The New Zealand's Young Enterprise (YES)

[NOPE -- Natural Organic Planet Earth]

Executive Summary --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOPE. strives for a Natural Organic Planet Earth. We are offering a more environmentally friendly lip balm to the market. Packaged in bamboo our natural lip balm not only looks the part but smells and tastes it too. We want to raise people's awareness of the amount of plastic and waste we use and create in our day to day lives. We want to offer a more environmentally friendly product to the market to help people make better choices and reduce the amount of waste we produce.

NOPE. was established at an all girls boarding school, Nga Tawa Diosean in the lower North Island. With 3 keen and eager young women we are determined to produce a product that we are proud of. When we first formed our group and brainstormed ideas for our future product or service it was clear we all wanted to do something that promotes environmental sustainability. Working as a group has brought us some challenges, initially starting with 4 members we have made alterations within the workforce to ensure we are the best company we can be. We have had a few bumps along the way but we have become more resilient and determined because of this.

Vision:

To enhance a Natural Organic Planet Earth.

Mission:

To provide an environmentally friendly alternative to beauty products while still delivering quality and organic ingredients.

Purpose:

To teach people of the impacts a simple everyday item contributes to our waste.

Our SMART business objectives:

• Have a product available by 20th June 2019

• Sell 75 units by 10th September 2019

• Make Regional Finals 2019

• To endorse year 13 Business studies with Excellence

• To achieve nation-wide media publicity by the end of the year

• To become the most satisfactory year 13 business studies group at Nga Tawa diocesan school in 2019.

• To make a substantial profit

Company values

Reducing waste:

We want to help reduce and eventually eliminate the amount of waste that is being created in our society. A lip balm container may be small, but a small start is better than no start.

Healthier life:

Products in the market are often filled with preservatives that don't have the natural goodness that they should. We wanted to strive towards having a natural product that isn't filled with the little unnecessary nasties. We achieved this by using less ingredients in our product and those we did were natural. This ensured we connected to our vision as we were able to enhance the natural ingredients in our product.

Help the environment:

We wanted to help the environment. We only have one planet earth and we need to protect it by making small changes in the things we consume that can have significant impacts environmentally.

Our main achievements:

- Attending UCOL market day

- Youth Space marketday

- Gaining knowledge and experience

- Excessive positive customer feedback

- Selling out 100 units in one term

Marketing Audit --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Marketing Analysis:

From our market research we found that the majority of lip balms that are sold both nationwide and worldwide are packaged in a plastic tube. Therefore with our unique selling point of having a bamboo packaged lip balm it eliminated a large amount of direct competitors. While also providing a higher environmentally friendly packaging to our product we also wanted to focus on the ingredients in our lip balm. Thus focusing on organic and natural products as many lip balms contain harsh ingredients which result in skin reactions.

Our direct competitors include Eco store, a well-known New Zealand company with their environmentally friendly products and packaging. Their “Nourishing manuka lip balm” priced at $9.99 is a potential threat to our business as our product is only in the development stage of the product life cycle whereas Eco Store have an advantage being at the growth/maturity stage with a large following with potential customers.

Another direct competitor is Lush. specialising in organic and natural body cosmetics Lush automatically becomes a threat to our business. Their Lip balms have a variety of flavours and range between $14-16. Although this is a higher price than Eco Store, Lush also has a large following but most commonly for young women between the ages of 12-25 which is a large target market that our business is also aiming to sell towards.

While both these direct competitors have organic and natural lip balm we did not find from our research a New Zealand company selling bamboo packaged lip balm which is a strength to our business as it provides a unique difference between the other brands listed.

New Zealand has a population of almost 4.8 Million people and is filled with beautiful beaches, and landscapes where people are out enjoying the glistening sun all year round. Worldwide Burt's Bees sells 86,400 lip balms a day which is almost 31.5 billion a year! Lip balm will always be popular because of people's needs and desires. Some people simply cannot live without lip balm. For this reason, while there is no current trend with lip balms we are joining the trend of environmentally friendly alternatives and therefore which makes our lip balm have a unique selling point.

Customer Analysis:

NOPE. stands for Natural Organic Planet Earth. This aligns with our goal, to produce a cruelty free and organic natural product. This way we can step towards a healthier natural organic planet earth. To achieve this, our company made a survey about what product we should sell and sent it out via email to Nga Tawa students and staff. Our results showed that lip balm was the most popular product that was organic and adequate. Our target market is 1. people who want to help the environment, 2. people who have dry lips, 3.people who want to help the animals to avoid plastic getting into our waterways, 4. environmentalists 5. everyone who uses or wishes to use lip balm. The age group of customers that we aim for is high school age which will be around 13 to 18 years old and our product can also be interesting for the adults aged around 20 and older.

Our Target Market is high school students that are between the ages of 13 to 18 years so we have considered the fact that old people might not work as much as an adult, so they might not have as much money as adults. This means that they will only have a limited amount of money that they can use. From this, our lip balm only cost $7 per 1 lip balm. We will also have a promotion which is to buy 2 lip balms for only $12. This will make the lip balm only $7 per lip balm. The lip balm cost $1 less than the original price which might make us be able to sell more lip balm. Outside school, we sell lip balms for $8 as we think the market can afford the price and bring us more profit. The promotion price and be one of the selling points among schools as people would be interested in discounts and attract them to increase the sales.

Competitor Analysis:

The competition in the market of lip balm in New Zealand is intense. Outstanding brands like chapstick and Harrow own quite a huge portion shown by the on stock products in markets like countdown and Healthpost NZ. Harraw is advantaged in its wide range and high diversity of flavours for lip balms, for example the moon lip balm and the papaya pineapple flavour. Their price is between $4-$5. Another example of competitors would be Nivea and Vaseline. Since they are famous for their high functionality and have a series of body care products, people who support their product would likely purchase lip balms from them. The price for their lip balm is usually between $4-$5, which shows the market price for a lip balm is between that range. There are lip balms producers that advertise their products as natural, such as Blistex and Burt’s bee. Those products would have a higher price for products between $6-$9.

Not only the independent firms exist in the market, family business and small business groups are participating in the market. They usually sell their homemade lip balms in different market days and online selling sites like Trade Me. There are different specialties of their products, some of them are natural and homemade, and some may become outstanding because of their shape and appearance.. There is a wide range of price in the market so it provides more option for customers from different level and areas (age/income/sex etc.).

The selling point of our product is the homemade lip balm with natural ingredients, contained by the bamboo lip balm. In my observation, most of the products in the market are made with plastic, which is against the purpose of our business. The bamboo would become our unique selling point as there are lots of different homemade lip balms that are hard to stand out. There are some organic and environmentally friendly lip balms made with paper or bamboo in the market, but their price commonly is higher than $10. Since our cost of product is quite low and we as students do not need labours to help with, we can keep the price as low as possible so the low price becomes another selling point for us.

Environmental Analysis:

There are 6 factors which is PESTEL analysis to help us identify and evaluate external factors that might influence the success of our product. Firstly is Political Factors, it is influencing the ways in which individuals may vote, according to environmental policy as a result of the educational nature of the NOPE brand. Also, regulation, tax policy and labour laws. Secondly is Economic factors, there are things that increased consumption spending, GST, interest rates, growth, exchange rates and inflation rates. This factor is one of the most important factors for every business companies. Thirdly is Social factors, there are trends, average income, population, cultural aspects, age distribution, safety and health. Trends of people who are our target market is the age between 10 to 15 which is what we have to be looking at. From what we know, people in that age group don’t have that much income to be able to effort the high price of some products because they are students which still have to use parents money. What we can do is look at the average income of students. It tells us that $7 is the best price that our product should be for them. Also, safety is one of the most important things. Our target market is students. This makes us have to make our product very safe and have to be without any bad chemical that can affect their health and safety. Fourthly is Technological factors, there are productive capacity, capital machinery, automation, using social media which is what our target market used nowadays, research and development, and availability. Nowadays, technology has developed a lot more and still keep developing. It makes everything a lot easier to deal with. For example, the engraving machine that the company we import the containers from have. It makes everything finished a lot faster, our logo looks the same on every container and easier for them to do it for us. Fifthly is Environmental factors, there are emissions, resources, waste, ecology, weather, natural disaster, climate change and endangered species. All of this is the reason why we are trying to find lip balm containers that are made out of bamboo. This is to reduce waste and make a healthier environment in the future. It might not happen soon, but if we all pay attention to this, it will make our planet look a lot better in the future. Sixthly is Legal factors, they are things that we as a company should do which are not getting sued, follow copyright laws, have consumer guarantees act, follow discrimination laws, follow employment law, and follow health and safety law. The most important legal factor is health and safety law. To be able to make our customers trust and use our product, we will have to make our product safe and clean. All of these factors are very important for us to run our business in the right way, so we should try to understand and follow everything.

SWOT Analysis:

Strengths -- A strength we have within our business is the Unique Selling Point (USP). Internationally it is a trend to use more environmentally friendly alternatives. This is a strength to us because society has reached a point in their own understanding that pollution and climate change is a arising issue that we need to stop. With this view point customers are more willing to make purchases to help a little bit with these problems.

Another strength we have with our business is our group size. By having too large of a group many team members do not get heard and the business becomes insufficient. For this reason we believe that having a size of 3 people eliminates the amount of conflict within our company.

Another strength we have is Barbie who is familiar with the ingredients and production of lip balm. By having an expert in our group we have an advantage with making the lip balm because we will know the amount of ingredients we need and the skills needed for pouring the lip balm into the tubes. This is a strength because it saves us both equipment and time as we can successfully achieve this job.

Weaknesses -- A weakness we have within our business is the lack of time and experience. If our business were to suddenly kick off and get hundreds of orders it would be unrealistic for us because we are only 3 school students with limited time as we have other subjects and commitments, therefore we cannot spare every spare moment on producing and promoting our product. This is a weakness because although we all want to sell our product and work together to promote, it is physically impossible to achieve this as none of us have a car to drive to visit local shops and we have commitments both academic and extracurricular. While it would be beneficial to go door knocking to people who may want to purchase or stock our product or to even promote consistently online, we simply cannot achieve this to a high standard. While this may be a weakness we must acknowledge this and instead of making this a conflict within our group or consistently wonder “what if”.

Opportunities -- An opportunity we have with our business is promoting nearby pharmacies and local environmental stores. From our trips to UCol and Youth space many people have suggested we stock our product in a beauty or pharmacy store. This would be a great opportunity for our business as it allows us to expand on our target market as we are unable to make every market day in the district and therefore our product will be visible to a larger range of people.

Another opportunity we have is to sell at the local market. We were lucky to have a stall at the Youth Space trade fair where a woman approached us asking if we would like to attend the UCol market day as well. This was a great opportunity for our business because we were able to visit a local university and sell our product alongside other students to gather broader customer feedback to the previous two market days. This has further opened more opportunities to attend more and further UCol market days.

Threats -- A threat we have is successful businesses such as Lush and Eco Store. These are our direct competitors as they target similar markets by also promoting environmentally friendly packaging. With this as a threat we have to work harder to ensure we produce a product that we are proud of.

Another threat we have to our business is time. While we did not intend to sell our 100 units within the first term we have decided to order another 200, this is a threat because if the demand is not as high as we intended then we will be left with dozens of lip balms and not be able to pay back our expenses or start-up capital. This is a threat because we do not want to leave at the end of the year with lip balms as it will be a waste. Therefore defeats our purpose of creating them.

Along with this threat of time, it was also a threat to our business with the withdrawal of a team member. A few weeks ago a member of our team left which left us in surprise as we thought our internals and pitch would include her workload. Therefore we were restricted with time as we thought her portion of the internal work would be done by her but instead we had to act swiftly and implement some alterations.

Other Marketing Analysis Tools:

For our lip balm product, it is existing in the market because there are other lip balm companies with organic balm, and also the lip balm package is not new to the market . This means that in the Ansoff matrix, this product is Market Penetration Strategy because we are selling existing products to existing markets. As a result, we will need to maintain or increase the market share, secure dominance of growth markets, restructure a mature market by driving our competitors, and increase usage by existing consumers. Our selling point is our pretty bamboo packaging. It is not usual to see in the market as it requires a higher cost compared to plastic. From our research, only a few companies are doing lip balm with bamboo containers. Also, it is an environmentally friendly product that people nowadays start to pay attention to and we are trying to reduce plastic as we can improve the environment even as a minor step. This selling point can attract attention for our brand and bring us into the growing potential market in both inside and outside New Zealand.

Our lip balm products are high in market growth rate and high in relative market share. This means in Boston Matrix, our product is the star which products are in high growth markets with high market share. From this, we realised we are having a good opportunity and are well established. Since we are in a competitive market, we have to update our customers' reviews and improve our products to avoid being banned by the market.

Marketing Assumptions:

After looking at the competitors analysis, we can see most of the lip balms have plastic packing which they ignore the attraction of environmental-friendly packing. This provides a chance for us to take space in the market. The competition in organic products is huge so that will not be our main competitive point. Supporting local business and being made in New Zealand are another unique points of us.

Our advantage is we are doing a school project, which staff and students from school are willing to support us. Since our market customers are mainly teenagers and women, Nga Tawa school is a perfect spot to start with our business, which also turns out we gain most of the profits from our school. We also have a price policy for our school so our products can be better promoted. As students are not as rich as adults, lowering the price further suits our target market.

We are seeking for more spots to sell our products, and we find lots of eco shops that would like to help. The beauty studio in Ucol is willing to offer stock for us. After we get more products to sell, we will start finding more places so customers can easily purchase our products. We also offer Facebook and Instagram accounts. That is because most teenagers are familiar with social media, so that our potential customers can be promoted and know more about us. Increasing our fame is the easiest way for us to increase our income.

Innovation -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Our NOPE. lip balm is an innovative product because from our market research and our knowledge we are the only company in New Zealand to see Bamboo packaged lip balm. We have achieved two unique portions of our lip balm. The first being a more environmentally friendly packaging to what is currently in the market. Along with this we have also incorporated natural products to make our lip balm which is also a health benefit. Therefore our product is both an environmentally and healthier alternative to what New Zealand offers. This is what gives our business a unique selling point because we cater for all benefits that could be offered in the aspects of a lip balm.

Production -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The production process for our lip balms begins from the packing being made in China. We chose China as the place to purchase the lip balm containers because they have a high number of bamboo trees therefore it was simpler to get them made overseas. We purchased our lip balm packaging from the website ‘Aliexpress’ and contacted the supplier via email. It was to our benefit that we had a member of our group who could speak Chinese as this allowed us to easily communicate with the manufacturer. While these were being sent over to New Zealand, we purchased local ingredients such as beeswax, olive oil and vitamin e oil as this supports our local community. Once all our packaging and ingredients arrive we create the lip balm then package them into the tubes. The final stages include labeling and packaging. We have our logo and information printed on business cards and paper labels with the ingredients attached with string to the lip balm tubes. Then the final product is sold to customers. With the “throw away culture” our world is living in, bamboo is a much more sustainable product to be using because plastic is creating unnecessary waste that we can not restore. 50% of plastic is never reused or recycled therefore it is single use plastic that is only used for one purpose. This is what lip balm containers are. Therefore we decided to hook onto this idea to make a product that is limited to the amount of plastic that is contributed to this figure which allowed us to create our mission of providing an environmentally friendly alternative to beauty products while still delivering the quality and organic ingredients. Which also aligns with our vision of enhancing a Natural Organic Planet Earth.

A quality process management we obtain is cleaning the inside of each and every lip balm tube before pouring in the ingredients. We use an anti bacterial wipe along with a cotton tip to clean the sides and lid of the lip balm containers. This ensures that there are no dust particles inside therefore making sure everything is cleaned thoroughly.

Quality control:

We produce our lip balms in bulk to ensure each and every lip balm is consistently produced. Our first batch of 100 was made on the 18th May 2019. Our second batch which was 200 was produced on the 2nd of August 2019. By choosing to produce our product in batches instead of on order it not only saves a significant time but also means we waste less ingredients and therefore costs. We work as a team to make sure the product is up to our standards to be sold. It allows us to manage our quality control as every batch will be similar and cleaned on the same day. It also means each lip balm will have a similar amount of time to cool before being sold due to the temperature of the day. This ensures we keep a constant trend with each lip balm in looks, texture and flavour.

Health and Safety:

We used one of the school cottages' kitchens to melt the beeswax and other ingredients. A part of our health and safety, we cleaned all equipment and measuring tools along with the bench space and table space we were using. While we are not selling food our product does not need to meet the food health and safety regulations but we wanted to ensure we did the best possible to keep our products clean and hygienic.

New Zealand Laws:

If we were to continue this Business beyond this year to ensure we have legal protection over NOPE. we would apply for a trademark. This is a unique identifier that customers and potential customers can recognise our business with our logo, slogan and brand. This would be beneficial for our business in the future if we were to ever have to take legal action over the ownership of our company.

Costs of trademark NZ:

To apply for a Trademark in New Zealand it is a cost of $150. For this to be renewed it would be $350 every 10 years from this date. Therefore we would as a business need to put aside some money for these expenses.

Marketing -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Our product is homemade organic lip balm with bamboo packaging which will reduce plastic in the lip balm market and in the environment. Our unique selling point is our product is zero emission, but negative emission because of bamboo growth and using bamboo packaging, not only means production of Natural Organic Planet Earth. Also, our lip balm is organic which means there is no chemical that can harm our customers and bamboo is exceptionally sustainable.

The price of our lip balm is $8 per lip balm but at Nga Tawa Diocesan School, our company has an exclusive price for our school staff and students which is $7 per lip balm and $12 per 2 lip balm. This is because our main target market is students and staff at school and people outside school's minor target is people outside school in New Zealand and people in other countries outside New Zealand. Places that we have sold our products are at Nga Tawa Diocesan School market day and YES market day. The price that we sold the lip balm at market days is $8 per one. In the future, we are looking forward to going to another market day to sell our product and also, we will prepare our products to be ready to sell it online by term 3.

Our target market:

1. people who want to help the environment

2. people who have dry lips

3. people who want to help the animals to avoid plastic getting into our waterways

4. environmentalists

5. everyone who uses or wishes to use lip balm. The primary market target of our company is the age group of customers in high school age which will be around 13 to 18 years old and our product can also be interesting for the adults aged around 20 and older which is our secondary market target.

We chose these target markets as our product is an environmentally friendly product and we are based at a boarding school. This made us believe it would be an opportunity for us to sell within our school. Also, we did a market research in our school and our research showed every second teenager owns a lip balm.

Price:

At Nga Tawa Diocesan School, our lip balm only cost $7 per 1 lip balm. This is because it is the primary target market. We will also have a promotion which is to buy 2 lip balms for only $12. This will make the lip balm only $6 per lip balm. The lip balm cost $1 less than the original price which might make us be able to sell more lip balm. We have the promotion because it is our selling point among schools as people would be interested in discounts and attract them to increase the sales.

Outside school, we sell lip balms for $8 as we think the market can afford the price and bring us more profit.

Promotional Strategies:

social media -- We have created an Instagram page and a Facebook page. Both have been slowly growing as word of mouth has been expressed. When we sell our product, the tag includes our email and these two social media accounts which has allowed people to follow and share our business to their own followers which has expanded our audience and brought new prospective customers to be aware of our company too.

Posters around school -- We have designed posters to promote around the school for our two new flavours - jasmine and Vanilla. On the poster will have our social media contact which allows them to contact us through.

Word of mouth -- Word of mouth is another way for our company to be known by other people. There are good and bad things about this because it is an opinion from our real customers. This will make us be able to have new customers and they will know how our product is like by the thought of other customers. It makes us have to be very careful about the quality of our products.

The best strategy that works for us is social media. As we can use social media to promote and sell our products as social media is very influential people nowadays. A lot of our customers mostly use social media to know more about our products and news that we have posted. For example, we posted the new flavours of our lip balm product and the market days that we went or going to go. This will make the customer who wants to see our real product, taste it or smell it be able to come and have a try.

Marketing Action Plan:

Term 1:

• Interview customers by survey to gather information and preference of people at Nga Tawa to figure out what our product should be as they are our primary target market and can reflect the majority of our target market.

• Design an eye-catching logo to fit the product concept.

• Find the company that provides bamboo containers for our product.

• Set up an Instagram account.

• Preparation for or selling processes which are consuming raw materials and packaging.

Term 2:

• Set up a Facebook page and email account.

• Prepare our business card.

• Make a pre order for students and teachers at Nga Tawa Diocesan School so they can help promote our products.

• collect surveys for feedbacks at Nga Tawa Diocesan school market day to improve products to better suit the market.

• Sell at Nga Tawa Diocesan School market day.

• Sell at YES market day in Palmerston North.

• Sell at UCOL market day.

Term 3 and 4:

• Having a second batch of products ready.

• Develop the oversea market as most of our teammates are international.

• Adding 2 different essential oils which respond to our market research to suit the market's taste.

• Look for more market days for further promotion and sale.

Marketing Budget:

We have several ways to promote our product, both at school and out of school. At school, we promote our products in the school market day, which does not cost us. We introduced our products to staff and students so they have a basic understanding of us. We provided testers and photos of products to draw their attention. After some of them pre order or know more about us, they will share their views of us, which is an advertisement for us. In this case, more people will know about us and become our potential customers.

Outside school, we joined the trade fair held by YES so more people in Palmerston North know our products. That costs us $10. One of our customers loves our lip balm and shared it to our Instagram, which is another free online advertisement for us. We applied for Instagram and Facebook pages for people to find us on different social media. After a customer tagged us on their social media, the more potential customers will see us, which is worth $10. Another customer we saw in the trade fair was from UCOL and she was impressed by our product, and she provided us an opportunity to sell our product there. This helps to increase our fame. However, we did not have business cards or posters to promote ourselves at the moment, which we are working on. With those materials, people walking past can keep a record of our brand and they might return to us someday.

At this stage, the budget we spend on marketing is only $10 as most of the market days we join are free of charge. Social media is also free to register, which reduces our costs. In the future, we will spend some more on making business cards or printing some posters to promote ourselves.

• Stall fees:$10 for trade fair and $0 for UCOL promotion

• Sample:$3 one lip balm as sample

• Decoration: $0 As we collect them from school and ourselves

• Social Media: $0 for both Instagram and Facebook

• Total: $13

Sales -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Refer to number of units sold (actual vs budgeted) and sales channels used during the year

We have made 2 batches of products to sell in term 2 and term 3. We have prepared 100 lip balms with original flavor (1 used as sample and 1 was missing) and sell them separately online and several market days. In our first market which is our school, we sold $404 of products and 64 lip balms in total. These sales include the orders from the Nga tawa market day. This market has took up ⅗ of our sales, which means the school is our largest market and most of our target customers are focused in there. We also went to 2 different market days and they are the Ucol market and Trade Fair. We both sold 16 lip balms for two market days and earned $256 in total. The 32 lip balms occupied around 3/10 of our sales. The rest of the 2 lip balms are sold online which include local and international customers. We made another batch at the end of July, which means we do not have any sales in July. Since it is our mock exam period in August, we would not able to promote on our products but only leave them to the next month. Our price setting for the lip balms is $8 per one outside school and $7 for 1, $12 for 2 at school. The strategy is made as we recognize most of the students cannot afford products with high prices and we are willing to purchase more if there is a discount. However, to increase our income, we think selling lip balms at $8 can maintain our income.

Before selling the products, we expected the containers for lip balms would cost $200, as a result we have put $300 as capital to consume all the materials and ingredients. In our forecasting, we estimated we will sell $350 in May and $210 in june. We have that forecast because we have 2 market days in May and one in June. The price forecasted is predicted with a product price of $7. We think we can sell 50 lip balms in May and 30 in June. We think we would have the largest sale in May during the year, as our product was first introduced to the market and customers will be interested in our products. Also, we have more promotion opportunities in both months, and they are the main promotion period in the year. These two months support us for the rest of the year as we would reduce but continue our promotion for our products. We expect we would have 20 lip balms sold each month as we want to maintain our sales but we do not put huge hope in these months as not much promotion would happen. In the forecast, we have planned to purchase a second batch for more flavours of lip balms. We were expecting to buy 100 more tubes which would cost around $200.

Comparing the actual sales with the forecast, we can tell we have higher sales than we have forecasted. We sold 10 more lip balms than we forecasted in May and 6 more in June. The total forecast income is $ 560 and the actual income of two months is $676. We earned $114 more than we forecast. If we divide 114 to 16 lip balms, the price for each extra one is $7.125 which is nearly $7 per one. This proves most of our sales are sold at school and the average selling price is $7 per one. However, we have spent more than we assumed, both the first and second batch of ingredients. We have overspent 440.8 for the first batch and $244.5 as we are purchasing an extra 100 tubes in the second batch than we predicted.

From our previous sales, we can tell our main market is our school, then different market days and just a little on online sale. I think that is because we did lots of promotion at school to let people know more about us. It is hard for us to do promotions before the market days. One of the reasons we have a low online sale is because we developed our social media,both Instagram and Facebook late and we did not put focus on managing the accounts, which more budget should be put in in marketing out of school.

Financial ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Income statement (actual vs budget) cash flow budget gross profit and net profit percentages

1st batch: In the beginning of the year, all 4 of us invested $75 into the business which is $300 in total. Our financial manager has deposited an extra $40.8 into the business as the capital was not enough to buy all the ingredients. The cost breakdown of our product is $202 for the lip balm containers, this includes the engraving, and $138.8 for ingredients and shipping. Therefore, the total cost of our product for our first batch was $340.80. All the ingredients and packaging are purchased in March, which means we cannot have any sales in that month as we do not have a product to sell. We started to produce our product at the end of April. We have paid $10 as our marketing fee for the Trade fair. We officially started selling and promoting our brand in May,at our school market day. As some people have pre ordered and add on after the market day, we do not know the actual sales on that day but that does not affect as we sell our products at the same price within the school. At the end of May, we earned $346 in total including general sales and online sales. At the end of June, we earned $330 which only general sales is included.

2nd batch: We have sold all our 1st batch within these two months. As a result, we have decided to order another batch of containers which costs us $406 including shipping in July. We have also decided to develop a wider market, in which we are selling lip balms with different flavours. We consumed two different flavours of essential oil online(Go Nature) and it cost us $38.5 including shipping. The balance in July comes to negative and it is $-444.5. In August, as we have only sold 7 lip balms, we only received the income of $44. Currently, our company is having a negative balance of $81.9 which means we need to sell at least 10 lip balms for $8 to prevent a deficit. However, we are confident in recovering the deficit as there are 3 more months till the end of our selling. We are working hard on seeking market days and ways to promote which could bring up our income and might also bring up our cost as a marketing fee. Also, we have received a preorder from the oversea market of 50 lip balms purchasing at the price of $8 per 1. I would also put this pre order as an income in October as that would be the month they are having the transaction. At the time, our balance would be $318.1 excluding other potential future sales.

Budget profit and net profit: At this stage, our budget profit over the year is $750 for the whole year. However, our net profit that cuts in October shows we would only earn a profit of $318.1 which is less sales and higher costs in expenses. There is a difference of $431.9. This result is not confirmed yet as we will continue our selling and promotional after handing in the annual review and we might have a reduced difference in the budget profit and net profit. Luckily, the net profit currently shows we are not having a deficit and all costs can be recovered.

Plan for Monitoring Sales: Forecasting helps us to monitor and manage our budget to prevent overspending. We are doing the sales forecast monthly according to the previous sales to get a valid number instead of numbers we estimate with no foundation. There will be a digital report for the sales forecast and will be shared to every group mate so we can remind each other if we are out of track. In our weekly scrum meeting on Tuesday, we would have a look at the sales forecast to see if we can improve the sales with further marketing plans.

This means the marketing action plan is important for our forecasting. The more actions we have for our marketing, the more sales we can make. There should be a time target for every action so we can better manage our cost and fix or improve them. This also happens in our scrum meeting weekly. If we do not achieve our target on time, we have to rearrange our time table and human resources to achieve it, so it is important to keep an eye on the marketing action plan. If we are on track, we can try to work on the next target so everything would be on progress.

Sustainability -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There are 6 factors which are PESTEL – Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal – analysis to help us identify and evaluate external factors that might influence the success of our product.

Political Factors: It is influencing the ways in which individuals may vote, according to environmental policy as a result of the educational nature of the NOPE brand. Also, regulation, tax policy and labour laws.

Economic factors: There are things that increased consumption spending, GST, interest rates, growth, exchange rates and inflation rates. This factor is one of the most important factors for every business company.

Social factors: There are trends, average income, population, cultural aspects, age distribution, safety and health. Trends of people who are our target market is the age between 10 to 15 which is what we have to be looking at. From what we know, people in that age group don’t have that much income to be able to afford the high price of some products because they are students which still have to use parent’s money. What we can do is look at the average income of students. It tells us that $7 is the best price that our product should be for them. Also, safety is one of the most important things. Our target market is students. This makes us have to make our product very safe and have to be without any bad chemical that can affect their health and safety.

Technological factors: There are productive capacity, capital machinery, automation, using social media which is what our target market uses nowadays, research and development, and availability. Nowadays, technology has developed a lot more and still keeps developing. It makes everything a lot easier to deal with. For example, the engraving machine that the company we import the containers from has. It makes everything finished a lot faster, our logo looks the same on every container and easier for them to do it for us.

Environmental factors: There are emissions, resources, waste, ecology, weather, natural disasters, climate change and endangered species. All of this is the reason why we are trying to find a lip balm container that is made out of bamboo. This is to reduce waste and make a healthier environment in the future. It might not happen soon, but if we all pay attention to this, it will make our planet look a lot better in the future.

Legal factors: They are things that we as a company should do which are not getting sued, follow copyright laws, have consumer guarantees act, follow discrimination laws, follow employment law, and follow health and safety law. The most important legal factor is health and safety law. To be able to make our customers trust and use our product, we will have to make our product safe and clean. All of these factors are very important for us to run our business in the right way, so we should try to understand and follow everything.