MGT2152 : Entrepreneurship : Fashion Retail Industry

The fashion retail industry is constantly moving towards a sustainable development of productivity and sales. In this context, sustainability and ethical concerns are increasingly becoming crucial to fashion clothing industry in Australia. Therefore, the organisation that focuses hugely on mass production challenges are being publicly shamed and are forced to move towards commercial sustainability. The clothing and fashion retail industry in Australia has faced major difficulties over r the period of five years in terms of changing customer demand, increasing competition and increasing the cost of rent. However, the revenue of the industry is expected to grow at an annualised rate of 2.0 in the coming years 2018-19 with a total revenue of $16.7 billion mainly due to the expansion of bricks and mortars retail through online channels (Au.fashionunited.com. 2018).

Apart from these issues, the fashion retail industry is anticipated to increase by 0.1% in 2018-19 owing to the weak exposable growth of income. It has been seen that Australian, fashion and clothing industry faces a highly uncertain future due to the changing global trends (Grimmer et al. 2017).  Manufacturing of clothing in Australian has declined drastically with the restructuring of the supply.  

Considering this competitive environment, Billabong is planning to venture their business in Australia in order to expand their business by opening more stores in Sydney, Brisbane followed by one more shopping centre in north Australia in order to move towards a sustainable pathway through resistance to growing challenges. The venture operational of the company will be opening prior to Christmas to retain an increased number of customers. In this context, they will help the customers by spending on innovative and additional fashion products by reducing the prices.

Billabong International is an Australian fashion retail organisation that surfs merchandise that is listed on the Australian stock exchange. However, it has been found from various sources that Australia does not have much international fashion organisations with Billabong that has 1.5 billion of market value in Australia with an annual revenue of 1.1 billion (NewsComAu. 2018).

b. Products and/or services

Billabongs products and services are inclusive of beach-themed clothing, swimsuit, surfboards, skateboards and other fashion accessories. The organisation has different kinds of brands such as Element, Von Zipper, Honolua surf company, Nixel, sector 9 and RVCA.   In this context, the company sells expensive designer brands due to which a huge number of people around the international boundary are attracted towards their product. The company also produce sports items for encouraging sports.

c. Target market

Billabong aims to develop an alternative market in addition to its existing clothing production and to differentiate their, marketing strategies in the international scenario. Based on this, Billabong aims to develop a core portfolio of products and overcome the challenges faced in Australia by venturing into Australia (Hallak et al. 2014). However, the organisation’s goal to venture into women and children clothing ion the next 3 years.

Apart from these issues, the company also plans to licences a set of cologne and perfume along with leather products, eyewear and jewellery. According to sources, it has been found that women clothing accounts for almost 52% of total clothing in the year 2017. Based on this factors, the company targets population of Australia specifically females aged between 20 – 40 years for the population who have affordable and limited disposable income to spend of standard quality clothing.

2. Review of the article: Butler, T 2017, 'Hiring an entrepreneurial leader', Harvard Business Review, pp. 85–93. 

In this article “Hiring an entrepreneurial leader” Butler delved into the skills mindsets and behavioural characteristics of entrepreneurs, thereby explaining their stereotypes about their business. In this context, the author also offers an evidence-based suggestion for conducting interviews, screening of resume that can be used by the human resource managers to recognise the entrepreneur leaders (Butler 2017). Apart from these, the article explains the way by which an entrepreneur can move towards sustainable organisational culture by addressing innovative techniques to enhance organisational culture and production.

It has been seen in the article, that companies while aiming to be innovative and agile in their business performance recruit various entrepreneurial managers to enhance their business activities. However, majority of the organisations lack the scientific way to differentiate the original entrepreneurs from the other candidates, in order to address this vital issue, the author of the article contrasted the psychological testing outcomes of more than 4000 successful entrepreneurs and of almost 1800 business leaders that referred themselves as the general executives but not entrepreneurs (Butler 2017).

Through the analysis of the articles, it is evident that there are three major differentiating factors for entrepreneurs. Firstly, thriving towards uncertainty, a growing for ownership, and innovative skills of persuasion. Based on this factors the author enters into the skill, mind change and behavioural aspects of the entrepreneurs for illustrating the stereotypes that are often missed.

For instance,  entrepreneurs are not always creative or in love with risk events or occurrence of risking issues, rather these leaders are highly inquisitive in nature and open to new experiences as well as they are quite comfortable with the unpredictable events. For exemplifying this, he shares the evidence of Charlotte Yates who brought into entrepreneur leadership style in Sprint and in IBM (Butler 2017).  

The author of this article stated that entrepreneurs like Charlotte are enthusiastic about a dreaming it up the process. To be specific a business entrepreneur are less constricted to convention than their corporate counterparts, they always have a backup idea for things that can be done better (Bakker and Shepherd 2017). In this research article, the authors have, therefore, successfully explored the organisational problem in dealing with recruitment, selection of new candidates.

3. Reviewing the venture development stages along with suggestions to implement the strategies

Entrepreneurship is closely related to the creation of a new Venture in the market. (Azmat and Fujimoto 2016) stated that the entrepreneurship is the way of identifying and evaluate a new opportunity in the market. Much of the research conducted in the article focuses on the early staged of developing a new entire that is fully concentrated on the creative and establishment periods of the entrepreneur.

Stage 1: The creation of concept:

Before the launching of business, the business needs to go through a form of connection or a prior planning. This stage is usually engaged with evaluation or running of the business for a short period of time before, the owner of the company places all its dependence on it (Davidsson and Gordon 2016). The stage is involved with the high amount of creative thinking, gathering of market information and networking activities.

In this context, Billabong has decided to aggressively develop its business and target a new market in Australia by venturing with a new range of collection for the children and women customers. By doing so, the company has aimed to launch marketing that is in line with the alternative clothing options to differentiate itself through innovative marketing strategies (Burns 2016).

Stage 2: phase of development

The business launched is either developed on a viable size or the plan is aborted at a preliminary stage. This phase of the decision depends on the fact that whether there are an adequate number of customers in the market that prefers the product and service (Gilbert 2017). Therefore, the marketing related to cash flow management often turns in to the major functional activities. However, it is an individual entrepreneur that manages the firm in this real stage of development through their own efforts.

In this context, Billabong human resource manager and sales and marketing manager will be responsible for executive the venturing plan by recruiting appropriate candidates for enhancing the business whereas the sales and financial manager of the company will manage the vulnerable stage of the development stage by focusing on the market tends and the consistent pricing pressures within the market (Fillis et al. 2017).

Stage 3: growth or decline phase

It can be said from the article that some of the enterprises have developed their business into o viable entity within the market and has made consistent growth within the market. In some cases, growth may be challenged due to the internal structure of the organisation (Johnsen et al. 2018). This is because the management of internal operations and people are often critical to the organisation. In case of growth, it has been found that apparel and fashion clothing industries are facing intense competition and pricing pressures from major industries that require continuous innovation of the product.

Therefore, to improve the growth and sales of the product, the company will build a new management structure consisting of the sales team that will delegate to generate sales lead on the regional location. In this context, the team will accountable for managing the retail store's connection (Welch et al. 2016). Apart from these, the sales team, the organisational management is based on the accountability and values of mutual respect that helps the firm to enhance their environment by encouraging productivity and sales.

In this stage of development, the company will seek to plan a substantial long-term business investment for developing their ventured products of clothing retail. In this context, the funding will cover all the operating expenditures and development of products for launching it in Australia.

Stage 4: phase of maturity

 In this stage the business organisation has to pass through the period of stability, it is when the growth began to flatten and the organisation starts moving towards maturity. At this specific stage, the entity may lose its simple structure of decision making and take help to utilise more sophisticated business procedure for transforming their business into more bureaucratic processes (Lerner et al. 2018). In this stage of maturity, the company will make efforts to enhance their marketing communication by communicating the message of their product line amongst a diverse range of customers. In this context, the marketing communication will consist of :

Public relation: press releases related to technical trade magazine and major business publication to reach target audiences

Trade events:  in this company representatives will be responsible for taking part in the trade shows that will as well retain an increased number of the customer to their venture capital

Internet: this the major sources of marketing communication. The company will be developing a website for Australia location highlighting their new product. Plans will be developed with a professional and effective platform to encourage an interactive form of sales that will generate in the region (Grimmer et al. 2015).

Apart from the company will also plan to use other channels such as billboards, television and stream team to increase their awareness.  In addition to this, they will be planning ways to attract and encourage customers to visit their stores more often in order to increase the sales of the venture organisation.

Stage 5: re-established growth and decline

After the enterprise has established itself completely within the market along with the competitive edge over their competitors, external investment, they may be available to exploit further in their redeveloped model of business (Hodges et al. 2015). This phase is usually known as s curve hypothesis that suggests that such investment may trigger towards the second phase of growth that may, in turn, become a stage of stagnation and decline with the increasing competition from the growing competitors and new entrants in the market.

It has been found from the Australia fashion marketing is bragged by advertising and marketing campaigns that help them to offer on-trend lifestyle and fashion information. In this context, it is evident that major brands have increasingly grown their strategies by targeting operational customers and enhancing the quality of the products (Taylor and Jack 2016). Apart from the fluctuating political and economic policies of Australia may influence the business of Billabong venture capital thereby slowing the production in the first year.

However, since Billabong is a major international company, the company has a high competitive edge as its name is nor attached to any other specific group of customers thereby allowing them to enter into various industrial segments. In addition to this, another major competitive advantage of the company is its innovative strategy of marketing, the company will be able to establish its present ion the Australia market (Blackburn 2016).

4. Evaluating various support systems offered by the government to facilitate entrepreneurial activities.

In Australia, the Australian government entrepreneurship program initiative of government helps the organisation to surpass competitiveness and productivity. It is a part for the Australian government national and science agenda. In the context, the government programs offer four major business elements:

Accelerating Commercialisation: This program supports the small and medium organisation and their entrepreneurs to commercialise on their novel products and services as well as processes.

Business management: In this program experienced business advisors and supervisors review business activities, such as direction, growth options, strategies as well as value chain to offer a report with detailed strategies for the improvement of business (Oviatt, and McDougall 2018).

  Incubation assistance: This program supports the new as well as existing incubators for improving the prospects of Australian venture start-ups for helping them to achieve commercial success in the international markets and to develop their abilities to progress business.

Innovation relationship: These programs consist of experienced innovation to recognise the business gaps and to prevent their business challenges

Suggesting different forms of support required from the government to foster business

Considering the apparel market in Australia, it is evident that clothing sales are mostly driven by changing economic conditions, changing demographic trends a pricing strategy. Therefore, fashion is an important thing for the individual company that plays a sufficient role in leveraging the entire demand of the marker.

It has been seen that Australia’s apparel and clothing industry continues to move through a positive retail value growth in the year 2017 with a lower rate in the year 2016. However, the competition within the fashion industry in consistently increasing due to the changing environment leading to the growth of many domestic an well as international market.

Considering this growing challenges of the fashion industry, it is evident that the company needs to depend on the business management program for enhancing their entrepreneurship. In this, the experienced business advisors of Billabong will help the organisation to review and evaluate the business operations and business strategy to gather necessary information about the business (Volery and Mazzarol 2015). In this regards the advisors will also operate a business action plan for outlining the strategies of the business for giving the business a more competitive and improved platform.

In case of growth management, the business manager needs to depend on the growth service program for identifying the growth opportunities in a more rapid way with the reduced amount of risk. This involvement will help the business to establish a growth plan for venture investment and help them to increase their opportunity in the competitive market (Ajagbe et al. 2015). Apart from these, will also help in mentoring the existing and new employees thereby developing requirement capabilities and strategies for the organisation through daily follow-ups as well as meetings.

In the case of supply chain facilitation, the company will be able to connect their supply with existing as well emerging market thereby offering the company with high project opportunities. By doing so, the company’s management advisor will be closely working with the different suppliers of the company in order to enhance the supply chain network thereby enhancing their ability to access new market (Williams and Shepherd 2016). The company needs to conduct an extensive research on the market for understanding the current customers demand, the companies, existing and long-term connection with the industry network and business assisting services.

The company can also focus on government programs that offer them to depend on tourism partnership to offer complimentary products as well as service for their new as well as existing customers. For doing so, the business organisation needs to settle down its business in Northern Australia (Leitch and Volery 2017). These service help by the government will help the organisation to reach their potential that they might not be able to access on their own.

It is the supervision and monitoring of the suppliers that can be considered as the preliminary stage towards the sustainable program. In this aspect, for enhancing their business opportunities in term do production as well as sales, the company is required to apprehend a collaborative approach to work together by sharing information and competencies to implement the sustainability policies (Dana et al. 2016). It is the duty of the top management of the organisational to take the organisation towards the more sustainable business that requires revising the company's vision as well mission that is related to compulsory regulation.

It is the government that high potential to inspire the organisation to adopt sustainability objectives to address the fashion industry through request of campaigns, and competitor’s actions to implement sustainability objectives in their working actions, in a fashion industry that is under constant pressure of dynamic change needs to focus on the issue of sustainability and government program to enhance their supply channels.

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