1. Evaluate the opportunity for Heather Evans, is it attractive for her? Evaluate Heather’s efforts to date.
In our opinion the business opportunity is very attractive for Heather Evans. A company of formal professional wear for women is in a well-defined segment group. It includes 4.3 mil. women, with over $ 5 bil to spend a year on clothes. It is also the fastest growing segment of working women’s clothing market, with real growth forecasted at 8-10% a year.
Heather has a good background to become successful in this business – a Harvard Business School (HBS) graduate, with background in modeling and fashion. We can also see that HBS gave Heather a broad range of contacts that she is not shy to use. All of this gives Heather an opportunity to be successful.
Heather is offering product which is a little different from already known formal professional style in the market. This gives her an opportunity to be the groundbreaker and expand the segment even further. But on the other hand, since the industry is so competitive and saturated, in a long run competition level is going to rise, and Heather will need to come up with a plan how to differentiate her product even more.
Heather has invested a lot of her own money in this company. And in case something goes wrong during production cycle, there might be high sunk costs.
In our opinion, Heather has showed a great effort so far with building up her own company. Starting with creation of a business plan, and ending with renting a space for showroom and ordering fabrics. She seems very determined to succeed in this business. Her biggest flaw seems to be the lack of trust in other professionals, which is why she takes the largest portion of operations on herself, which makes everything a hundred times harder for her.
In times Heather seems very organized and well prepared. But her schedule and traveling between Boston and NYC takes a big toll on the financial side of her company. In our opinion she...