Exploring the development opportunities for the local independent brands in Hong Kong

EXPLORING the development opportunities for the local independent brands in Hong Kong

Wing Yan Chow T0001707 NTU MA Fashion Marketing

EXPORING THE DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE LOCAL INDEPENDENT BRANDS IN HONG KONG

Student Name: Student Number: Course Title: Module Code: Supervisor: Assessment Type: Word counts:

Wing Yan Chow T0001707 (MA) Fashion Marketing 2016-2017 FASH40107 Liz Bolt Final Dissertation Report 16048 words

DISSERTATION DECLARATION

ABSTRACT

Nowadays, “lifestyles� is one of the tools for the people to show off their daily life and cultural taste on the social media platforms. Most of the local small independent brands in Hong Kong have taken advantage of this phenomenon and released a lot of products, which draw from the hipster’s lifestyle and culture. However, some of the local independent brands are lack of marketing strategy and support currently, and most of them are difficult to develop and expand their business to a higher level and get in touch with the target consumers.

Encountering such issue mentioned above, this issue inspired me to start research on how to help those local small independent brands in Hong Kong to develop their business by suggesting a few marketing strategies or development opportunities. At first, this research project is going to look into the current market environment and promotion trends in Hong Kong and pin down specific issues needed to be resolved. Next, I will try to identify the customer behaviour by analysing the data that I collected from the secondary and primary research.

At the end of this project, there will have the execution part, which about the suggestions for the Hong Kong local small to medium sized independent brands to develop their business.

Keywords: Hong Kong, Independent Brands, Marketing Strategies, Development, Customer Behaviours, Hipster, Culture, Creative Industries Word counts: 16048 words (excluding abstract, acknowledgements, content page, references, bibliography and appendix)

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my dissertation project supervisor, Liz Bolt for the encouragement, support and time-spent to my project. If without her guidance and recommendations, this research project cannot process smoothly during those months.

Furthermore, thanks to everyone who have helped me on this project, including all the participants in the online survey, interviews and focus groups. This accomplishment would not have been possible without them.

Lastly, I would like to express my appreciation to my family and friends by supporting and encouraging me to face the difficulties and pressures during this project. With their encouragements, I am able to solve all the problems during this year positively and efficiently.

Thank you very much!

From: Wing Yan Chow (Coey)

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CONTENT ABSTRACT

02

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

04

LIST OF FIGURE

07 - 08

CH1.

INTRODUCTION

09 - 10

CH2.

LITERATURE REVIEWS

11 - 17

2.1

2.1.1 2.1.2 2.1.3

2.2

2.2.1 2.2.2 2.2.3

2.3 2.4

CH3.

CH4.

Consumer Behaviour and Needs Theory of consumer behaviour Maslow’s Hierarchy Needs

Consumers’ behaviour and needs in specific country – Hong Kong

The Leading Marketing and Promotion Trends in 2017 Transparency & Storytelling

Being Visual for the Promotion Content

The use of Public Relations

The use of Social Media Promotion

MACRO ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS CASE STUDIES

What have the Hong Kong Government done?

4.1.2

Hong Kong Design Centre

4.2

CreateHK

Cooperation between the Hong Kong Government and Public Organisations

4.2.1

PMQ

4.2.3

D2 Place

4.2.2

4.3 4.4

15 - 16

Customer Retention

4.1

4.1.1

13 - 14

17 17

20 - 22 23 - 34 25 - 26 27 - 30

JCCAC

Handicraft Markets in Hong Kong Learn from the UK

31 - 32 34

CH5.

5.1

METHODOLOGY

Research Framework

5.2

Research Approach –Demographics and Psychographics

5.4

The Collection of Primary Data

5.3 5.5

CH6.

The Collection of Secondary Data Ethical Considerations

FINDINGS & RESULTS

6.1

The findings of interviews with the brands’ owners

6.3

Findings for the execution idea

6.2

CH7.

7.1

7.1.1 7.1.2

7.2

7.2.1 7.2.2

CH8.

Findings related to customer behaviours

DISCUSSIONS

Supports from the Hong Kong Government Complicated application procures

Lack of reflections and transparency

Factors of affecting the Hong Kong local independent designers and small brands’ development

EXECUTION IDEA

8.3

Competitors

8.5

Handigather’s Future Plans

CH9.

37 38

39 - 40 41

43 - 46 43

44 - 45 46

47 - 52 49 - 50

51 - 52

Lack of marketing and promotion skills and mindset

Handigather's functions

8.4

37

Customer behaviours and shopping patterns have changed

8.1 8.2

35 - 41

Target Users

SWOT Analysis of Handigather

CONCLUSION

53 - 60 54 56

57 - 58 59 60

61

REFERENCE

63 - 65

APPENDIX

69 - 110

BIBLIOGRAPHY

66 - 68

LIST OF FIGURES Fig1.

Unknown Title. Source: Instagram account - janet_alodia

Fig2.

Death of Elocution. Source: Pinterest

Fig3.

Customer Impact Diagram. Source: Own Image

Fig4.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Source: Own Image

Fig5.

Showboard of process of production. Source: Instagram account - Blackcred

Fig6.

Blackcred Interviews on newspapers. Source: Instagram account - Blackcred

Fig7.

How much are returning shoppers really worth? Source: Yotpo

Fig8.

Unknown Title. Photo taken by Redd Angelo

Fig9.

Unknown Title. Photo taken by Patrick Cheung

Fig10.

Rental Indices for Hong Kong Property Market 1997 – 2017. Source: The Rating and Valuation Department of Hong Kong

Fig11.

Unknown Title. Source: Getty Image

Fig12.

The Logo of CreateHK. Source: CreateHK

Fig13.

The Logo of Hong Kong Design Centre. Source: Hong Kong Design Centre (HKDC)

Fig14.

PMQ Building. Source: Google

Fig15.

PMQ Building. Source: Getty Image

Fig16.

JCCAC Building. Source: Getty Image

Fig17.

D2 Place Building. Source: Google

Fig18.

Music Performance inside D2 Place. Source: Instagram account – d2_weekendmarkets

Fig19.

JCCAC Handicraft Market. Source: Instagram account – jccac_artsvillage

Fig20.

Unknown Title. Source: Splitshire

Fig21.

Research Framework. Source: Own Image

Fig22.

Ways or channels that the participants have get in touch or heard from the Hong Kong local independent brands at the first time (Question 8 of the online survey). Source: Own Image

Fig23.

Reasons lead to purchase products from the Hong Kong local independent brands (Question 5 of the online survey). Source: Own Image

Fig24.

Influences of customer purchase intentions (Question 10 of the online survey). Source: Own Image.

Source: Own Image

Fig25.

Major social media platforms that the participants used frequently (Question 11 of the online survey).

Source: Own Image

Fig26.

Reasons for like or sharing from social media (Question 13 of the online survey). Source: Own Image

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Fig27.

Are personalised and interactive customer experiences on marketing or promotion methods are important for a small independent brand in Hong Kong. (Question 14 of the online survey). Source: Own Image

Fig28.

What kind of platforms were the participants usually shopping from. Source: Own Image Customer Impact Diagram. Source: Own Image.

Fig29.

Results of the vote in the focus group. Source: Own Image

Fig30.

YMCA College of Careers. Source: Instagram account – wkda_hk

Fig31.

Handigather Platform Mockup. Source: Own Image

Fig32.

Handigather Target Users Moodboard. Source: Own Image

Fig33.

Perceptual Map of Handigather. Source: Own Image

Fig34.

The Logo of Skill Share. Source: SkillShare

Fig35.

The Logo of Pinkoi. Source: Pinkoi

Fig36.

The Logo of U Lifestyle HK. Source: U Lifestyle HK

Fig37.

Handigather’s Future Plan Timeline. Source: Own Image

Fig38.

Handigather’s Instagram Page. Source: Own Image

Fig39.

JCCAC Handicraft Market. Source: JCCAC

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CH1. INTRODUCTION The terms of “Hipster” was coined in the jazz age of the 1940s (Pfeiffer, 2015). It is a word to describe the people who fond of art and culture.

They are a group of young adults who dressed up to the nines, hanging around in bookstores, handicraft markets and independent concerts. The definition of “Hipster” is different to everyone.

They can be a group of people who influenced by consumerism, or they can be loyal supporters of a certain culture and art.

It is an era of consumerism nowadays; there are more people are becoming the slaves of consumerism. To be frank, movies and books have become a kind of consumer goods for the fake hipsters to show off their lifestyles through social media platforms nowadays. Pfeiffer (2015) has also stated that the hipsters nowadays are tending to be entrepreneurs by buying and selling local products and running micro-businesses, and the hipster lifestyle has certainly become an excellent fertiliser for those alternative businesses.

After the heydey in the 1960s to 1970s, and through the decline in the 1980s to 1990s, the hipster culture has started to reappear in Hong

Kong during 2008. However, they have appeared by a different posture. Up to the present, the hipster trend has undulated in Hong Kong for many years, and have affected by various cultures from the countries nearby, especially cultures from Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. In the recent years, the Hong Kong society has stereotyped the hipsters as a group of people who are slim, wearing simple and fashionable clothing, hang out at the bookstores and cinemas, watching some independent movies; and the society has also started to use the consumption patterns to determine the hipsters’ daily activities. Subsequently, culture, society and commerce have closely related among those years, and this kind of relationship has driven the growth of economic. Moreover, there are more and more fashion and lifestyle magazines have made use of those hipster styles as a gimmick to promote locals, fashion items and other consumer goods; Influenced by media in such, the definition of “hipster” is now depended on by these series consumption patterns.

Under the capitalism, the concept of creative industries that emphasised economic functions has replaced the cultural industries. Therefore,

文 青 Fig 1 09

designers and authors would prioritise the economic benefits of their work. There are many recent pieces of literature which about hipster cultures are linked to consumption. Parrish (2015) has stated that the creative industries can be defined as a broad range of economic activities, which concerned with the generation and commercialization of creativity, ideas, knowledge and information, for example, design, music, publishing, crafts, visual arts, fashion and furthermore. Nowadays, hipsters tend to define themselves by consumables instead their cultural literacy. However, Kong (2014) argued that literature and art have been commercialised nowadays such that their individuality and uniqueness has been taken away.

However, to be fair, art and cultural activities can also be supported by the profit of creative economy.

Followed by Hong Kong’s commitment to transform into a creative city, the creative industries within this region may receive more resources on developing their business by meeting the current market needs and atmosphere. However, according to own experiences and observations, as Hong Kong is still one of the most significant financial centres in the world, being one of the members in the creative industry in Hong Kong are often not the first choice for the young generations, which will have more additional discussions in this report.

On the other hand, because of there is a growth of social media usage among those years. The Hong Kong people have started to be aware of their lifestyle after receiving inspirations from the hipsters’ online posts, which lead to the hipster culture begin to grow viral in the recent years, and there are more local businesses and independent events that related to hipster culture in Hong Kong. Also, there are more fashion brands started will use unique and handmade as their selling points to attract their target customers.

The Hong Kong Government set up the DesignSmart Initiative (DSI) worth 250 million HKDs in 2004. This programme aims to provide funding support for design projects and to promote design as a value adding activity and to support the Design Incubation Programme (DIP) from the Hong Kong Innocentre (Hong Kong Gov., 2013). However, some of the local independent brands may not have enough marketing backgrounds or resources to develop their business, and those brands here in Hong Kong may not have a sounding reputation to attract potential customers. However, yet, they still have opportunities like handicrafts fairs and events to reach out to the market, such as JCCAC, Gala Market and Weekend Wardrobe, but most of them based on a "first-come-first-served" condition. Therefore, the majority obliged to use the social media platforms (such as Instagram and Facebook) to promote their products and services. At present, there is a reversal trend in the Hong Kong society; there are more people started to pay attention to the local brands and social enterprises because they all feel that the market should not have only one operation mode, which is the businesses monopolies control all of our daily life. On the other hand, the exorbitant rent in Hong Kong has given rise to the local brands become harder to expand their businesses.

Therefore, this pheromone has motivated me to start researching on how to help those Hong Kong independent businesses to develop their brand. Which leads to the purpose of this report will be to discuss and analyse the current problems that the Hong Kong handicrafts industry are facing and to explore on how those local small independent brands may develop in the future.

Research Questions and Objectives This research will be focusing on the current issues that the Hong Kong local independent handicraft brands are facing and how the industry evaluates the supports from Hong Kong Government. Therefore, this research intends to answer the following questions: 1. Does the Hong Kong Government care the issues from the supporting programmes?

2. What should the Hong Kong Government do to solve the problem(s) and support the local businesses?

3. Are there any new ways for the Hong Kong local independent brands to solve their current problems?

With the aim to: Discuss and analyse the problems that the Hong Kong handicrafts industry are facing and explore on how the local small independent brands in Hong Kong may develop in the future.

In additional, there will have a few objectives set for this research report to achieve the goals of this study: 1. Research on the current market trends and customer behaviours (What they need and their purchase purposes.)

2. To identify the Hong Kong local small independent brands current problems.

3. To identify what reasons will affect the brands marketing and branding ideas or plans 4. Suggest and research marketing strategies for local small independent brands in Hong Kong 10

CH2. LITERATURE REVIEWS

Fig 2

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Overview of This Chapter Referring to the forecasts from Business of Fashion (see BOF Team and Mckinsey & Company, 2016), the terms of sales of the fashion industry will have a rapid expansion by 2.5 to 3.5% in 2017 compared with 2.0 to 2.5% in 2016. However, the fashion market should not become complacent by the growth of sales and should have to keep developing their marketing plans and recognise the consumers’ needs. In this chapter, there are going to show the information which related to the consumer behaviour and needs, the marketing and promotion trends in 2017 and the use of public relation and social media in the fashion industry.

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2.1 Consumer Behaviour and Needs

2.1.1 Theory of consumer behaviour People have studied consumer behaviour for many years; in academic subjects, it can divide into economics, sociology, psychology, neurology and anthropology. Blackwell et al. have stated that consumer behaviour is the activities people undertake when obtaining, consuming and disposing of products and services (see Blythe 2013, p.5). Consumer behaviour is originally referred as buying behaviour and is a study of processes involved when individuals or groups: select, purchase, use or dispose of products, services, ideas or experiences to satisfy needs and desires (Solomon and Rabolt, 2013). It is crucial to comprehend the consumers’ needs; by understanding the consumers’ preferences and behaviour may increase their revenue and loyalty, and consumer behaviour is able to

research through consumer themselves, their lifestyle and experience (De Clerck, 2017).

Meadows (2012) said that market research is about obtaining and analysing information in order to make sure offering a correct product to the customers and it is the major role in a business plan. Therefore, the founders of the brands should find out about the customers’ spending habits, lifestyle, preference and needs. In additional, function, fashionability and added value are often focused on the product developers to look at the impact of a product on their target market (see fig 3) and it is also helpful for small fashion label to measure their product range.

FUNCTION

IMPACT ON CUSTOMER

ADDED VALUE

FASHIONABILITY

Fig 3 Customer Impact Diagram

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2.1.2 Maslow's Hierarchy Needs To know about customers’ behaviour and their needs, we should make sure we could understand what are needs and wants. Abraham Maslow has proposed a theory in 1943, which has called as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (see fig 4).

According to this theory, there have divided into five stages: physiological needs, safety needs, belongingness and love needs, esteem needs and self-actualization. Maslow (1943) asserted that people are encouraged to achieve certain needs, and some of them may take preference over each other. Also, our basic need is used to achieve the physical survival, after we have fulfilled by the physical needs, we will try to pursue more. Furthermore, there is an interesting study from Mark Oleson (2004) which is related to Maslow’s human needs theory. He said that Maslow’s human needs theory could lead us to have a better understanding of the individuals’ money attitudes; moreover, he believed that money might encourage people to pursue a higher level of psychological and social needs, such as cars, luxury products and memberships in clubs. Therefore, the brands should understand their customers' cultures and behaviours, and try to satisfy them at the same time.

SELF-ACTUALIZATION Achieving one’s full potential, including creative activities

Self-fulfilment Needs

ESTEEM NEEDS Prestige and feeling of accomplishment

BELONGINGNESS & LOVE NEEDS

Psychological Needs

Intimate relationships, Friends

SAFETY NEEDS Secuity, Safety

PHYSIOLOGICAL NEEDS

Basic Needs

Food, Water, Warmth, Rest

Fig 4 Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

2.1.3 Consumers’ behaviour and needs in specific country – Hong Kong Product Innovativeness However, part of the Hong Kongers are still having a prejudice against product innovativeness, but generally, most of the people in Hong Kong do not mind or resist to try creative new things even though the products do not come from a highstreet or luxury brand (Laurent, 1985). By increasing the innovativeness of a brand, it may able to help the consumer to become an opinion leader or fashion leader, and then they may able to become a fashion innovator automatically. Shukla (2009) has brought an interesting point of view on the importance of product innovation, she thought that it is not only the invention of a new idea is significant, but it is also bringing new ideas to the market by working on practices and exploiting it in a manner, which leads to new products, services or systems and adds value or improves its quality.

Materialism On the other hand, the term of materialism has been widely discussed among the society, basically not just in Hong Kong; it has become a global issue. According to Crossman (2017), materialism has two different definitions. First, it refers to a process that people based on their sense of themselves, their well-being and social standing on possession. On the other hand, it may define as an approach to understand people’s social life that rests on the idea that production and reproduction are fundamental social processes that greatly influence. One can suspect materialism has affected the current younger generation nowadays because Hong Kong is a prosperous city that full with plentiful advertisements and materialistic values have start brimming over the whole society.

In an interesting journal article (Chan, 2006). Chan stated materialistic values have already prevailed the whole society through the promotion of mass media, for example, the characters on television dramas have often rationalized the luxurious living standard that is totally different to the reality, also wealth is highly visible, and high-end luxurious brands are aggressively marketed; moreover the shopping malls are located closely to schools and residential areas. Those reasons above may increase the effect of materialism in Hong Kong.

The Trend of online shopping and eCommerce Online shopping has become the leading trend and shopping method in Hong Kong, and there has been a shift towards using mobile devices for eCommerce in 2014. Ada, C., the Country Manager of Visa Hong Kong and Macau, said that the trend of eCommerce and online shopping are being more mature than before, especially the security issues have been solved to suit the consumer needs (see Visa, 2015). In the light of the infographic on an article from Nielsen (2016), there are 88% of Hong Kong consumers have an online shopping experience in the past 12 months, and the young generation aged under 30 years old are the most active consumer of e-shopping; and over 80% of them will shop online through computers following by choice of smartphone and tablet.

However, there are a few pros and cons from online shopping. According to the report from Hong Kong Consumer Council (Hong Kong, 2016), the main reason that leads people to prefer online shopping are because products online are always cheaper than the stores on the street; also they enjoy the convenient and quick services of online shopping. However, there are plenty of people who worry about the leakage of personal data; also they do not have enough confidence on the products quality. Moreover, the report has also mentioned that there are a few issues happened in the clothing products sectors in online shopping retail industry. They have found that the fashion industry has used the Internet for retail in two different ways; first of all, the luxury brands use the online platforms for promotion rather than transact their products, they would like to the customers to get into stores where the in-store atmosphere and more personalised customer service may able to deliver its premium value proposition to their consumers. However, the less exclusive clothing brands will use online for marketing and also make transactions, and there may have a few products quality issues with those brands.

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2.2 The Leading Marketing and Promotion Trends in 2017

2.2.1 Transparency & Storytelling Marketers and brands have already made use of visual storytelling - advertisements to deliver the brand stories have been used for many years. Over the past several years, increasing the brand’s transparency has become one of the leading trends in the retail industry, and people are becoming more aware of the stories behind the brands beyond the product itself. Lifestyle also becomes an invisible product, which is the psychological satisfaction. There are more consumers would like to know more about the story behind the fashion products they buy and are asking where these products come from and how they have been made (Ethical Fashion Forum, 2010). Buying less, locally and quality made products have become increasingly attractive in the market; political, ethical and environmental are the largest concerns in the customers’ heart. In additional, the customers nowadays love to hear that the products are from the local independent retailers and also produced locally (Roolant, 2017).

By offering compelling and unique stories, the brands can deliver their tone-of-voice and message to their customers easily. There is a great storytelling and brand transparency example from a Hong Kong young brand - blackcred, which shown below (see fig 5-6). Blackcred is a brand which has a strong brand story and image combined with the cultures and traditional craftsmanship. The key of success for this brand is the owner has done a great job on the brand's transparency by telling their customers about how the products were made in a casual way, which may increase the target customers interest. Thomas (2012) mentioned the reasons that lead storytelling to become one of the essential elements in branding in his blog article. He thinks that stories can produce experiences and they may increase the impression of the brands in the audiences’ heart; also stories can help the brands to work on their brand analysis and to position more easily; moreover, stories are most likely to be shared by the people and able to motivate the audiences to achieve the brand’s goals. In additional, excellent brand stories may able to tap into people’s emotions and connects with the brand position or where the brand comes from; the marketers of the brands can create the images and build personal relationships are well on the way to establishing long-term brand loyalty (Hemsley, 2016).

Furthermore, Young (2013) has said that it becomes mandatory for the fashion brands to increase their transparency and traceability. It is important to disclose the products details completely nowadays, including the material sources, manufacturers, suppliers and so on; and the products information above have started to be aware by the customers. Ethical Fashion Forum (2010) has also mentioned that for the companies and brands who are taking the transparent route that disclosing more production information are able to increase innovation, consumer trust and collaboration along the supply chain.

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Fig 5. Blackcred's showboard of process of production

Fig 6. Blackcred Interviews on newspapers

2.2.2 Customer Retention Customer retention is the actions that companies take to attract their current customers to continue using their services or purchasing their products (Tallyfy, 2017).

Furthermore, Alshurideh (2016, p. 383) has summarised the definition of customer retention in his work, he defined customer retention in the following way: “all marketing plans and actions that seek to retain both existing and new customers by establishing, maintaining, and maximizing mutual long-term benefits that strengthen and extend the joint relationship between two parties”.

Thus, the objective of customer retention is to retain maximum amount customers for the company, utilising customer loyalty and brand loyalty in most occasions, and such action – customer retention will be involved in the whole lifetime relationship journey between customers and the company (Galetto, 2017).

Fig 7. How much are returning shoppers really worth?

(Data from Yotpo)

However, there are many forces driving the continued changes in the customer marketing environment, and hence, expectations are changing correspondently. In order to survive in the adverse circumstance from the market, some of the brands may prefer to put more efforts on finding new customers instead of finding ways to satisfy the current customers.

Rosenberg and Czeniel (1984) asserted due to most of the consumer marketing have geared toward attracting the new customers, and leads to the substantial portion of budgets, top management attention and talented marketing personnel often valued by neglecting the backend efforts of customer retaining. Therefore, it is essential for the companies to differentiate their obtaining and retaining functions, to assess the balance between them and to remedy any deficiencies in customer retention. During this process, it may require additional management to attach more importance on the potential of current customers and carry out more attractive plans to keep them coming back. According to the data from Yotpo (2017), the company gross relies on returning customers in some degrees; as it has shown in the chart (see fig 7), returning customers may only take up 14.77% of the whole chart, but they have spent nearly three times more than the one-time customers.

To keep customers engaged, Jao (2015) has mentioned that it is essential to collect and analyse customers’ transactional and behavioural data, in order to increase the customers' lifetime value and provide a tailored customer experiences. Also, it may enable the brands to forecast the customers’ needs and create a preferable customer experience by taking insights from the data collection. Furthermore, Lazazzera (2014) asserted that implement a customer loyalty program might be one of the ways to retain current customers. By developing a loyalty membership for a brand and rewarding the customers for repeat purchases may increase their desire on continuing consumption.

2.2.3 Being Visual for the Promotion Content Creating visual contents of the communication channels and promotion methods is become prevalent to increase the attention from current and potential customers; images, infographics, videos, memes and GIFs have been widely used by the brands and marketers in those years (Morrison, 2017). In additional, Gramble (2016) indicated the media and consumer communication channels nowadays are not making things easier, moreover the content on magazines or newspapers in both print and web formats are becoming increasing visual.

Narrowly speaking, providing visual contents on promotion and communication use can bring benefits for the brands.

Kusinitz (2014) asserted that, by having a high competition in the market, it is vital to increase the visual and creative content while the brands are working on the marketing contents for capturing the attention from the target audience.

According to the data from MDG Advertising in Kusinitz’s article, the numbers of audiences will get a rapid increase by 48% if the brands have contained both images and videos in their posts; also by adding visual elements into the promotion contents, the audiences are able to understand the brand’s messages easily. The view was further supported by Manic (2015), the visual contents such as illustrations, comics and videos are a kind of excellent methods for the companies to deliver the messages to the customers, and also those methods are able to become a storytellers to let the brands to tell their stories to the target audiences. Creating visual contents of the communication channels and promotion methods is become prevalent to increase the attention from current and potential customers; images, infographics, videos, memes and GIFs have widely used by the brands and marketers in those years (Morrison, 2017). In additional, Gramble (2016) indicated the media and consumer communication channels nowadays are not making things easier, and the content of magazines or newspapers in both print and web formats are becoming increasing visual.

Narrowly speaking, providing visual contents on promotion and communication use can bring benefits for the brands.

Kusinitz (2014) asserted that, by having a high competition in the market, it is vital to increase the visual and creative content while the brands are working on the marketing contents for capturing the attention from the target audience.

According to the data from MDG Advertising in Kusinitz’s article, the numbers of audiences will get a rapid increase by 48% if the brands have contained both images and videos in their posts; also by adding visual elements to the promotion contents, the audiences are able to understand the brand’s messages easily. The view was further supported by Manic (2015), the visual contents such as illustrations, comics and videos are a kind of excellent methods for the companies to deliver the messages to the customers, and also those methods are able to become a storytellers to let the brands to tell their stories to the target audiences.

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2.3 The use of Public Relations Public relations (PR) is one of the promotion methods in marketing communications mix, and it usually works in the event planning, crisis communication, community relations, reputation management, digital or new media and internal communication. According to Investopedia (2017), public relation is used to manage and help to spread the messages and information of the individual or companies to the public and to ensure the information in a positive light. However, the definitions of public relations have already changed from emphasised on press agent and publicity in the early stage to a more modern definition that focuses on the concepts of engagement and relationship building (The Public Relations Society of America, 2017). This was further supported by an article (see Rodriguez, 2017), as the consumer expectation and education levels have changed and improved, fashion brands should put more additional efforts on marketing, including social media, blogs, search engine optimisation and fashion content marketing. By hiring a public relation agency, it may help the brand to increase brand awareness and improve public perception. Moreover, the public relations has become digital, and the relations between digital marketing and public relations have become closer with each other.

It is essential for the fashion brands to hire the public relations representative. Mooney (2017) stated that the roles of public relations are used to build up the relationship between brands and mass media; help the brands to build a clear brand’s image; also expected to handle and pacify the complaints from the society.

In additional, Shekih (2009) assert that fashion public relations are able to bring plenty of benefits for the fashion brands, including increasing sales from the customers, receiving acknowledgement and endorsements from the target media, increasing chances of collaborations and marketing opportunities, also to attract celebrity customers and endorsements (Sheikh, 2009). Nevertheless, it may difficult for the brands to evaluate the success of their public relation plans; secondly, public relations is hard to envisage the audiences’ responses and the success of plan should emerge after a few months from the public relations promotion stage (Mcclay, 2013).

2.4 The use of Social Media Promotion Using social media platforms as the promotion channels is not a new thing to the fashion industry and the functions of social media widely mentioned by different studies. Moreover, it is undeniable that social media is one of the most effective promotion tools for the fashion industry currently. Owing to advances in technology, promotions on social media platforms have become popular among the industry and got a rapid rise in the usage for the brands in the promotion stage. According to the definition of social media from Evans (2008), social media is the democratisation of information and transforming people work as content publishers instead of content readers. Social media is building up by different types of elements, including Internet forums, message boards, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, images and video. On the other hand, Mangold and Faulds (2009) assert that social media has become one of the hybrid element of the promotion mix in marketing. Social media has two interrelated promotional roles in the marketplace. First, it enables to build up a communication channel between the brands and customers, and second, it allows the customers to share their experiences with the others as an additional promotion use. Social media allows providing a platform for the brands to create a digital portfolio and showing their ideas or products to their target consumers. The reason that leads social media become one of the elements in promotion mix is because it is a tool that can combine both IMC (companies talking to customers) and word-of-mouth (customers talking to one another), and maximise the effectiveness of such promotion.

As mentioned before, the importance of customers’ participation and interaction have increased in the industry nowadays, and there are more people would like to know more about the brand story and how the brand works; and the social media able to deliver the “behind-the-scenes” message of fashion industry to the target audiences and allows the audiences to involve more into the promotion stage (Shiau, 2014). Therefore, besides the traditional social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram, video blogging and live stream videos will become a leading trend in the promotion methods. In additional, the brands will start attaching great importance to the success and responses from social media. DeMers (2016) forecasted the social media promotion plans for the brands in the coming years would be towards to refinement apart from having most of the mainstream social media channels at the same time. There will have more brands prefer using only one social media platform for promotion that they have worked especially well.

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Fig 8

CH3. MACRO ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS

Fig 9

We can classify the factors into the following principal categories while we are working on the environment analysis, including demographic factors, social and cultural factors, political and governmental factors, economic factors and technological factors (Baker, 2014). Therefore PESTLE Analysis is one of the popular analysing tools on analysing the macro-environment. According to the definition from Hamel (2017), PESTLE is an acronym from “political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental�.

Also, it is used to identify all of the external political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental factors, which may affect to a business or company.

In this chapter, there is going to explain and analyse the main factors that may influence the development of the Hong Kong fashion industry by using the PESTLE analysis (see Appendix 3 for more).

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1

Uncertain Political Outlook

The Hong Kong Chief Executive election was held on 26 March 2017 for the 5th term of the Chief Executive of Hong Kong. Carrie Lam, the former Chief Secretary for Administration, has won the execution and become the new Hong Kong Executive starting from 1 July 2017. Before this election, Hong Kong is currently facing a lot of social events in those years, such as the Umbrella Revolution in 2014, the Legislative Council rejected the unmodified electoral reform proposal in 2015, Mong Kok Civil Unrest in 2016 and Demonstration of opposing the fifth occasion of Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (SCNPC)'s interpretation of Basic Law in 2016. As we can see, it is difficult for the Hong Kong government to carry out new policies in this period. In additional, according to the manifesto of Carrie Lam in the Hong Kong Chief Executive election 2017 (Campaign Office of Carrie Lam, 2017), there are unable to see any substantive motion or guidelines that are able to improve or solve the current problems in the Hong Kong creative industry. Therefore, it is difficult to see any opportunities for the creative industry to develop their business in the future.

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Fashion and Creative Industries are not valued in Hong Kong

There are four pillar economic sectors of Hong Kong, including trading and logistics, tourism, financial services and professional services and other producer services. As Hong Kong is an international financial centre, the financial industry is often become the first industry to develop and receive supports from the Hong Kong government and companies. Therefore, being one of the members in the creative industry in Hong Kong is often not the first choice for the young generations.

According to own observation, the elder generation in Hong Kong will not suggest their children work as a designer or any posts in the creative industry. Most of them prefer their children to find a job pragmatically such as banker, sales or civil servant, which may able to have a better quality of life in this highly competitive society.

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3

Exorbitant Rent Problems

Renting an office or store at a reasonable price is important for the brands and companies. According to the review of Hong Kong office and retail renting performance of 2016, due to slipping back of visitors in 2016, the expanding demand for luxury stores has been decreased, which leads to the rent in core retail area have got a slight decrease in 2016. However, the consumption pattern of Hong Kong have focused more on the people’s livelihood, which leads to the renting of stores in non-core retail areas such as Tuen Mun and Yuen Long have got a sharp rise by 44.1% and 9.2% compared with the peak period of 2013 (see Business Wire, 2017).

According to the data from the line chart provided (see Fig 10), Hong Kong is facing a severe exorbitant rent problem during those years. As Fig 10 Rental Indices for Hong Kong Property Market 1997 - 2017 we can see from the line graph, the rent of each property categories in Hong Kong has got a continually rise starting from 2010 to 2017 after a fall in 2009. On the contrary, the report from Savills World Research Hong Kong (2017) said that the rental adjustment cycle in the street stores segment was very evident in 2016 with increasing vacancies and falling rents, especially for the core retail areas and shopping centres.

Due to an uncertain prospect in the property market in Hong Kong, it becomes more difficult for the designers and small brands to find a suitable location for them to start up their businesses, which may affect the development of the whole fashion and creative industry.

4

Rapid Business Expansion of Oversea Fashion Brands

According to the data provided by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), the Hong Kong economy expanded by 4.3% in real terms in the first quarter of 2017, and the economy is forecasted to grow by 2-3% for the whole period of 2017. However, the value of retail sales has got a slightly decrease by 1.3% year-on-year during January to March of 2017 after the decline of 8.1% in 2016.

Though retail industry of Hong Kong is facing a bleak prospect, Hong Kong is often a perfect location choice for shopping with a wide range of local and international fashion brands. As an international sourcing hub in Asia, Hong Kong has attracted a lot of different global trading houses and retail brands, such as The Gap, Calvin Klein, Zara, H&M, Tommy Hilfiger and Forever21. Due to the high demand of international fashion product in Hong Kong, most of the global fashion brands have already launched their branches in Hong Kong.

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CH4. CASE STUDIES

The creative industry is one of the important economic drivers for Hong Kong because this industry can help and increase the innovation capacity of the Hong Kong economy and become a powerhouse for the future economic growth (GovHK, 2016).

The creative industry is always one of the industries that the Hong Kong government wishes to develop in the recent years. However, most of the supporting programmes provided by the Hong Kong government do not have any obvious results currently.

This chapter is going to talk about the supporting programmes for the Hong Kong local creative industry provided by the Hong Kong government and the other public organisations.

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Fig 11

4.1 What have the Hong Kong Government

D O N E

?

To develop and promote the creative industry of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong government has established the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC) in 1995. The major role of this department is to provide a channel and platform for the Hong Kong Government to support the development of the creative industry in Hong Kong by working on the grant allocation, policy and planning, advocacy, promotion and development, and programme planning (HKADC, 2017).

Apart from launching the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, the Hong Kong Government has put a lot of resources to develop the Hong Kong local businesses in the recent years, which can provide supports to different areas in the Hong Kong art and design industry. However, most of them are repeated or similar functions with a lack of public awareness and monitoring; also the information and guidelines that provided are not clear enough for the designers. In this section, I am going to talk about two major supporting programmes, Create Hong Kong and Hong Kong Design Centre, which is provided by the Hong Kong government.

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4.1.1 Create Hong Kong Create Hong Kong (Create HK) is an office set up under the Communications and Creative Industries Branch of the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau by the Hong Kong Government in June 2009. The aim of launching Create Hong Kong is to cultivate a conducive environment for Hong Kong to facilitate the creative industries development and to develop Hong Kong into a regional creative capital (CreateHK, 2013). The services that provided by Creative Hong Kong mainly including following aspects as below: industry support, digital entertainment support, film development funding and design support services.

In addition, in the period of 2009 to 2013, the Hong Kong Government has spent total HK$600 million to establish the Create Smart Initiative (CSI), to provide financial support and helps to develop and promote the Hong Kong creative industry, which becomes one of the main services of the Create Hong Kong.

From the beginning till now, Create Hong Kong has provided a lot of different kinds of supports to the new businesses and designers based in Hong Kong. However, here are a few limitations and weaknesses of this programme: including too many repeated or similar services, not clear information and guidelines and complex application procures.

Fig 12 The Logo of CreateHK

4.1.2 Hong Kong Design Centre

Fig 13 The Logo of Hong Kong Design Centre

Hong Kong Design Centre is one of the successful supporting projects that have done by the Hong Kong government in the recent years. It is a supporting centre located at the Inno Centre in Kowloon Tong launched in 2001. There are four purposes of Hong Kong Design Centre, including to establish Hong Kong as a centre of Design Excellence in the Asia by connecting the stakeholders of the creative industry together; providing different platforms for the design talent in Hong Kong, nurturing the younger generations’ creativity and entrepreneurship, providing opportunities to promote innovation and growth within the Hong Kong design community and to engage the whole society to share and take part in the events of the industry.

Apart from providing a platform for the Hong Kong local brands and designers to promote their products and services. The Hong Kong Design Centre has set up a wide range of supporting programmes and projects to support the Hong Kong local businesses, including Fashion Advisory Group (AGF), Design Incubation Programme (DIP), the Institute of Design Knowledge and “7+1� Entrepreneurship for Design & Creative Business Certificate Programme.

In the recent years, Hong Kong Design Centre is the largest supporting source for the local creative industry by provided a lot of funding and supporting programmes. Also, by launching one of the major art and design institutes in Hong Kong - Hong Kong Design Institute to cultivate more local design talents. The Hong Kong Design Centre has become a principal role in helping the Hong Kong creative industry develop to a brighter future.

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4.2 Cooperation between the Hong Kong Government and Public Organizations Apart from the supporting programmes and projects provided by the Hong Kong Government, there are plenty of organisations and corporate groups have put many efforts on supporting the creative industry in Hong Kong.

Due to the industrial transformation in Hong Kong since the 1990s, part of the industrial buildings has been underutilised. Therefore, the Hong Kong government decided to carry out a list of revitalization measures to facilitate the redevelopment and wholesale conversion of older industrial buildings; and those measures have been with effect from 1 April 2010.

These measures aim to provide more spaces to meet the Hong Kong’s current changing social and economic needs (Revitalising Industrial Buildings, 2010). Under the measures, the owners of the industrial buildings that have already built in 15 years ago may modify the buildings’ purposes by an exemption premium, such as changing the buildings into offices, art and design studios, apartments. Basically, it is a considerable milestone for the Hong Kong government on supporting the local creative industry and designers. However, there are a lot of press reports mentioned the renting of those renewed industrial buildings had got a constant increase which is affected by the revitalization measures. The public criticised that the current revitalization measures are giving preferential treatments to the owners of the industrial buildings and may lead to the local designers and young brands have to move away by the unaffordable rent.

Although the revitalization measures have criticised by the public, but it is hard to deny that there are a few successful projects cooperated by the Hong Kong government and public organisations.

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4.2.1 PMQ PMQ was formerly known as Police Married Quarter before the revitalization, which located in Sheung Wan, the middle of SoHo area. In the November 2010, the Hong Kong government announced to revitalise the PMQ, and turn it into a public place that gathered with art studios, retail stores, restaurants and exhibition area. According to the introduction of PMQ website (PMQ, 2017), the current operating right is awarding the PMQ Management Co, Ltd, a non-profit making social enterprise set up by the Musketeers Education and Culture Charitable Foundation Ltd., in collaboration with the Hong Kong Design Centre, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and Hong Kong Design Institute of the Vocational Training Council.

According to the application guidelines from PMQ (2017), all the tenants of PMQ must pass two rounds of selections by submitting business proposals including the working experiences, development plans, the creativity of the products and the contributions in promoting design industries and PMQ to the public. All the license period will be in a fixed term of two years, and all renewal should be subject to re-application and assessment. At this moment, PMQ has around 80 tenants mainly as local designers brands and design studios or companies that selling original design products targeted in mid to high market customers, such as Vivienne Tam, Bamboa Home, Blind by JW, Stockholm and HAK. However, some of the tenants think that due to the building location and lack of promotion, there is still an uncertain business prospect by the low visitor flow, even there will have night markets during some of the weekends, which may slightly increase the flow of visitors. Therefore, the main problem of PMQ facing now should be part of the tenants may not choose to stay with PMQ after the lease has been expired.

Fig 14 - 15 PMQ Building

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Fig 16 JCCAC Building

4.2.2 JCCAC The Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre (JCCAC) is an art colony and multi-disciplinary artists’’ centre located in Shek Kip Mei, which was revitalised from the Shek Kip Mei Factory Estate in 2008.

JCCAC was a community project through the cooperation of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC) and the Hong Kong Arts Centre (HKAC), and managed and run by the Hong Kong Baptist University and Hong Affairs Bureau by receiving funding support from the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust. The Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre provided nearly 140 studio units at an affordable rent for the local art organisations and designers as promotion, retail and art education use. On the other hand, JCCAC has also provided a lot of supporting facilities for the local organisations to hold some activities and programmes, such as a Black Box Theatre, two exhibition spaces and a central courtyard.

The JCCAC currently has three core functions will hold randomly, including the annual JCCAC festival, JCCAC Handicraft Fairs and Hong Kong Really Really Free Market. For the annual JCCAC festival, it is an annual promotion event of JCCAC,

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which aim to promote JCCAC to the public by holding different kinds of visiting, talks, seminars and exhibitions. For the JCCAC Handicraft Fair, it is one of the largest handicraft markets in Hong Kong, which was held randomly for the local designers and brands to sell and introducing their products and business ideas to the public. For the Hong Kong Really Really Free Market (HKRRFM) is another emphasised handicraft market, which organised by the Hong Kong Design Community. In this market, all participants are free to exchange the items between each other. The HKRRFM aims to counteract capitalism and to build a caring community based on sharing resources and also to improve the collectives’ lives of all (HKRRFM, 2017).

4.2.3 D2 Place

Fig 17 D2 Place Building

Due to the Individual Visit Scheme, most of the local shopping malls have occupied by the international chain stores, which has quenched the existing spaces of the Hong Kong local small brands. However, there is a new retail space called D2 Place located in Lai Chi Kok, which targeted the young generation and families as their target customers. D2 Place was revitalised from two old linked industrial building by the Laws Properties Group in 2014 and currently named as D2 Place One and D2 Place Two. The Laws Properties Group hopes that D2 Place can provide a new area and more opportunities for the local handicraft designers and small brands to start up their businesses.

Apart from providing a wide range of restaurants and retails areas for the local designers to start up their own business in the D2 Place One; D2 Place Two is going to continue implementing the concept of innovative business by continue offering spaces for the entertainment, retails and restaurants.

Furthermore, D2 Place has provided a large area for different organizations to apply and hold the handicraft markets, such as two of the famous handicraft markets in Hong Kong - Weekend Market and Weekend Wardrobe. Also, there are going to provide a large retail area named “The Labs� for the art and design, music, sports, cookery and beauty brands, in order to offer a flexible support for the local businesses and to create a new diversified business model of a combination of merchandising, studios and interactive classroom.

Fig 18 Music Performance inside D2 Place

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4.3 Handicraft Markets in Hong Kong Handicraft markets in one of the routes for the local designers and small brands to sell and promote their products to the target customers in a lower cost budget. Currently, there are a lot of handicraft markets and pop-up markets in Hong Kong holding by the public organisations or shopping malls, such as Weekend Market, Dreamcatcher Holiday Market and Pinkoi Market.

According to the experience of being one of the visitors in some of the Hong Kong handicraft markets, it is hard to deny that the handicraft markets in Hong Kong have already developed maturely nowadays. Those markets are able to increase the footfall of the locations and provided an excellent opportunity for the local brands to develop and expand their brand to wider audiences. However, as an owner of a small brand and visitor of different handicraft markets in Hong Kong that always wishes to apply those handicraft markets, there are a few areas (using the JCCAC Handicraft Fair as an example) that I think the handicraft fairs in Hong Kong should be aware.

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Fig 19 JCCAC Handicraft Market

1. Space and Stall Facilities

2. Lack of Information Details

According to the application form of the JCCAC Handicraft Market from online (JCCAC, 2017), the fair takes place over two days by offering 2 types of stalls for the participants to choose: Whole Stall size in HK$800 for two days (around ÂŁ80) and Half Stall size in HK$400 for two days (around ÂŁ40). For the Whole Stall, one table (approximately 6ft x 2.5ft) and two chairs will be provided. For the Half Stall, the owner is going to share their space with another brand by owning half a table (approximately 3ft x 2.5ft) and just one chair.

Also, every participant may bring along not more than one extra chair and decorations of the stall.

However, according to my observation, the space provided for each store is not enough by displaying as many as the products that they want to show; and there may be a few accidents by a limited space provided, such as the products have damaged by limited space for the visitors to walk, some of the store owners may have arguments due to the space has been occupied by another store.

March, M.L. has said that if there was a website provided for the event, the website should include detailed instructions and information; also all the anticipate questions should be answered and addressed by clearly shown on the website (See Begley, K., 2007). Providing enough details and guidelines for the participants is important while holding an event. However, the information was often not enough provided on the event websites and Facebook page. Therefore, it is hard for the brand's owners and visitors to do some research before applying and visiting the market.

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Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works.

Steve Jobs

Former CEO, Apple

4.4 Learn from the UK The United Kingdom (UK) is often one of the “designer-friendly” countries in the world. Compared with the works of the Hong Kong Government has done, the UK Government has got a perfect management system by owned an official Design Council, which is similar to the Hong Kong Arts Development Council and Hong Kong Design Centre. The role of the Design Council of UK is to improve the people’s life quality through the use of design, by focusing on three areas, including business, the built environment and public services (Design Council UK, 2017). The Design Council of UK has provided a full design supports for different designers fields and design companies, such as skill training, strategic support for sustainable places in the cities and offering some design challenge projects for developing the society and people’s life quality.

Therefore, in my opinion, the Hong Kong government should start to learn from those areas instead of just non-stop establishing plenty of ineffective programmes, and try to improve the Hong Kong people life quality as soon as possible.

On the other hand, we can see there are plenty of public or private organisations in the UK have always been committed to helping and cultivating the local design talents, such as the Great British Exchange, British Design Fund and the UK Fashion and Textile Association. On the other hand, there are a lot of online platforms can let the designers promote and sell their products that Hong Kong is exile currently, such as Etsy, Not On The High Street.com, Not Just A Label and The Young British Designers.

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CH5. METHODOLOGY

Fig 20

35

This chapter is going to present and explain the research strategy and methods applied in this study. The methodology of this project aimed to research on the customers shopping behaviours and issues that the Hong Kong local independent brands are facing. Therefore, apart from a collection of secondary research, there will have mixed primary research methods applied to achieve the goals of this study.

Therefore, this chapter is going to give a clear description and timeline of how this research project conducted.

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5.1 Research Framework

Fig 21 Research Framework

5.2 Research Approach – Demographics and Psychographics

Demographics and psychographics can help the marketers to understand their ideal customers. Demographic information includes the consumer's basics (age, gender, race, location, and profession).

On the other hand, for psychographics information, it will focus on the target customers’ interests, affinities, and emotions of a group of people, and it is important for marketers to have to understand for positioning their products (Affinio, 2016). According to the definition from Flynn and Foster (2009, p104 & 106), demographics data able to provide the researchers with the vital statistics about the population; and psychographics is used to define people’s lifestyles, the activities they engaged. On the

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other hand, psychographic information is used to describe the lifestyle of the population, which may help the fashion brands to identify their target market.

Furthermore, from a marketing perspective, demographics define what buyers commonly need whereas psychographics defines what buyers want (General Business Marketing, 2009). To starting collecting for psychographic information, marketing data, surveys, social media, focus groups or interviews and information from sales and customer service teams will be great research places for the brands (Hibma, 2013).

Frey and others (1991) have given a definition of research methods as “it is the particular strategies researchers use to collect the evidence necessary for building and testing theories� (see Communication 454, 2000). Generally speaking, research design can divide into three different methods: qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods (a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods) (Flynn and Foster, 2009, p119).

According to the research framework for this study (see fig 21), both secondary and primary research will be done simultaneously, and the collected information and data will be analysed.

At the end of this study, there will have an execution outcome idea as a suggestion for the Hong Kong Government and local independent brands by using the summary of findings.

5.3 The Collection of Secondary Data

Secondary research can define as one of the most widely used methods for data collection (Prescott, 2008). This dissertation was completed by researching on an enormous amount of secondary research; including theories research, journal articles, cases studies, consumer behaviour reports and books. The areas and research keywords were focused on consumer behaviour, promotion trends, social media effects and public relations in promotion strategy. All of the information and data that collected by the secondary research will become the foundation while planning for the primary research stage and there will have a few analyses and discussions with the primary research findings after all the research phases.

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5.4 The Collection of Primary Data

To get a better knowledge and understanding of different stakeholders, this project will separate into four divided research phase by working on a list of mixed primary research methods (both quantitative and qualitative research methods), which shown in the following. For quantitative methods, it is used to collect empirical data that is in the form of numbers; and for the qualitative methods, it is used to collect empirical data, which is not in the form of numbers. To ensure the participant's rights and make sure the research can go on smoothly, there will have a clear brief to every participant before starting the research, and consent forms will be needed from both parties.

Phase 1: Focus on the industry

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The aim of this research phase is to have a more focused and depth understanding of the Hong Kong handicraft industry. During this section, there will have five structured interviews via calls, emails and Facebook messages with five local independent brands owners who based in Hong Kong, including Little By Little, Design Port, Pause & Ponder, Tania Willis and Onezeroegg (see Appendix 5). These interviewees will have different ranges of products from each other, which allows this study to gain more additional knowledge from the various kinds of products and designers.

By using a structured interview method, all questions and interview procure are based on structured and close-ended questions. According to the instructions from McLeod (2014), structured interviews can let the researcher replicate easily as a fixed set of close-ended questions are used, which allows the researcher to quantify and test for the reliability.

There are two limitations of this research method; the first one is the whole research procure may cost plenty of time to find and wait for the agreements from the owners of the brands. Due to the time equation problem between Hong Kong and the United Kingdom, most of the interviews were done during midnight or early mornings. Besides, it was quite helpless while most of the owners have not answered the request messages after reading them.

Phase 2: Focus on customer's behaviour This phase is going to focus on the customer behaviour in the current handicraft market in Hong Kong, and there will have both qualitative and quantitative ethnographic research methods, including an online survey and five interviews, which will take part with the current or target customers from the industry. According to the definition from Ken Anderson (2009), Ethnography is a branch of anthropology that concerns on understanding how people live their lives and also to analyse the buying patterns and customers’ habits. The research methods during this section aim to gain a deeper understanding of the customers’ behaviour and their shopping habits. It is important to understand the customer behaviour during research; the benefits of using consumer behaviour to create marketing strategy can help the marketer and brand to figure out about the needs and values of their target market, also helping them to deliver their messages to the correct target market (Adelene, n.d.).

1. Online Survey The online survey in this section (see Appendix 4) was designed through an online platform called “Typeform”, which allows the participants to fill in their responses through a more convenient way by using their mobiles or computers. This survey was designed with total 17 questions with an optional request for asking the participants to leave their email address for any further interviews or communication if needed. The questions in this online survey will focus on the participants shopping experiences and habits of receiving information from the brands. This online questionnaire was conducted of 63 people based in Hong Kong with the main age range in 18 to 30 years old. After the research, all the collected data from this survey will be analysed through different kinds of charts and graphs for becoming one of the supports for the execution idea.

Phase 3: Auto-ethnography: Self-experiences This research phase will work on some case studies that focus on the self-experiences of my brand and have a few reflections on being one of the visitors in a lot of different handicrafts fairs in Hong Kong. During this section, there will have a summary of my previous experiences and feelings from the handicraft fairs for additional references and to keep as a record for the research. Therefore, this section aims to gain a further personal understanding by using some phenomenological methods.

All the reflections and information are able to help to analyse and to understand the problems that the Hong Kong handicraft industry is facing; also, those information allows me to start thinking of the core framework for the final execution idea of this project.

However, an online survey may face a few disadvantages, including the identity of the respondents and some of the questions may have complexity issues (Survio, 2013). Due to this online questionnaire is disturbed through the social media platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp, which may lead the researcher unable to provide enough guidance while the participants are completing their survey. Moreover, some of the questions in the survey may too complex or complicated. Therefore, the researcher may not be able to explain every question in details to the respondents who may not understand some of the questions properly.

2. In-Depth Interviews At the same time, there will have five face-to-face and Skype structured interviews with targeted or current handicraft brands customers and hipster cultures supporters from Hong Kong (see Appendix 6), part of the participants are invited to the interview after taking part in the online questionnaire.

This interview will focus on their lifestyles and shopping habits, such as what reasons lead them to fall in love with the hipster culture, where will they buy their clothing usually and their observations of the current handicraft industry in Hong Kong or even in the global areas.

Mathers and others (2002) said that however face-to-face interview is a research method that requires the researcher plenty of energy to finish the research, but it may one of the effective ways of collecting high-quality data. Compared with the other different primary research methods of data collection, face-to-face interviews allows the interviews to explain the details and purpose of the project and increase the encouragement of target participants to take part the research. Also, both parties can clarify the questions and misunderstanding during the interviews, which can prevent any potential errors.

Phase 4: Execution Idea Visual Researches After all the basic secondary and primary researches, the last phase is going to focus on the visual research for the execution and recommendation idea. During this period, there is going to have a creative focus group with nine participants who are in around 18 – 30 years old and selected based on their familiarity with the project research topic, such as the hipster culture, customer behaviour, promotion and marketing trends.

Focus Groups are often used widely in the research projects, and used for developing and improving products or services (Lotich, 2011). Therefore, the participants are invited to work on some brainstorming, discussions and voting that mainly focused on the visual ideas and functions of the final execution during the focus group. To prevent any misunderstanding and ensure the focus group can run smoothly, all the participants will clearly inform the purpose and procures of the focus group before the focus group get started. Furthermore, all the findings and discussion results will be used for the design and inspiration use during the execution part.

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5.5 Ethical Considerations

Wester (2011) stated we should make sure the importance of engaging in the responsible conduct of research, as well as ensuring conclusion validity in quantitative research and confirmability in qualitative research. Moreover, she mentioned there are five main ethical principles to consider while we are doing our research, including respect for persons, autonomy, protection of vulnerable populations, beneficence and justice. Bersoff and Bersoff (2008) have firmly stated that due to research ethics is a methodological issue. Therefore every decision of the research procedures should have potential ethical implications (see Wester 2011, p303).

As we can see, research with having an ethical consideration is critical. At the beginning of the online questionnaire, all participants will clearly inform on the front page of the questionnaire (see Appendix 4), which has mentioned the project details and how their responses will be processed. As same as the interviews and focus groups that have done for this research project, all participants must sign up a consent form (see Appendix 4) as an agreement of taking part in this project; moreover, all the participants will have an opportunity of having a clear and detailed information about this project. If some of the participants are under 18 years old, their participations of this research should ethically be approved by the university and their parental guardians. All the data and information will keep in safe on a password-protected computer and will be erased after the whole research.

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ETHICS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN LAWS.

Wynton Marsalis

CH6. FINDING & RESULTS The findings of the data collections is used for analysising and supporting the research areas and questions. This chapter will focus on the research results and findings during the Research Phase 1 to Phase 4, such as the results of focus group, online survey and interviews.

6.1 The findings of interviews with the brands’ owners The five structured interviews with the owners of the Hong Kong local independent brands has done during Phase 1 aims to collect a more focused and depth understanding of the current problems in Hong Kong handicraft industry. Here are some of the key problems that the Hong Kong handicraft market is facing has been pointed out after the interviews, which shown in the following (See Appendix 5 for full interview scripts): 1. Application problems for the Hong Kong government supporting programmes As mentioned before in Chapter 4.1, the Hong Kong government has provided plenty of supporting and funding programmes for the local designers and brands.

However, the application procures are too complicated and may take a lot of time during processing. The owner of Design Port, which has applied for the supporting and funding programmes from the Hong Kong government, mentioned her experience during the interview. She said that they have applied the SME funding programme from the Hong Kong government while joining the overseas trade shows and handicraft markets, however the application procures of SME funding programme is a bit complicated. Firstly, they were asked if the trade shows are recognized. Then, the application will require providing a load of documents, such as the flight tickets to proof the schedule and even the marriage certificate to proof the relationship of her husband and herself. If there is one or more document is missed, the application will be failed. Moreover, the owner of Design Port has tried to apply a few more supporting programmes for the organizations and Hong Kong government, but she said the application was failed because of those organizations think that their brand is not small or weak enough to support, which leads her feeling disappointed and worrying about the funding problems for her brand.

2. Manpower problems Human resources management is one of the most critical aspects of running a business (Small Business Hub, 2014). However, human resources management is often being a serious problem for the small business. According to the interviews with Design Port and Pause & Ponder, 43

both of the brands’ owners also mentioned they are difficult to expand their businesses due to the shortage of hands. The owner of Pause & Ponder who just owned two staffs (including herself) said that the main problem from the manpower problem is she has to manage and finish everything by herself, including customer services, design, online marketing and promotion. Therefore, she does not have enough time to focus working on her design area or spending more time on thinking how to expand her business.

3. Application problems during applying for the handicraft markets The third problem that we found during the interview analysis is about the application problems during applying for the handicraft markets. One of the owners of Little By Little mentioned during the interview, most of the application fee for the handicraft markets in Hong Kong is too expensive for her brand, and some of the high application fee handicraft markets' locations may a bit concealed to receive more additional customers. And those problems often become one of the burdens for her brand and may affect her brand’s customer awareness.

4. Renting and location problems As mentioned in the macro environment analysis (see Chapter 3), because of the consistently high levels of rent in Hong Kong, small local businesses in Hong Kong have faced a lot of problems to expand their businesses. The owner of Little By Little mentioned during the interview, most of the owners of small local brands in Hong Kong would prefer and put more efforts on launching an online store instead of a physical store, which cost them lower expenses. Moreover, the owner of Onezeregg who is a multimedia designer and part-time ceramic artist based in Hong Kong has said that he has to make his product in a small space at home because he is unable to found a suitable area for him to open his studio at a reasonable price. Moreover, he has applied successfully for the studios from the JCCAC before, but due to the opening time of JCCAC is not suitable for him. Therefore he was forced to give up the chance of opening a physical store and studio at the end.

6.2 Findings Related to Customer Behaviours The online survey that has done during Phase 2 is used to research on the participants shopping experiences and habits of receiving information from the brands. By 16 June 2017, the online survey has already received 63 responses, and the key findings of this survey are shown as below (see Appendix 4 for full data set).

Shopping Experience from the Hong Kong Independent Brands

Fig 22.

Ways or channels that the participants have get in touch or heard from the Hong Kong local independent brands at the first time (Question 8 of the online survey)

Fig 23.

Reasons lead to purchase products from the Hong Kong local independent brands (Question 5 of the online survey)

According to the results of the online survey, we can found that there are 33 out of 63 participants have not purchased or visited from the independent brands in Hong Kong, which means addition promotions in needed for those small independent brands for getting a wider range of customers.

However, most of the participants said that the first time they have heard or get in touch with the local handicraft brands is from the handicraft markets (see fig 21), which may show the importance of applying the handicraft markets.

According to the data that Fig 23 shown, the major reasons lead the other 30 participants to purchase the products from the local independent brands from Hong Kong are due to the brands can provide a better products quality than the large brands and most of those brands can provide more product choices. Moreover, some of them would like to show their supports to the local small brands.

Furthermore, most of them mentioned that they would spend around HK$200 to 800 (around ÂŁ20 to 80) every time from a brand, which means most of them are glad to spend an amount of money to support the local businesses.

On the other hand, we can see the influences that increase the customer purchase intention from the results from question 10 (see fig 24), price and style of the products are the major concerns among the other three influences: visual layout, product information and customer services from the brand.

Fig 24.

Influences of customer purchase intentions (Question 10 of the online survey) 44

The Habits of Mobile and Social Media Usage The second part of the online survey (Question 11 to 17) is focusing on the participants’ mobile and social media using habits, and the key findings of this part are shown below.

According to question 11 (see fig 25), the major social media platforms that the participants have used are Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat. When asked about the reasons for using social media platforms, most of them are used for communication and social with the others, and partly of them are used to follow the blogs and to check the trends. Regarding the reasons of Like and Sharing information from social media (see fig 26), 71% of the participants are usually attracted by the post with exciting and colourful content followed by the humorous content chosen by 51% of participants, and relatable content chosen by 41% of participants.

On the other hand, to have a better understanding of customer behaviours and shopping habits, interviews have carried out with five current or target customers of the small independent brands based in Hong Kong during Research Phase 2. The interviews are focus on the participants’ lifestyles and shopping habits, such as what reasons lead them to fall in love with the hipster culture, where will they buy their clothing usually and their observations of the current handicraft industry in Hong Kong or even in the global areas (See Appendix 6 for full interview scripts).

During the interviews, we can found that the surrounding environment such as cultures, peers suggestions and living environment have affected most of the participants, which become the reasons to lead them to become a hipster. The influence makes them purchase from the local independent brands in Hong Kong is because they all love and prefer to buy the simple designed handmade products. Moreover, they do not mind to spend a large amount of money to buy their favourite products; most of the interviewees mentioned during the interviews that they will spend around HK$ 700 to 1500 (around ÂŁ70 to 150) on fashion items every month.

About the mentality and loyalty of the hipster culture and their current fashion styles, the interviewees replied that they still have an uncertain mindset and not sure of if they are going to change the fashion style in the future. However, they do not wish to change their current fashion styles if there are have no any external factors in the future, such as the job and family requirements.

Fig 25.

Major social media platforms that the participants used frequently (Question 11 of the online survey)

Fig 26.

Reasons for like or sharing from social media (Question 13 of the online survey) 45

6.3 Findings for the execution idea There were two questions asked in the online survey, which is related to the execution plan research. According to the results from question 14 (see fig27), 87% of the participants think that providing a personalised and interactive customer experiences on marketing or promotion methods is critical for a small independent brand in Hong Kong. On the other hand, according to the responses of question 16, most of the replies said that a digital platform should provide a user-friendly interface platform with simple and convenient functions. Moreover, some of the respondents suggested for blogs or recommendation services by providing styling recommendations. Besides, there are a few responses said that personalised features are able to save the users' time on using the platform.

Fig 27.

On the other hand, there was a focus group held during the Are personalised and interactive customer experiences on marketing or research phase 4 with nine participants (see Appendix 7 for promotion methods are important for a small independent brand in Hong full scripts). This focus group was focusing on the functions Kong. (Question 14 of the online survey) and ideas for the execution part by working on some discussions, voting and brainstorming.

At the beginning of the focus group, the participants were asked about their shopping experiences by asking what kind of platforms were they usually shopping from (see fig28). There are 5 participants said that they always purchase products from online and the others said that they would buy products from both physical and digital platforms or check the products through online then buy it in the physical one.

Fig 28. What kind of platforms were the participants usually shopping from

Next, there was a voting in the focus group. The participants were given four different styles online platforms to choose for their favourite style and which design do they think is suitable for the handicraft brands use. According the results show below (see fig29), we can see the clean layout with colourful and bright colours is most welcomed by the participants.

Lastly, the participants were asked to work on some brainstorming and discussions about the functions of the platforms for the execution part. During the brainstorming, we found that simple and clean design layouts are often welcomed by the participants. One of the participants, Janice said that she prefers a clear design and interface without any repeated patterns or images, which can let her relax and feel comfortable while using the platform. Furthermore, here are some of the ideas for the platform’s functions that given by the other participants: - Holding some activities or events for the family and education use - Meeting new friends by joining the platform’s events, such as handicraft markets visiting, art jamming, movie nights and workshops.

- Suggesting some oversea handicraft markets and events - A map which can provide creative events or handicraft markets nearby - Blogs for talking about latest trends and introducing local handicraft brands - Online tutorials and workshops

Fig 29. Results of the vote in the focus group

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CH7. DISCUSSIONS

Fig 30

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As mentioned before, this project aims to research on the issues that the Hong Kong handicrafts industry are facing and explore on how the local small independent brands in Hong Kong may develop in the future.

This section is going to work on the analysis and discussions according to the findings from previous primary and secondary research, in order to answer the research questions that were set at the beginning of this project.

Moreover, the analysis in this chapter is used to fulfil the research objectives of this project, including to research the current market trends and customer behaviours, and to identify the problems that the Hong Kong handicraft markets are facing.

Therefore, there are two major parts in the chapter, which are focusing on the problems of the current supports from the Hong Kong government and also the factors that may affect the local independent designers and small brands’ development.

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7.1 Supports from the Hong Kong Government According to the case studies that have done in Chapter 4, the Hong Kong government have put a lot of effort on developing and promoting the Hong Kong creative industry, such as established the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC), setting up the office of Create Hong Kong and launched the Hong Kong Design Centre. Although, those supporting programmes that mentioned have helped the Hong Kong local designers and brands to receive more supports on their developments, and to reach wider international audiences. However, there are a lot of designers and small brands said that the current Hong Kong government's supporting programmes still have a lot of areas to improve, which the government may never know or discovered about those issues.

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7.1.1 Complicated application procures Referring to my research and observations, some of the guidelines and information of the supporting programmes that provided from the Hong Kong government are not enough or clear.

Although, we can find that most of those programmes’ websites have provided both English and Chinese versions for the visitors basically; and some of them may also provide different kinds of languages too, such as Japanese, Korean, Italiano and French. However, most of the application forms are just provided in the English version; therefore, some of the applicants may not be able to understand and fill in the application forms correctly. Moreover, we can find that most of the websites have not provided enough application guidelines for the users by just showing the basic information, programmes’ objectives and their successful achievements. Furthermore, most of the supporting programmes’ applications are too complicated for the applicants, and there are a lot of similar supports programmes provided from different government departments, which the applicants may get confused about which programmes should they apply for. Take the SME Funding Schemes provided by the Hong Kong Trade and Industry Department for instance, this scheme has provided four funding programmes for the small and medium companies or brands to apply for additional funding supports, including SME Export Marketing Fund, SME Development Fund, SME Loan Guarantee Scheme and Special Loan Guarantee Scheme (Application period closed in December 2010). Even though the website has provided information for each supporting programmes, but the application procures are a bit complicated and takes time for applying. The owner of Design Port mentioned in the interview that the SME funding application required her to hand in a load of documents related to her brand, including the flight tickets for attending to the oversea trade shows to approve their schedule, which she has to spend a lot of time to get prepared for it. Moreover, due to her brand is a family business; therefore, she was required to submit a copy of the marriage certificate to prove the relationship of her husband and herself, which makes her feel not respected and incredible.

Also, some of those websites have already provided an email contact but without providing any other contact methods such as telephone numbers. The offices of those supporting programmes designated contact method, which is emailing, was also deemed to be ineffective; firstly due to its slow responding and secondly their response has not provided any clear answers for applicants’ questions.

7.1.2 Lack of reflections and transparency During the research of this project, we can found that most of the Hong Kong government's supporting programmes do not have enough reflections and transparency. By taking the SME Funding Schemes for instance continually. The aim of SME Development Funding Programme was to provide financial support to non-profit-distributing organisations to implement projects for enhancing the competitiveness of Hong Kong's small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

However, according to the information of funded projects under this programme provided from the website of SME Development Fund (Hong Kong Government, 2013), most of the grantees are the large organizations or chambers of commerce who already owned plenty of resources and money, such as Federation of Hong Kong Industries, The Hong Kong Chinese Importers’ and Exporters’ Association, and Hong Kong Brand Development Council Company Limited. On the contrary, the owner of Design Port who just owned one physical store in JCCAC mentioned during the interview, their brand has applied for the SME funding schemes before, but the SME office said their brand is not small enough to meet the application requirements of the funding programmes. Therefore, we are able to see the contradiction between the successful application results and the aims that set for the SME funding programme and the low transparency of the applications of those funding programmes.

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7.2 Factors of affecting the Hong Kong local independent designers and small brands’ development Customer service and customer experience are important to a business; there are a few research showed that the consumers would try to desert the brand when experiences were failed to meet their expectations (Dave, 2009). Therefore, understanding the customer behaviours and shopping patterns have often become the first priority before starting a business. However, most of the small local brands in Hong Kong are lack of marketing and promotion skills, which may affect their business development and expansion.

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7.2.1 Customer behaviours and shopping patterns have changed We can notice that the customers nowadays have set a high demand for the customer services from the brands. In those ten years, one-to-one marketing has used widely in the fashion industry, and providing personalised services has become one of the most concerned areas by the customers nowadays. Compare with the services provided by the brands in the past, the brands nowadays have offered more personalized products and services for their customers, such as let the customers to choose the designs of the products, putting their names on the products, in order to increase the brands’ competitive in the market by offering an intimate service to the customers. Ball, Coelho and Vilares (2006) stated that the main theoretical effects of personalization are to increases satisfaction and benevolence trust from the customers, which may also increase the effect of brand loyalty. They believed that a personalised relationship is built on communication and is related to trusting and satisfactory between the customers and brands. Therefore, providing a personalised service has become one of the challenges for the local independent designers and small brands in Hong Kong.

7.2.2 Lack of marketing and promotion skills and mindset The second factor that may affect the development of the local independent designers and small brands in Hong Kong will be lacking marketing and promotion skills and mindset. First, as we mentioned before, the small brands are hard to apply the supporting programmes provided by the Hong Kong government. And we can see there may have collusion between the businessmen and government, due to most of the successful application quotas were given to those large companies and chambers of commerce. Therefore, the small local brands may not have enough resources on increasing their brand awareness and expanding their businesses.

Also, as mentioned in the introduction, Hong Kong is one of the most significant financial centres in the world, being one of the members in the creative industry in Hong Kong are often not the first choice for the young generations, even most of them are interested in art and design. On the other hand, some of the owners of those handicraft brands in Hong Kong have not studied any business or marketing degrees, which were lacking in marketing and promotion skills training before or while they are starting the business. Therefore, most of those owners have to find some like-minded people to join their brand. However, most of the people who studied business would not prefer to take part in the creative industry after graduation, which leads to the local handicraft brands are difficult to develop their business by using marketing strategies.

Lastly, there were a lot of brands owners rejected directly or indirectly to take part in this project research, which this project aims to help them on finding opportunities for developing their brands. So, it is essential for them to provide their experience and problems of their brands.

According to this research experience, we can find that the owners of those small brands in Hong Kong may not have any mindset to seek help on their business while they understand that they may need help from the others.

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CH8. EXECUTION IDEA

Fig 31 Handigather platform mockup

INTRODUCTION OF HANDIGATHER This section is going to talk about the execution plan of this research project.

Currently, there does not have any particular online platform to support the local small handicraft brands in Hong Kong. Moreover, as mentioned, most of the local small and medium handicraft brands in Hong Kong are difficult to find for supports. Therefore, those points have become the reasons to have an idea of launching an online platform for helping the Hong Kong local small handicraft brands to expand their business and develop their routes to customers.

Preliminarily, the online platform named as “Handigather”, which combined three different words - “handicraft”, “handi” and “gather” together. This platform aims to provide a channel for the Hong Kong small to medium size handicraft brands and 53

designers to be in touch with their current or target customers. Moreover, the reason to create this platform is, we found that most of the Hong Kong people are too busy with their work, which leads most of the people have missed their mindset on sparing their time for their family and friends. In view of this, Handigather also aims to become a tool and reminder to remind them to remember to spare more time with their loved ones.

Therefore, “ Work-Life Balance” will become one of the selling points of Handigather.

Furthermore, in the coming sections, there will have additional detail and plans of Handigather to show a definite plan of the execution idea of this research project.

8.1 Handigather's Functions Promote the “Work-Life Balance” mindset to the users is Handicraft’s mission. Therefore, we will try to design our services that can enrich our users’ daily life and provide plenty of inspiration for them to spend time with their family or friends. Handicraft’s function is going to separate into four different parts, including “What to Do”, “Teach and Learn”, “Support Me” and “Blogs”.

1. "WHAT TO DO" In this section, we are going to provide various detailed information of the Hong Kong local handicraft markets through timetable and map. Our users may research those handicraft markets details by typing keywords or locations into our searching program, and then the program will show the users detailed suggestions and information of the handicraft markets.

On the other hand, Handicraft will hold different kinds of activities for our users to join, such as art jamming, workshops and handicraft markets visit randomly.

Because we understand that people in Hong Kong are busy on working, and most of them are hard to know some like-minded friends in their daily life.

Therefore, our users may have a chance to meet some new friends who can share the same interest by attending our events. Moreover, we also welcome families to join our events and enjoy their family day.

3. "SUPPORT ME" There will have two functions in the section of “Support Me”.

At first, we are going to create a forum for the brand owners or people who decide to start up a business to share and exchange their experiences or ideas. By sharing experience between each other, we hope that the users of this function may provide more actual experiences with the others and help each other to solve the problems.

Secondly, there will have plenty of articles and information related to business, supporting programmes from the Hong Kong government or local organisations, and designs inspirations.

For this function, we aim to provide clearer and detailed information on the support programmes in Hong Kong for the brands' owners and newbies of business or marketing.

2. "TEACH AND LEARN" The function of this section is inspired from Skillshare. Starting from the birth of YouTube, online videos and tutorials have become a trend in those years. By taking online tutorials, learning seems become easier and convenient than before; people can learn different kinds of new skills whenever and at any places as they want. In “Teach and Learn”, we will provide a platform for our users to share their skills or experience by uploading their videos onto the system.

This function allows the brand owners to promote their brand and increase the brand or customers awareness. Also, we hope that the users of Handigather can learn more about handicraft and design by using this function.

4. "BLOGS" Blogs are one of the common functions in the online platforms nowadays. In our “Blogs” section, there will have different themes in every month that included a lot of interesting information wrote by our users or some famous bloggers.

And each of the blog articles must filter by our staffs before posting. However, there are no any specific restrictions for the content of the blog articles, and it may relate to lifestyles, fashion and beauty, art and design, travelling.

Moreover, we will select three to five interesting blog articles every month for the content of our newsletters.

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WORK-LIFE BALANCE that's what we believe.

8.2 Target Users

Handigather welcomes everyone in the world to become our members, even though we are based in Hong Kong.

However, we are going to target two types of people to become our main users.

For the first group of target users, we are going to target the Hong Kong people who are creative and pursue on a higher quality of life, roughly aged between 18 to 40 years old. The second group of target users will be the owners of small to medium sized local handicraft brands or designers who based in Hong Kong.

There are three customer profiles shown in Appendix 10 as the examples of our target users.

The first customer profile will be a girl who called Yanna. She is working as media relation specialist in a fashion company based in Hong Kong. She is an independent and outgoing person, who pursues on a higher quality of Fig 32 Handigather target users moodboard life. Due to a heavy workload and irregularly work shift, Yanna is difficult to meet new friends as she wishes to. Therefore, she hopes that there may have a platform for her to meet some new friends who are in same interests. Therefore, our events in “What to Do” may able to help our users like Yanna who are looking for new friends to take part in some interesting activities.

The second target users called Raymond. He is working in the marketing department of a wholesale company based in Hong Kong. He is a father of one daughter in 4 years old and one son in 8 years old. He loves to spend time with his family during weekends. However, he is looking for some suitable activities for his two kids to increase their creativity and skills. Therefore, we hope Raymond can make use of the functions provided by Handigather, such as the events in “What to Do” and the online tutorials in “Teach and Learn”, to let him spend the time more efficiency with his family.

The last target users example will be an accessories designer called Olivia. She is an accessories designer based in Hong Kong who wishes to start her brand, but she does not know anything about business or marketing. Therefore, she is looking forward to seeking for business partners, or someone can provide her with a few marketing skills support. Thus, our functions in “Support Me” may allow Olivia to found more additional supports while starting up her own business. Also, she can make use of the online tutorials function in “Teach and Learn” to increase her brand awareness by uploading some videos about her design progress or inspirations.

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8.3 Competitors

Fig 33 Perceptual Map of Handigather

Handigather is an online platform, which is a collective of three main elements including information, inspirations and education. According to the perceptual map above (see fig33), compared with the potential competitors, such as Pinkoi, Skillshare, U lifestyle HK, Little Steps Asia, and Creema.

Handigather is going to stand at the position near to user-friendly and providing multi-functions, which should be able to become one of the best choices for the target users.

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While working on the plan of Handigather, there were a few online platforms have given plenty of inspirations for the development of my execution ideas. Hence, this dissertation report is going to include case studies of those platforms in the following.

1. SKILL SHARE

Fig 34

In the past, we rely on face-toface lecture from a tutor in order to acquire new skills. However, due to the rapid technology is development nowadays; many online learning platforms thrive in this technology advance era.

Skillshare is one of the largest online learning platforms that provided wide range of online tutorials, which related to design, lifestyle, business, and technology.

In my opinion, the selling point and success key of this platform are they are able to provide their services through online, and it can let their users to use their services at anytime and anywhere as they want to. Compare with listening art theories in the classrooms that may not be entirely useful in the workplaces. Skillshare takes the pride of the sharing actual work experiences. Besides the tradition one direction teaching method, students get to choose a more suitable mentor to learn from through other peers’ comments of each tutor.

2. PINKOI

3. U Lifestyle HK

Fig 35

Pinkoi is one of the famous online shopping platforms in Asia, which offered a lot of Asian designers’ products. Pinkoi aims to create an online community for the designers and bring Asian’s best designs to reach wider audiences and to the rest of the world. In my opinion, the reason that leads Pinkoi to become successful is they have provided a user-friendly interface with a strong technical support for the designers and customers.

Moreover, they have provided a lot of help for the Asian designers to overcome the payment issues and language barriers by provided different language versions on the platform, which allow the Asian designers to sell their designs to all over the world.

Fig 36

U lifestyle HK is one of the largest online information platform based in Hong Kong, which provided various of information related to travel, beauty, fashion, cuisine and lifestyles. Currently, U lifestyle HK owned seven online platforms to provide different kinds of information, including U Travel, U Beauty, U Food, U Blog, U Lifestyle, Mall King, and U Know.

The successful key of U Lifestyle HK is they have provided a wide range of information for their users by separated into different sections. At the same time, they have used different colours to divide every section to prevent the users have any misunderstanding or misleading.

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8.4 SWOT Analysis of Handigather

The SWOT analysis is a part of company’s strategic planning process to determine the areas to improve for a project or working on a situation analysis (Kokemuller, 2017). While working on Handigather’s strategic planning process, a SWOT analysis has done during the process (see Appendix 9).

According to the SWOT analysis that has shown, we can know more about the strength of Handigather.

Handigather is a large online platform with user-friendly and clear interface design, which can provide a broad range of services for the users, including gathering events, providing handicraft markets and supporting programme information, online tutorials to increase brand awareness, and forum. We understand the families from the new generations are more emphasise on “Work-Life Balance� and spending more time with their family. Thus, Handigather committed to holding different kinds of events and activities that are suitable for the families.

However, there are a few areas for Handigather to improve and beware.

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Due to Handigather is going to face a lot of competition from other online platforms offering seemingly similar services; therefore Handigather has to provide more good services and functions to the users in the future. Moreover, as being a new online platform with low awareness, Handigather have to build up a reliable brand image to increase the confidence level from the current and target users.

In addition, however, Handigather is going to provide detailed supporting programme information for the small to medium sized brands in Hong Kong; Handigather has not decided to provide any funding supports in the short term; therefore we may not be able to provide full support to the brands who are facing the financial problems.

8.5 Handigather’s Future Plans

Fig 37 Handigather’s Future Plan Timeline

Referring to the timeline shown below (see fig37), it is the Handigather’s future development plan in the coming five years. As we can see from the timeline, Handigather is going to launch in the early April of 2018. There will have a nearly three months preparation and promotion period before the launch day, including promotion on the social media platforms and handicraft markets. On the other hand, we will provide around one-year timeslot for reflection and improvement in 2019 to make sure Handigather can provide the best services to the users. After finished the reflection and improvement period, we decided to expand our services by providing more oversea handicraft markets information progressively and also sending requests to the oversea handicraft brands that planned to expand their business to Hong Kong to join our platform. In the future, we wish our platform could expand to the other Asian countries to help more different talented designers and handicraft brands, such as in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia and Thailand.

Fig 38 Handigather’s Instagram Page

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CH9. CONCLUSION

In conclusion, to have a better understanding of the brands and customers of the Hong Kong handicraft industry; we have done a lot of primary and secondary research in this study, which focused on the customers’ behaviours and current promotion trends.

During the research, we have found that building a good relationship with the customers, and increasing brand or customers’ awareness has become the priority and target for the Hong Kong small to medium sized brands in those years. However, most of the brands in Hong Kong are lack of marketing and promotion skills, which the Hong Kong government may not able to provide enough related supports currently. Therefore, this report has talked about the strengths and areas that need to improve in the support programme provided by the Hong Kong government by using case studies and a list of primary research.

On the other hand, we can notice that the Hong Kong handicraft industry needs a platform for the brands' owners and designers to communicate with each other and exchange ideas or inspirations. Thus, there was a creative execution idea generated at the end of this research, which is an online platform, called Handigather. Handigather is an online platform based in Hong Kong that targeted the Hong Kong young generations users and owners or designers from local small to medium sized handicraft brands. And the missions of Handigather are to support the local small handicraft brands in Hong Kong and helping them to expand their business and develop their routes to customers.

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Fig 39

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Visa, 2015. Visa Survey: Hong Kong online shoppers concern product quality over security. Visa [online blog]. Available at: http://www. visa.com.hk/en_HK/aboutvisa/mediacenter/nr_hk_01122015_HKeCommsecurityrelease2_Eng.html [Accessed 7 March 2017].

Williams, J. C., and Torella, J.A., 1997. A Guide to Retail Success. New York: Fairchild Book.

Wong, L.Y., 2016. 當 代 文 藝 風 潮： 香 港 文 藝 青 年 商 業 化 (Translate: Contemporary Literary Trends: Commercialization of Hong Kong Hipster Culture). Cultural Studies [online], 52 (May). Available at: http://www.ln.edu.hk/mcsln/52nd_issue/feature_01.shtml [Accessed 28 December 2016].

Woodside, A.G., Sood, S., Miller, K.E., 2008. When Consumers and Brands Talk: Storytelling Theory and Research in Psychology and Marketing. Psychology & Marketing [online], 25(2) (February), 97-145. Available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mar.20203/ epdf [Accessed 8 March 2017].

Zaltman, G., 2003. How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the mind of the market. United State: Harvard Business School Press.

Zhang, J., 2017. How Western contemporary fashion brands are cashing in on Hong Kong’s luxury downturn. South China Morning Post [online], 11 April. Available at: http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/fashion-luxury/article/2085704/how-western-contemporary-fashionbrands-are-cashing-hong [Accessed 20 May 2017]. 唔識設計搞時裝土炮品牌年收幾十萬 (Interview with Carlsen Pung, the owner of Fumble), 2017. [Youtube] 果籽 , 23 June. Available at: https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju_l6nC4iR0 [Accessed 25 May 2017].

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APPENDIX

Appendix Appendix Appendix Appendix Appendix Appendix Appendix Appendix Appendix Appendix Appendix Appendix Appendix

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Ethical Clearance Checklist Methodology Table PESTLE of Hong Kong Fashion Industry Online Survey Results Brand Interviews Customer Interviews Focus Group Visual Inspirations for Execution Idea SWOT of Execution Idea Customer Profiles Execution Idea Designs Critical Path Tutorial Record Sheet

p.70 p.71 p.72 p.73 - 78 p.79 - 84 p.85 - 90 p.91 - 95 p.96 p.97 p.98 p.99 - 103 p.104 - 107 p.108 - 110

APPENDIX1 Ethical Clearance Checklist

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APPENDIX2 Methodology Table

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APPENDIX3 PESTLE of Hong Kong Fashion Industry

POLITICAL - The Hong Kong Government set up the DesignSmart Initiative (DSI) worth 250 million HKDs in 2004. This programme aims to provide funding support for design projects and to promote design as a value adding activity and to support the Design Incubation Programme (DIP) from the Hong Kong Innocentre .

- Current supporting programmes from Hong Kong Government have not provided enough support (marketing and promotion training) to the local brands - ‘Hong Kong Fashion Week’ is organised twice a year and attracts international suppliers and buyers to participate in the exhibition.

- The Government’s Policies may get changed after the new Hong Kong Chief Executive assumes the new official post.

ECONOMIC - Financial industry is the main industry and market in Hong Kong, which leads the fashion and creative industries are not valued - The exorbitant rent in Hong Kong has given rise to the local brands become harder to expand their businesses.

- On 18 October 2005, the mainland and Hong Kong agreed to further liberalise the mainland market for Hong Kong companies under the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA), which improved Hong Kong logistics, manufacturing and retail industry.

- Along with rising labour costs and stricter environmental regulations on the Chinese mainland, an increasing number of Hong Kong and mainland clothing manufacturers have relocated their production of lower-end and mass products to Southeast Asian countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam (expected to benefit by 2018 from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which is a trade agreement among twelve Pacific Rim countries signed on 4 February 2016), Cambodia and Indonesia. Their manufacturing operations on the mainland are now focused on more sophisticated and higher value-added items or urgent orders.

- Rapid business expansion of oversea fashion brands, e.g H&M, Forever21, Zara, Hollister, Jack Wills SOCIAL - Consumers gradually resume spending on fashion products, but still opt for items that offer comfort, function and value-for-money, and nothing too radical - People prefer products to be produced in an ethical way – e.g. workers paid reasonable wages - People aware on customer loyalty and personalisation - Social responsibility become important to a brand - There is a reversal trend in the Hong Kong society; there are more people started to pay attention to the local brands and social enterprises because they all feel that the market should not have only one operation mode, which is the businesses monopolies control all of the people’s daily life.

TECHNOLOGICAL - Online shopping become the trends of shopping methods - Increasing social media promotion and usage - Development of hi-tech communication platforms or channels usage in-stores - Due to the growing awareness on health and quality of life, the demand for functional clothing is climbing. Along with the rapid development of functional clothing innovation, apparel with various functions can easily be found in the market. Anti-UV, anti-ray, good sweat management, thermal insulation, self-cleaning are examples of how material technology is being applied to the garment industry.

- The growth of technology allows consumers to search the internet and find a way to create their own custom made outfits. This is the modern way to express their creativity on making their own fashion designs and clothes.

LEGAL - Copyright problems from Mainland China ENVIRONMENTAL - Importance of Corporate Social Responsibility: People started to beware on the transparency of the brand, including how and where the products are made - Global Warming and other environmental issues in a global level

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APPENDIX4 Online Survey Results

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Online Survey Link: https://coeychow.typeform.com/to/YgAJ1S

Online Survey's Results (Total: 63 Responses) 1. Your gender?

A. Male B. Female C. Decide not to Tell

2. Your age range?

A. Under 18 years old B. 18-20 years old C. 21-25 years old D. 26-30 years old E. 30-40 years old F. Above 40 years old

(18 responses) (41 responses) (4 responses)

(1 responses) (6 responses) (34 responses) (17 responses) (4 responses) (1 responses)

3. Have you ever visit or purchase from the independent brands in Hong Kong?

A. Yes (30 responses) B. No (Skip to Question 10) (33 responses)

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4. If yes, which brand(s) have you purchased or have get in touch with? (2 or more brands name would be great) E.g. Chaillie Ho, HAK, Parsley Workshop, Clumsy Fingers, Eggs and Soldiers) 5. If you have purchased from those brands before, what reason(s) leads you to purchase from the local independent brands of Hong Kong? (Could choose more than one answer) A. The prices are cheaper than the major/famous brands (9 responses) B. Provided more products choices (17 responses) C. Better products quality (17 responses) D. Able to buy the products from different platforms/locations (7 responses) E. Would like to support the local brands (13 responses) F. Peer pressure (3 responses) G. Due to the current market trends (6 responses) H. Other (1 responses)

6. How much have you spend on a brand at one time?

200 - 800 hkd. (around ÂŁ20 - 80)

7. Where will you purchase those products? (From digital platforms or physical stores?)

Digital Platforms Physical Platforms Both

(4 responses) (12 responses) (15 responses)

8. Where have you heard or get to know from those brands in the first time?

A. Social Media Platforms/Blogs B. Handicraft Markets C. TV programmes D. Newspaper/Magazines E. Peer Suggestions

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(9 responses) (17 responses) (2 responses) (0 responses) (2 responses)

9. Which channel(s) do you receive news or messages from those brands?

A. Newsletter B. Social Media Platforms C. Blogs D. Discussions between friends E. Other

(0 responses) (29 responses) (7 responses) (13 responses) (1 responses)

10. What influences your purchase intention?

A. Price B. Style C. Visual Layout D. Product Information E. Customer Service

(48 (43 (21 (22 (11

responses) responses) responses) responses) responses)

11. Which 3 social media channels do you use most frequently?

A. Facebook B. Instagram C. Twitter D. Snapchat E. Pinterest F. YouTube G. Tumblr H. Other

(58 responses) (56 responses) (4 responses) (34 responses) (9 responses) (48 responses) (4 responses) (1 responses)

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12.Why do you use social media?

E.g. Stay connected and follow brands Keep in touch.

Update daily life.

Communication.

Browsing news.

13. What attracts you to share or like content from a brand on social media?

A. Humourous content B. Relatable content C. Visually exciting and colourful content D. Celebrity involvement E. Typography F. Free stuff or discounts

(32 (26 (45 (21 (19 (23

responses) responses) responses) responses) responses) responses)

14. Do you think providing a personalized and interactive customer experiences on marketing or promotion methods are important for a small independent brand in Hong Kong?

A. Yes B. No

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(55 responses) (8 responses)

15. Do you partake in any activities or use apps related to fashion brands?

A. Yes B. No

(17 responses) (46 responses)

16. What sort of experience(s) would you expect from a fashion brand mobile app or trading platforms?

E.g. Convenience interface.

Clean and simple design layouts.

Provide good customer services and interaction.

Interesting functions.

User-friendly.

17. What lifestyle apps have you used on your phone? (not just only fashion style app) E.g. Zara, ASOS, OpenRice, Goxip, Trivago, Taobao, Food Network, Beauty Exchange

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APPENDIX5 Brands Interviews

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Interview call with Pause & Ponder (Re-design Second-hand Clothing) Date: 27/4/2017 1. May you tell me about the story of your brand and the reason(s) that lead you to start your brand? What is your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – WHAT SETS YOU APART? (There are a few reasons that I started this brand. First, I have started to beware how the products production progress affected the environment and animals.

After a few years, I have received a skin allergy, and I discovered it might cause by the animals or some dirty fashion product samples. Furthermore, I have visited to Japan after a few months, and I fall in love with the retail environment of the vintage and second-hand shops, which is totally different with Hong Kong.

In additional, I found that there is a lot of people in Hong Kong will throw away their clothes even they have not worn before, and even some of them have not tear off the labels. On the other hand, I always found there are plenty unused cloth were thrown by the factories, and I believed those cloth may allows me to reuse them on my designs.

Actually, I have not planned to open a physical store at the beginning, and I have just used my Facebook group promoting my designs. However, I have a friend who able to support me to launch a physical store, which allows me expand my business.)

2. Who are your current customers? Are they different to your target one?

(I discovered most of my customers are from young generation, because most of them do not mind to throw away their things, also they are easier to accept second-hand products than the elder people. Moreover, I found that the young people are not sure what fashion styles are suitable to them; therefore they may have more chance to throw away some new clothes than the elder one.)

3. Have your brand facing any problem(s) currently?

(I think the problem is about how to increase our customer awareness. Although we have a physical store, but the location of our store is quite concealed.

Moreover, fast fashion has affected Hong Kong fashion industry nowadays, which leads to the local fashion brands in Hong Kong may facing an adverse operating environment.

Lastly, I think the main problem is the manpower of our brand. For truly, we just two people including myself working for the brand. And I have to work everything by myself, including customer services, design, online marketing and promotion.)

4. How do you currently market your brand- what methods of social media work for you (and have you tried other methods that work less well?

(Apart from social media, we have participated a few handicraft markets to increase our brand awareness at the beginning.)

5. Have you apply any programme(s) from the organization or government to help you while you setting up your brand?

(We have not apply any programme at because most of them may cost a lot of time on the application progress, also I cannot find those programme may help my brand apart from financial support, and money is not the main problem for my brand. However, the support that I wish to receive is marketing or business support. Our brand has started around half a year ago, and we still have to learn more about marketing and branding which those programme may not offer us.

Moreover, we do not have enough time for write a detailed proposal and have a lot of meetings with the organizations from time to time.)

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Interview call (Design Port) (Selected shop which selling own design products and also products from the other designers or brands) Date: 3/5/2017 1. May you tell me about the story of your store and the reason(s) that lead you to start your store?

(Actually, my husband is a handicraft designer and we own a brand before we started Design Port. Also, we wish to launch a platform for the Hong Kong designers and brands to share their products and ideas for letting more people to know more about our works.)

2. Who are your current customers? Are they different to your target one?

(There are not any big differences between our current and target customers; and our customers are mainly in 20-40 years old.)

3. Do you have any future plan for your store?

(We are going to open our second store in Eslite Living in the coming August. And we hope that we can expand our business to different countries.)

4. Have your store facing any problem(s) currently?

(I think should be the manpower problem. Due to we are a family business, and most of our staffs are our family members. Even we do have hired a few full-time and part-time staffs, but most of them will not decide to work for us for a long period, which leads us difficult to hire a suitable people to work for us.)

5. Have you apply any programme(s) from the organization or the HK government to help you while you setting up your store? Why? (Yes, my husband has joined a few overseas trade shows and handicraft markets, which may able to support our brand and store, therefore we have applied the SME funding programme. In my opinion, the application of SME funding programme is too complicated. Firstly, we must ask if the trade shows are recognized. Then, the application will require us to provide a load of documents, such as the flight tickets to proof our schedule and even our marriage certificate to proof the relationship of my husband and me, because I am going as a staff of my brand. If there is one or more document is missed, the application will be failed. So, it really wastes us a lot of time to finish those documents submission.

At the same time, we have tried to apply some of the supporting programme for the organizations and Hong Kong government, but the organizations think that our brand is not small or weak enough; therefore we failed to apply those programme.)

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Interview on Facebook message (Onezeroegg) (Handmade Accessories Designer) Date: 3/5/2017 1. May you tell me about the story of your brand and the reason(s) that lead you to start your brand? What is your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – WHAT SETS YOU APART? (As I am a multimedia designer and a ceramic artist, I would like to have my own brand to sell my handmade pieces. So you can see that I also sell handmade coffee cups too! However, fashion accessories are also one of my interests and I love to try using different materials to create my products.)

2. Who are your current customers? Are they different to your target one?

(Honestly, we do not have too much customers at the moment, however our current customers are aged between 25-35 years old, American Born Chinese or studied aboard before. Actually this is very much the same as my target customers, because I studied in UK before too.)

Nottingham Trent University School of Art and Design

CONSENT FORM

Project Title: Master Degree Dissertation (Exploring the development opportunities for the local

independent brands in Hong Kong)

Please read and confirm your consent to being interviewed for this project by ticking the appropriate boxes and signing and dating this form

1.

I confirm that the purpose of the project has been explained to me, that I have been given information about it in writing, and that I have had the opportunity to ask X

questions about the research

2.

I understand that my participation is voluntary, and that I am free to withdraw at any time without giving any reason and without any implications for my legal rights X

3.

I give permission for the interview to be recorded by research staff, on the X understanding that the tape will be destroyed at the end of the project

4.

I agree to take part in this project

2/5/2017 Terry Lai ___________________

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Signature

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Student Ethical Toolkit, version 2 24.10.2011

Page 4

3. Do you have any future plan for your brand?

(I am looking for consignment and will try to participate in more handmade markets. And I wish our brand could do better on “Online to Offline” marketing mode.)

4. What do you think is the most difficult thing while you are setting up your brand?

(I think the most difficult thing for our brand is promotion, it is difficult to reach more additional customers without paying a huge amount of money.)

5. Have your brand facing any problem(s) currently?

(At the present, I do everything for my brand at home, but my home is too small for me to work. I believe most of the designers would like to own a physical studio. However, the rents in Hong Kong are too high for me to rent a space and open my workshop or studios. And all I want is to make more products!)

6. Have you apply any supporting programme(s) from the organization or the HK government to help you while you setting up your brand?

Why? (I have applied the JCCAC studio successfully before. But unfortunately, those studios just allows us to open our store during the morning and afternoon time, but as I am working as a full time designer at the same time, therefore it is quite difficult for me to start a physical store. Even though, I understand those studios are mainly for the freelancers and full time artists, but I do not think there will have people are able to work as a full-time artists in Hong Kong.)

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Interview with Little by little (Handmade accessories) Date: 3/5/2017 1. May you tell me about the story of your brand and the reason(s) that lead you to start your brand?

(My younger sister majored in art while studying in University and I studied in art management. We have joined and visited a lot of different handicraft market in Hong Kong, and we discovered the prices of products have set too high which are unaffordable for some of the students; and that is the reason leads us to start our own brand. We wish to design and create some handmade products with a reasonable price. After a few months, our mother has joined our brand, and our brand started to become a little family business.)

2. Who are your current customers group? Are they different to your targeted one?

(There is not much difference between our targeted and current customer. Our main customers are students, also there are some parents will buy our products for their children.)

3. Do you have any future plan for your brand?

(We are still planning for it, but do not have any great ideas.)

4. What is the issue(s) that your brand facing currently?

(I think it should be joining the handicraft markets. There are a lot of handicraft markets in Hong Kong nowadays, however most of them are lack of promotion skills and the quality are really poor, which may leads to an unstable numbers of visitors and customers. Moreover, most of them may need to pay a high application fee, but the locations will make people disappointed. I understand the rents in Hong Kong is really high, and most of the brands will prefer or put more efforts on launching an online store instead of a physical one, which may affect the brands to join those handicraft market.)

5. Have you apply any supporting programme from the organization or the HK government to help you while you setting up your brand?

Why? (No, we have not applied any supporting programme.)

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Interview with Tania Willis (HK based Illustrator and Designer) Date: 3/5/2017 1. May you tell me about the story of your brand and the reason(s) that lead you to start your brand?

(As an illustrator and designer, I decided to use some of my pre-existing artwork to develop a range of quality art prints. I’d had an exhibition in Kapok, which had been well received. The show had sold well and afterwards I wanted to keep the prints available, so I created an online shop, which has also continued to do well. I had a lot of other older imagery that would work as potential art prints so I was able to build a large collection of imagery.

I’d also noticed a shortage of well-designed HK-specific stationery and I had often been asked by clients to launch a range too. So I took some of designs and applied them to cards & printed them with the local indie printer InkChaCha. Kapok remains my main bricks and mortar distributor in HK for stationery and art prints.

These were noticed by a Taiwanese company (Jena Card Creative Co Ltd) who then licensed some of the design for textiles, paper items, ceramics & stationery. They gave me my own brand so I was able to continue 'Small Editions’ by Tania Willis. These sell mostly in Eslite stores.)

2. Who are your current customers group? Are they different to your targeted one?

(My customers are very varied. The group is also split between online and shop purchases. For buyers in PMQ Kapok shops, it’s mostly designconscious younger Hong Kongers This market sometimes finds me from online and make more purchases. For the online prints, it’s often expats who now live abroad, who have come across it with keyword searches.

Quite a few people purchase for leaving HK as a group gift.)

3. Do you have any future plan for your brand?

(I have more illustrations to add to the art print range. I’m also looking for partners to collaborate on licensing projects.)

4. What is the issue(s) that your brand facing currently?

(When I have moved back to the UK, supplying quantities of signed prints to HK shops is a minor problem, as is keeping in touch with my distributors for new sales, resupplying & collecting revenue.)

5. Have you apply any supporting programme from the organization or the HK government to help you while you setting up your brand?

Why? (We have not applied any programme for our brand, because it really takes time.)

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APPENDIX6 Current/Target Customers Interviews

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Face-to-Face Interview with Christy Kwan Date: 5/5/2017 1. What makes you fall in love with this style/culture?

(Because I love unique and handmade products. Hong Kong people nowadays love to go with the stream and always affected by the trends, which makes me disappointed and hate with this.)

2. What products or items have you bought that is related with this style?

(I got tote bags, accessories and shoes.)

3. Where will you shop the most?

(I love to go to the handicraft fairs when I have time.)

4. How much will you spend on the fashion items every month?

(I spend around 600-800hkd (ÂŁ60-80) every month on the fashion products. It depends on what I need that month.)

5. What are the reason(s) that make you purchase from the handicraft brands?

(Because most of products from those brands are handmade. First, I do not need to afraid they may have some ethical issues while producing. Secondly, every handmade product is totally different with each other even they are in the same design, and you may able to own a unique product which it is the only one in the world.)

6. Has your style changed as you have got older or are there certain products you will always buy?

(I do not change my style in those years, but I cannot promise I will not change my wearing once I have a child. Because I sure I will not have enough time to care my appearance at that time.)

7. How do you get your information? Online (which routes?), blogs, Wechat, magazines,pop up shops (YouTube, Facebook and Instagram are the main channels that I receive information. Also, I will like to have a chat with the brands owners in the handicraft markets.)

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Face-to-Face Interview with Patrick Man Date: 5/5/2017 1. What makes you fall in love with this style/culture?

(I fall in love with the hipster culture when I was having my working holiday in Taiwan from two years ago. Hipster culture is not a new trend in Taiwan, and you can see there will have many cafes, boutiques and bookstores all around which is totally different with Hong Kong. And that is one of the reason I come to UK for visiting.)

2. What products or items have you bought that is related with this style?

(I do not think hipster culture cannot be defined by what fashion items the people wear, it is a lifestyle.)

3. Where will you shop the most?

(PMQ, JCCAC are my favourite place to visit. On the other hand, I will go and have a look a few handicraft markets during weekends, but I found that the Hong Kong handicraft markets’ qualities still have to improve.)

4. How much will you spend on the fashion items every month?

(I will spend around 500-1000hkd (ÂŁ50-100) on fashion items every month. I sure men do not need too much clothes as the ladies.)

5. Has your style changed as you have got older or are there certain products you will always buy?

(I love the style that I wear, so I may not change it in the future. But if I got a job in a large company, I must change my clothing into suits, which I do not wish to.)

6. How do you get your information? Online (which routes?), blogs, Wechat, magazines,pop up shops (I sure most of the people in Hong Kong will have their own Facebook and Instagram account, which I do. Also I love to read magazines, such as Popeye, Inventory, IDN magazine etc.)

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Face-to-Face Interview with Carol Yip Date: 11/5/2017 1. What makes you fall in love with this style/culture?

(I am a university student who majored in Fashion Design. I love simple and clean designs, which I used as my design styles. Actually Hong Kong hipster culture and fashion styles were come from Taiwan at the beginning around 3-5 years ago, and it has been spread around quickly.)

2.What products or items have you bought that is related with this style?

(I have got a lot of items that related, such as clothes, accessories, bags, stationaries. Even the decoration in my room is inspired from this style.)

3. Where will you shop the most?

(I often goes online shopping; Birthmark, Storerooms, Wood Soda are the three brands and store that I love the most. I will visit the handicraft fairs when I have time too.)

4. How much will you spend on the fashion items every month?

(Around 1,500hkd (ÂŁ150).)

5. Have you purchase any products from the Hong Kong local independent brands? If yes, what have you bought?

(Yes. I got some long skirts, hats and tote bags.)

6. (Related to question 5) If yes, what are the reason(s) that make you purchase from those brands?

(As I mentioned, I love simple and clean designs. Also I would like to support the local brands.)

7. Has your style changed as you have got older or are there certain products you will always buy?

(I do not change much on my fashion styles currently, and I wish I would not change it when I get older.)

8. How do you get your information? Online (which routes?), blogs, Wechat, magazines,pop up shops (I mainly use social media, such as Facebook and Instagram)

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Face-to-Face Interview with Ryan Law Date: 4/6/2017 1. What makes you fall in love with this style/culture?

(Because I love vintage designs from 70s – 90s since I was in Secondary School, which become popular again in those years.)

2. What products or items have you bought that is related with this style?

(I got a bag, jackets and some indie style eyeglasses.)

3. Where will you shop the most?

(Major in handicraft markets and I will visit PMQ when I have time.)

4. How much will you spend on the fashion items every month?

(Not fixed. But maximum around $1500.)

5. Have you purchase any products from the Hong Kong local independent brands? If yes, what have you bought?

(Most of my clothes are bought from the Japanese and Taiwan fashion brands. But I do have some clothes from the Hong Kong handicraft markets, however I forget the brands names. But I am quite falling in love with a Hong Kong local brand called Craftihood which sell handmade leather products.)

6. (Related to question 5) If yes, what are the reason(s) that make you purchase from those brands?

(There are not any specific reasons. But I was easily moved by the first impression of the products; I will purchase the products if the price and style are suitable for me. ) 7. Has your style changed as you have got older or are there certain products you will always buy?

(I have not changed my fashion styles around those 10 years. But I am not sure if I will change it when I got older.)

8. How do you get your information? Online (which routes?), blogs, Wechat, magazines,pop up shops (Facebook and Instagram.)

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Skype Interview with Priscilla Lo Date: 9/6/2017 1. What makes you fall in love with this style/culture?

(At the beginning, I try with this fashion style is because of the trends and peer recommendations. But after I put on a skirt, which is related with the hipster style, I started to fall in love with hipster fashion.)

2. What products or items have you bought that is related with this style?

(Basically, I have a lot of hipster fashion items, such as skirts, plenty of demin items, bags, accessories etc.)

3. Where will you shop the most?

(Design Port in JCCAC and handicraft markets such as weekend wardrobe, YMCA) 4. How much will you spend on the fashion items every month?

(Around 500 to 900) 5. Have you purchase any products from the Hong Kong local independent brands? If yes, what have you bought?

(Yes, but I cannot remember most of their brands names. But my favourite brand is Runwaysnp, they are a brand that selling handmade bags and provide photography services. Sometimes, they will hold handicraft markets in their physical store, which gathered some of the Hong Kong local independent brands together.)

6. (Related to question 5) If yes, what are the reason(s) that make you purchase from those brands?

(I love handmade products, because I do not prefer the products are made by machine.)

7. Has your style changed as you have got older or are there certain products you will always buy?

(I am not sure. But I think I do not hope that I will change my current fashion style.)

8. How do you get your information? Online (which routes?), blogs, Wechat, magazines,pop up shops (Basically from social media platforms, and sometimes I will chat with the brands owners in the handicraft markets.)

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APPENDIX7 Focus Group

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Focus Group Script Me:

Heidi: Sara: Chloe L: Benjamin: Chloe N: Downey: Carol: Sarah: Janice: Me:

Thanks for coming for this focus group today. The research topic of today is focusing about the functions and ideas for my dissertation project’s execution idea. The focus group of today will need around 15 to 30 minutes and there are some refreshments provided on the table over there. This focus group will be transcribed. Please ask me if you want the script of today. All information will used for supporting my work and idea for my dissertation project.

Firstly, I want to ask what platforms will you guys shopping from? Mostly on physical or digital platform?

Online shopping for sure!

Both.

Online mostly.

Both of them.

Depends on what kind of products. But I often go TaoBao. Online.

I prefer to have a look the products online first, and then go to buy and try it in the physical store.

Physical one!

I often go online.

Okay. Here are four different styles of online platforms design. (See Fig A.) Which one do you like and think it is suitable for the handicraft brands use? Please type a heart shape under your choice.

Fig A. Vote for the platform design styles [Voting Results] Opinion A: 0 participant Opinion B: 4 participants Opinion C: 4 participants Opinion D: 1 participant Sarah: Janice: Me: Chloe N: Sara: Benjamin: Carol" Heidi: Benjamin: Chloe L: Downey: Me:

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Simple and clean designs are often used widely during those years. And I think it should be the trend too.

As a frequent online shopper, I prefer a clear design and interface, which is able to give me relax and comfort shopping experience. I hate the designs that are full of images and patterns. They are suck!

Thanks for everyone. Next, I want to ask if anyone have purchased any products from the handicraft brands or markets before?

I am a great fans of handicraft markets. The products from handicraft markets are often cheaper than the large brands on the high street.

I agree with you, Chloe.

Even I do not have any experiences on purchasing from a handicraft brand, but I think that handicraft brands can provide high quality products in a reasonable price, which is one of the successful keys to those brands.

I got a few handmade accessories with are bought from handicraft markets. But I think some of the brands are still a bit expensive for students.

Yeah.

I agree with what Carol said. But I think we should not despise the effort of the designers. Most of them have spent a lot of time and energy to finish their designs. Therefore, I do not mind to spend a huge amount of money for a handmade product, they are often better than the products from factory-made.

I always go to PMQ when I was in Hong Kong, because it is near my home.

My purse was bought from a Hong Kong local handicraft brand, but I forgot what the name is it.

Okay, thanks everyone. Let’s have some brainstorming. I planned to create an online platform to help and develop the local handicraft brands based in Hong Kong. And I wish you guys could provide me some ideas for the functions or any details of this platform. Then I will write them down on those memo papers (see Fig B).

Fig B. Brainstorming for the execution idea.

Sarah: Heidi: Benjamin: Chloe L: Downey: Me: Sarah: Sara:

Please write down simple and Clean design interface.

What about the indie style design?

I prefer high-end design with convenient and quick procure.

Colourful designs are great for attracting people too.

How about different themes for every month?

Thanks for everyone’s opinions. What about the functions of the platform?

I think providing a membership system is great idea. One for store owners, with around $1500 per month and 10% discount for applying more than 3 months. Then for the user membership, with a free membership discount for the first 3 months then need around $200 every months after.

Yeah! And I think providing 10% discount for both parties by inviting their family and friends can help to attract more people joining the platform too. Also, the users have to fill in a short survey before joining, and then they can make a preference for the information that they can get in touch with.

[All agreed]

Heidi: Chloe L: Downey:

I think provided some activities suggestions for family and education use can put into the platform function too. And the platform can cooperate with the public organizations and schools.

I know it is quite stupid idea, but I think if there will have some speed-dating functions holding by the platform, such as going to some handicraft markets, workshops and then having a gathering at the restaurants nearby after the events.

It is not a stupid idea, Chloe. I like your idea. Most of the Hong Kong people are too busy to find their partners, if the platform can gather the people who are in the same interest. It would be great.

[All agreed]

Benjamin: Chloe L: Janice: Carol:

I am thinking of, if it is possible to hold some art jam activities and art or fashion movies views. Also, holding some art exhibition visiting.

How about suggesting some oversea handicraft fairs for the users and brands owners? Also there may have a map, which shows the locations of the markets with some details on it.

The platform can promote some more about the traditional handicraft in Hong Kong too.

As I know, most of the brands in Hong Kong do not familiar with the supporting programmes provided from the public organizations. So I think providing some suggestions and information of those programmes will be useful for the users.

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Downey: Me: Sarah: Janice: Carol: Me:

How about skill support like the platform called Skill Share? Providing online tutorials and blogs.

Yes, Downey! I am going to use Skill Share as one of my idea development inspirations too.

I think discount or free stuff to attract more people to use the platform is useful too.

Also, the styling suggestions and blogs!

Will there be any physical monthly magazines or free booklet?

It is a good idea, Carol. But I think it is not the first thing to do at present. Thanks for your idea anyway.

Are there any other ideas?

[Everyone shake their heads]

Me:

Okay. Thanks everyone for coming and provided a lot of useful ideas to me. Those information are really useful for my project.

- END OF THE FOCUS GROUP -

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APPENDIX8 Visual inspirations for execution

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APPENDIX9 SWOT of Execution Idea

Strength - Able to provide a wide range of services including gathering events, providing handicraft markets and supporting programme information, online tutorials to increase brand awareness, forum etc.

- User-friendly and clear interface - A platform that can provide information related to the support programme for local businesses - A platform that provide events which welcome the families and young generations - Helping local medium to small sized independent brands to increase their brand awareness

Weakness - Facing a lot of competition from other online platforms offering seemingly similar services - Initial Brand awareness for Handigather and we may need to engage trust from the users, word of mouth promotion etc - Handigather will not be able to offer funding support to the brands, which may not able to provide supports to the brands completely

Opportunities -

Promote Hong Kong independent brands and local designers Expand our services to international stage Provide more services to our users Become the largest online platform that related to handicraft and designs in Hong Kong

Threats -

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Standing within a highly competitive market Need to make sure the information in “Support Me� is correct and clear Increase the user awareness of our platform Need to seek for cooperation or supports to improve the platform’s functions and operations

APPENDIX10 Customer Profiles

Customer Profile 1

Customer Profile 2

Yanna Ho | 26 years old Media Relation

Raymond Cheung | 36 years old Marketing

Yanna is working as media relation specialist in a fashion company based in Hong Kong.

She is an independent and outgoing person, who pursues on a higher quality of life. Due to a heavy workload and unregularly work shift , Yanna is difficult to meet new friends as she wish to. Therefore, she hopes that there may have a platform for her to meet some new friends who are in same interests.

Raymond is working in the marketing department of a wholesale company based in Hong Kong. He is a father of one daughter in 4 years old and one son in 8 years old. He loves to spend time with his family during weekends. However, he is looking for some suitable activities for his two kids to increase their creativity and skills.

Customer Profile 3 Olivia Hung| 23 years old Accessories Designer Olivia is an accessories designer based in Hong Kong who wishes to start her own brand, but she does not know anything about business or marketing. Therefore, she is looking forward to seek for business partners or someone are able to provide her a few marketing skills support.

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APPENDIX11 Execution Idea Designs

Handigather Logo Design

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Handigather Platform Design

"What To Do"

Platform Front Page

Front Page

Front P

Video P

Users Login Page

Users Register Page

Front

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"Teach & Learn"

"SUPPORT ME"

Front Page Front Page

Video Page Example

"Blog"

Front Page

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Handigather Facebook Page

Handigather Instagram Page 103

APPENDIX12 Critical Path

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APPENDIX13 Tutorial Record Sheets

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