In week 5, we conducted a questionnaire from 120 people. That's a fair amount of people, even though I would prefer to collect answers from at least 200 people. Their answers are representing a larger group of people, who we will be targeting to.
Week 6, was a consolidation week. That week, I went on holiday to Germany and after a weekend in Norway, before travelling back to Manchester. The project was put on hold. To be honest, it has been moving slowly for the past couple of weeks. However, our mentor told us that we are doing it well, and somewhat has accomplished more than other groups in this business project.
Our next step will be the sourcing stage. We have completed the questionnaire, and got the results to move on to the next step. The sourcing will be carried out by our Commercial Director, Leslie. She has been looking into different suppliers in China who are offering our desired products. The supplier choice will be based on different factors, such as the price (of course), if they are requesting to buy in quantities, and if so, how many? Some suppliers request people to order at least a 1000 items (which would not be appropriate for us). Other factors we need to consider in the buying process are the lead times and the freight cost. We don't want the products to take long time before they arrive. We need to start selling our products during the Christmas markets, starting in December. The Christmas markets could possibly be the best time to sell our products, because it's huge and many people are looking for presents to their loved ones for Christmas. Therefore, being able to provide our customers our products is essential during this time of period, as we are approaching Christmas very soon.