designs

• Buying quality products

• Representing brands they love that cannot be found other places

• Gaining affirmation from peers

• Being nerdy but still cool

Value Proposition: Pain Relievers

• Money back guarantee

• Licenses that cannot be found other retailers

• Unique POV on product design

• Product is limited and covetable

Value Proposition: Gain Creators

• Unique clothing from mass produced product

• First to market amongst peers

• Licenses that cannot be found anywhere else

• Fashionable on trend clothing

• Quality for the money spent

• Social media buzz creator

Set Goals

Stregths:

Represent their favorite pop culture brands in clothing that isnt mass produced or cheap. Be unique, fashionable, cool amongst peers

Weakness:

There is a lot of competition in the pop culture licensed apparel and accessories market. Lack of online community for pop culture fans (doesn’t exist yet).

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SWOT Analysis:

Opportunities:

• Money back guarantee

• Licenses that cannot be found other retailers

• Unique POV on product design, art direction

• Product is limited and covetable

• Partnering with licensors for marketing opportunities

Threats:

• Competition being first to market

• Stronger more on trend art direction

• More loyal customer bases

• Competition has better pricing

Strengths:

• Overseas low MOQ sourcing for fashion items

• Strong relationships with licensors

• In house printing capabilities

• Solid infrastructure for inventory and shipping management

• Creative budget for activations

• Creative budget for marketing materials

• Strong existing customer base

Weaknesses:

• Approval lead times for product with licensors

• Constant fresh art direction

• Trying to be everything to every customer

• No plan to test properties before buying inventory

• No strategy around sales and reduce cost items

• Rising costs of overseas manufacturing

Strategy-Opportunities through strengths:

• Ability to test new licenses quickly with customers

• Produce unique fashion items at a low MOQ inventory commitment

• More in person marketing activations

• Offer free shipping or free overnight shipping

• Bring to market licenses that have not been used by competitors

• Find new ways to engage customers online
  

Strategy-Opportunities minimize weaknesses:

• Unique clothing different from mass produced product

• First to market amongst peers

• Exclusivity in licenses

• Ability to hire top talent for design direction roles

• Improve domestic sourcing strategy, diversify

• Sharpen pricing to reduce the need for constant sales

Strategy-Prevent threats through strengths:

• Be more interactive with customers, create community

• Work with domestic and overseas partners to reduce pricing, leverage business with them

• Ability to pay top talent in design and direction

• leveraging relationships with licensors to prevent competitors from access to licenses
  

Strategy-Minimize danger where weakness meets threats:

• Unique clothing from mass produced product

• First to market amongst peers

• Licenses that cannot be found anywhere else

• Fashionable on trend clothing

• Quality for the money spent

• Social media buzz creator

PLAN

MVP Strategy:

• Test license interest with customers via social media post, testing engagement with post (likes & comments). We will need to set engagement threshold on posts to determine whether to move forward on it.

• If the license shows potential (via metrics) confirm the MVP test on development calendar, and the full cut and sew collection on the calendar. These should be separated by several months.

• Identify most successful product category (t-shirts?) THIS IS THE MVP

• Need to determine the amount of tees that constitute the MVP. 3-5 total designs should be sufficient.

• Success metrics assigned for sell throughs for MVP releases.

• Design DTG t-shirts using current trends and most popular aspects of the license.

• Designs should be completed quickly and sampled quickly.

• Confirm samples look good.

• Get approvals from licensors.

• Photograph samples.

• Launch on website.

• Analyze sell throughs against success metrics.

• Proceed with cut and sew or cancel cut and sew from calendar.

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MVP Timeline:

Clicking this link below will open a new window in your browser displaying the MVP roadmap strategy. This strategy would take place place over 3 months. This time frame is just an example, this process could take up to 6 months depending on the time required to test customer interest in the license.

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Design Sprints :

6 sprint stages:

• Understand: user needs / business needs / technology capacities

  What are our competitors doing? What licenses are they going after that we have and can be “first” to? What licenses have they done that we can do better? What licenses are our customers asking for? Do we have those, if not how fast can we get the license? How are we capturing and communicating with our customer requests, can this be done via social media? The customer is the primary stake holder but how can we engage the licensor as well so they feel compelled to help with marketing? What are our insights and ideas?

• Define: Key Strategy / Focus

  Develop early approachable product that can be executed quickly to test customer desire for license, focus on quality tee designs that are on trend and understandable. Define the user journey here from the point which the customer learns what license we intend to design into all the way to their purchase experience and review of the product. What 3 words would we like for customers to use when talking about our product, compare these to the actual words they use once they complete purchase.

• Diverge: explore as many ideas as possible

  Speed to market on un-tested properties through DTG print tees on multiple properties per month, what new licenses should we be testing, are there licenses that have performed well in the past that we can take a fresh look at? What trends would you use to design each of these licenses, can you provide quick sketches or trend pulls for reference in our discussion? We should storyboard the tee MVP collection here and show how the trend would apply to the license.

• Decide: select the best ideas

  Analyze thresholds for each release and determine if they warrant expanded product offerings and larger collections. Review all the licenses suggested and the trends and design ideas suggested for each and have the design team vote on which ones to approach first. At this point we can talk further about the main contenders and refine the design ideas.

• Prototype: create ideas to test

  Divide up top contenders amongst designers and start working on mock ups for each license.

• Validate: validate ideas with stakeholders for sampling

  One mockups are complete, teams review the designs with creative director and brand managers to evaluate, revise and curate the mock ups. Designs should be vetted with sales, merchandising and CEO once approved the sprint is complete and designers should move to sampling.

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Agile/Waterfall Hybrid :

The hybrid method is highly suggested for this type of product as it allows us to test licenses with our customers, and using KPI’s and thresholds, determine if a license should have a complete cut and sew line. The overseas cut and sew items involve inventory investment and a much longer lead time with the potential for greater loss.

This strategy will require 2 types of design teams, team 1 would be focused solely on speed to market tee design. This team would be the tip of the spear in testing and should have strong design intuition and be able to execute the MVP designs in line with current trends and market comps. These designs will set the creative tone for the forthcoming cut and sew line.

Team 2 would be responsible for the full cut and sew line. This team should have a strong background in patterning and material usage as well as being able to apply trend and graphics to their product in a way that follows current fashion trends for our target customer. They should have an understanding of different art techniques available to us from our overseas factories and should work closely with the factory and the PD team to execute innovative products to bring to market. Both teams should be involved in meetings and design reviews for both the agile and waterfall calendar for each license, this allows for complete transparency and collaboration from concept to execution.

DTG tees are our “software” the cut and sew line is our “hardware”

Will utilize Gantt / kanban chart, waterfall calendar, agile sprint calendar

Click this link to view an example of the sprint plan.

LAUNCH

Pricing Strategy :

Im not a sales expert but I believe from my limited knowledge that Dumbgood operates on a Margin based pricing + Cost Plus + Premium, pricing strategy.

Dumbgood regularly changes margins for items depending on sell throughs to increase volume and decrease price for the customer. When the product is first released to the market Dumbgood operates on a purely cost plus pricing strategy. Dumbgood has a specific margin goal of 70% for all new product releases but this could change based on market demand or product time on site. Dumbgood also relies on a premium pricing strategy, given they have access to exclusive licenses and the ability to create unique products that can only be for through the Dumbgood retail site.

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Go to market:

Who is the launch owner?

This would be the Brand Manager for Dumbgood

Who are you trying to reach with the specified License?

Here we would refer back to the persona(s) that we discussed at the beginning of the design sprint, where we discussed picking the license and the trends to design into.

Pricing & sales strategies:

• MVP tee pricing $30-$34

• Cut and sew apparel items pricing from $50-$100

• Accessories pricing $30-$100

Marketing Strategy:

• Social media product seeding

• Direct email promotion

• Social media channel posts

• Google ad’s purchase

• Instagram & Facebook ad’s

• Partner with online publications to review product

• Possible marketing activations - pop up shops, event promotions or trade shows

Success metrics:

• Sell through rate of 50-80%

• ROAS of 4

Customer Support Plan:

The standard customer support team will be sufficient, the team should be updated on new silhouettes and sizing changes that may have taken place in the product design. They should be answering questions through email and social media as received from the customer.

Post Launch:

• Continue paid advertising

• Continue product seeding with influencers

• Taper off social media posts

• Set timeline for product sunsetting

• Set timeline for for product to go to sale section

ASSESS

Data:

Dumbgood should first be looking at sell throughs around the MVP and then the cut and sew collections if they moved forward. Dumbgood should be analyzing customer conversion rate, analyzing the sales funnel on the website and checking ad performance for each new license release. We should also see customer satisfaction rates go up by analyzing traffic on social media around both the MVP and cut and sew product releases.

Dumbgood should be looking to increase speed to market on new licenses utilizing the DTG capabilities, to print and test t-shirts with new licenses with its customers. This should be considered the MVP of the brand for each property on the calendar. Using this MVP strategy they should be able to reduce liability in inventory and reduce stress on overseas partners. This will also allow Dumbgood to better understand the type of licenses that its customers are interested in which should lead to a higher conversion rate / increased revenue and better sell throughs.

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Customer Feedback:

If we are truly taking into account the customer personas when selecting the licensed properties we bring to market, we should see a dramatic swing in customer satisfaction and retention. If Dumbgood follows its MVP strategy and allows the customer to be the voice of the brand through their purchases we will see an increase in social media buzz and organic hype created by the customers. This strategy should also be reducing the amount of customer complaint tickets and increase the AOV and return customer rates. We should also analyze the email signup and followers across all social media to determine customer satisfaction.

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Launch Findings:

Based on this development strategy, Dumbgood should learn who its customers really are. We should be learning what types of licenses they react best to, and what their interests are. This should be evident in the success metrics outlined in previous sections. The design and development strategy incorporating the MVP should be helping to reduce the amount of un-sold inventory on hand and reduce the amount of discounted product we sell on the site.