Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Few ventures and why they failed!

Bling- the name itself was pretty impressive and caught the eyes of the crowd with its black and silver board. Onlookers got curious to know what shop is this and soon the Business of this Garment store flaunting trend and peppy outfits started to gain a few customers while its owner who was the designer himself kept his fingers crossed to settle very soon. This venture had a very good beginning but somehow even if this did attain a good deal of customers and like any other business this too took its time to settle, however before it could establish firmly, the number of customers decreased drastically and there seemed no growth after a certain time period. The owner started giving heavy discounts, but this was of no use while there were days when not a single customer came and it became weeks and months while all the stocks piled up and further the owner had to shut the store and look for another job as a designer after his failure as an entrepreneur. After some careful evaluation on where this store lacked eve if it had an amazing collection and the prices were very much worth the material and the designs were fresh, but Bling lacked very few basic things that any outlet should take care and if these things are not taken care of, then no matter how good your product is, you won’t have customers flooding or the regular customers cannot be maintained. The first flaw was its location amidst a residential area that to where the standard of living of the people wasn’t as much as wearing those hip hop clothes or going for parties, so the crowd from nearby never poured in, and in an effort to save some bucks in not taking a commercial hub for his store as he considered it as an extra useless expenditure and he was confident that since his designs were unique, customers would come pouring in from everywhere. But this stingy attitude made him super confident that ultimately led him to shut his shop. Another drawback was that he dint study the market and what type of designs the crowd would prefer and while few of his designs sold really well for a certain time period but after all that stock got over, there were no more great collection as the first lot and thus no more were the customers satisfied as there was no variety and all the best ones were over, so there was no point in coming all the way to this place just to pick up a garment and Bangalore still has greater options and there was hardly a difference of few bucks but at least that minimized the efforts and time, so was way worthier than trying the luck in Bling. Thus crashed the Business and when it comes to Women related products, the maximum advertisement is the word of mouth that can make the business popular and a single woman can be enough to either boost it or even demoralize it. And this again added to the discontent of the customers and gradually no one had faith or the time or efforts to visit this shop and it became very difficult for the owner to regain the customers and neither could he make a new collection since all his money was blocked in the heaps of clothes he had already designed and ultimately he had to quit as he didn’t have much of capacity to wait without income either, neither could he attain popularity in a short span, not did he have enough money to invest in new collection and in a new place, thus the designer cum owner preferred enjoying a lesser riskier stable job by working under some one while Bling remained in his list of bitter experiences, but this man never tried to learn from his mistakes or take suggestions from anyone that inhibited his growth and neither did he try improving in his designs considering his were the best and he would take the criticism as a disrespect, thus there ended a beautiful venture that if survived could have left a fashion statement in the city.
A small village named Idar, about 150 km from Ahmedabad in the borders of Rajasthan was known for its Granite hills and the LORD MINERALS & ENERGY LTD venture targeted one of those hills due to the favoring price of 10 lakhs for granite of good quality and color. However being new in this trade, later the Agrawal family handling this Business realized that wasn’t their only investment and soon they had to take up loans to furnish all the needs to initiate the Business, but the amount of hidden expenses never seemed to end starting from the need of spending a fortune on only removing the unnecessary stones to bribing, even due to the Entrepreneur’s lack of foundation in the mining sector, the machinery were taken on lease that again was another major reparation thus demanding a huge investment that went up to 30 lakhs. This wasn’t the end to the problems, and then came problems with the acceptance of the color and quality, that further invited a lot of toil in marketing. While venture was managing a hold, then arose another obstacle after it was realized that the granite showed color variations and the quality degraded as they dug deeper. There was no buyer either for this low grade Granite no matter how low the rates were maintained, even if it meant a loss, but there was no sale. Despite a year of endless efforts, nothing seemed to show a ray of hope while the market is highly competitive, and this venture suffered the blow of destiny as they landed with a low grade site and there was nothing they could do than to accept it silently and by the time they turned back after putting in the best of endeavor, they realized they had already had invested a great deal through loans and nothing seemed to work out while they were completely drained of their resources and moral strength and finally this venture came to an end that had no flaw other than the fact that luck didn’t favor and may be considering the opinions of few old players in this trade could have been beneficial than blindly trying luck in such ventures where you never know what you digging into. It is experience that really matters no matter which Business you take up and learning from other’s mistakes is always a virtue.

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