Business Strategic Plan

SWOT Analysis

Strengths (Internal):

Consumer Preferences -   http://www.euromonitor.com/sauces-dressings-and-condiments-in-new-zealand/report  - Our PEEST analysis of the market revealed that there are a lot of sauce preferences from customers around New Zealand. Sauces and dressings are “playing a key role in ongoing shift consumer preferences”, which gives our company ‘Spice Boyz’ the confidence to continue with our company and product, as it can reach remarkable sales in the first go, as it is a brand new flavour and can accomplish our mission of raising awareness of ‘Telza’ sauce. In relation to our target market, adults knowing that this product is produced by young men, it builds a impression that “these boys have put in a lot of effort”, hence giving us a social advantage into selling our product, which is why we believe our product will be successful especially in relation to the age of our target market. This is because we would not be able create this ‘sympathy impression’ on a market aged under 30 years of age.

Rating Of Telza Sauce - We carried out our product ‘Telza’ sauce, as we did a live taste tester investigation with the staff of our school, Ormiston Senior College (results in primary research). After we had analysed our primary research, the average rating of the ‘Telza’ sauce is 8.22 out of 10 from the results we gathered. This is an extremely good rating for our product to start off with, as it gives Spice Boyz the confidence to continue with the product ‘Telza’ sauce.

Access To Mentors From The Food Industry - Our two current mentors, Glenn Duncan and Kris Tong have a lot of experience in the food industry, where Glenn he has worked for TipTop for 20 years and Kris is currently working as a process technologist under ‘Food Bowl’. Glenn and Kris have expressed an interest to assist into producing the ‘Telza’ sauce and have been openly providing a lot of help throughout the process (labelling and packaging) in producing our product.

New Flavour In The Market - As ‘Telza’ sauce is introducing a brand new taste in the sauce market. We have compared our sauce to other sauce flavours from other and haven’t found any similarities to ‘Telza’ sauce. Therefore, this also means that there is no direct competition (proven by our secondary research). We are able to attract our target market, who are people that do household shopping (generally adults). We also have the strength to attract customers outside of our target market, this is due to new products and tastes generally attracting more customer attention and people.

PH Level Of ‘Telza’ Sauce - Our PEEST analysis of the market revealed that before we go into producing the ‘Telza’ sauce, there are safety and health regulations that need to be done by food technologists, and this includes acidifying our sauce in order for it to be sustainable in room temperature. This is one of the most critical parameters, simply because food products have to have a pH level below 4.6. Therefore we got Kris to test the ‘Telza’ sauce and the results came out to be that the pH level of the Telza sauce is only 3.5, which is well below the required zone.

Young Enterprise Group - As we are an established young enterprise group; The fact that we are a young enterprise group will attract other families and older aged consumers as they are typically generous enough to support young, local start-up businesses, and seeing as we have quite a unique product will help attract our target market even more and also the the market outside of our target market.

Family Businesses To Promote - The 2 members from Spice Boyz have family businesses that consist of a restaurant (Town Grill) and a supermarket (AJ’s Smile Supermarket). We consider this as our strength, as we already have established family businesses to promote our product ‘Telza’ sauce. As Town Grill is the place where the sauce has been originated from, the business itself would help us promote the product.

Weaknesses (Internal):

Low Brand Profile - ‘Telza’ sauce is a new product in the sauce market with no profile, therefore we consider our company ‘Spice Boyz’ to be a Problem Child in the Boston Matrix. This implies that Spice Boyz has a low market share, but will have high market growth in the sauce market by the end of 2016.

High Production Cost - A Problem Child will have high cost in the early stages of production as we are a new business starting up. We won’t be producing ‘Telza’ sauce in bulk in the early stages of our business, the cost of production would be quite high due to the arrangement of 350ml bottles, packaging, sealing and labeling the nutritional information, as it will need sufficient amount of capital to continue with the production of ‘Telza’ sauce .In order to produce our final product, there will be a high investment costs. The costs to hire out an industrial kitchen and a induction sealer machine (to foil seal our lids) it is very expensive for a small business like us.

High Marketing Cost - We have enough finance to produce our first run of ‘Telza’ sauce but we do not have access to enough finance as a Problem Child will have high cost in the early stages to promote largely on media as used by our competitors (Heinz Watties, Best Food and Home Brand) in the sauce market. This will make our task of raising awareness of ‘Telza’ sauce difficult.

Opportunities:

Possible future distribution partnership with the local Pak’nsave -

Our school, Ormiston Senior College has an already established connection with the local Pak’nsave, through previous sporting events and employees from Pak'nsave being students at Ormiston Senior College. This enables opportunities for our business to form a partnership with Pak’nsave, as the CEO of our business Hetu, is currently working at the local Pak’nsave and will be able to communicate to the upper management of Pak’nsave for possible future distribution partnership.

Possibly sell our company to a bigger company such as Heinz Watties - We have the potential to sell our company and product to a bigger company such as Heinz Watties if they were interested in buying Spice Boyz out. This would be an opportunity for us in the case of if our product is a success. Heinz watties is a well established brand, with numerous flavors and variants of sauces in the New Zealand sauce market alone. If the success of our business is noted and recognised by this company, then we may have a chance to sell our company to them.

Possible partnerships with retail outlets -

If our product becomes very successful through our initial business activity, we may be able to form partnerships with retail and food chain outlets such as Subway, McDonalds, Nosh, New World and Countdown. In achieving our vision to see the Telza sauce in every New Zealand’s family’s pantry, we would have to scale up our production to a level where we are distributing our product nation wide.

Threats:

Competition from other sauce with established brand profiles - Our Porters 5 forces analysis revealed that our market is quite competitive as there are many sauce brands in the market, and we will be competing against established brands that have been in the market for quite some time such as Heinz Wattie's, Eta, Home Brand and Best Food. This is a threat to our business as the customers will have the option to change to another sauce brand if the price, or the taste of our product does not suit their interests.

Inflation (Increase prices of ingredients) -

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/new-zealand/inflation-cpi/forecast - Our PEEST analysis of the market revealed that it has been predicted that inflation will rise in the upcoming months/years (Tradingeconomics.com). This would affect our production cost, as the price of the ingredients would increase. This would mean that our cost of producing the ‘Telza’ sauce would be quite higher than the cost of production at this point in time. As a result, this would push up the price of ‘Telza’ sauce, where it may become over priced for a 350ml sauce bottle and decrease the demand of the product.

Threat of new entrants - Our Porters 5 forces analysis revealed that our entrance into our sauce market is difficult. This is considering the cost of the bottles, packaging, sealing and labeling the nutritional info, which requires a food technologist due to safety regulations that charge too much, which exceeds our budget.