Learning Launch Reflection

Challenge

The challenge was scaling a retail honey business that started as a side hustle and grow it into a  business that is profitable and a brand that is recognisable. The main challenge with achieving these  objectives was finding the right business model. For instance, would the sales be able to sustain having  a shop in a mall or should the business continue to be run from the home of the owner through digital  channels.  The business had been run as a side hustle for approximately one year and although it was  still making sales and acquiring new customers, the operating model was inefficient and this could be  seen from the low level of sales and non-existent repeat business. After exploring various options  including setting up a website(the downside of this is low internet usage in my country), creating an  agent network, where agents would receive a commission for sales (the downside was that due to the  low cost of start-up the agents could possibly establish their own businesses with our clients), the  solution that held the most promise seemed to be having an actual shop in the mall. The potential  appeal of this was that the business would be easily accessible to existing and potential clients. This  proposed solution as well as the assumption that clients prefer a shop had to be tested.

Selection

I selected the Learning Launch tool as I was in the experimentation phase and wanted to assess  whether sales would be able to sustain having a shop as well as determining the size of the shop should  the data show that one should be set up. The Learning Launch is a tool that is used to determine  whether an idea can work in real life by setting up a functional replica of the idea and running it as an  experiment in order to observe whether it works and to collect any other required information from  it (Martin Houdek, Course notes, Week 4-page 3). I selected the Learning launch because I had already  analysed the business through the preceding three phases, namely, What Is, What If, and What Wows  and had a solution that passed all the evaluation criteria. I believed the Learning Launch would be the  best tool to test my idea as I could do the experiment at a very low cost and in the very same mall that  I desired to open the shop.

Application

In order to test my solution, I set up a stall at the mall, where I would sell the honey from. I chose a  stall because it did not require a lot of money to set up as all I needed was a table, a banner, a  notebook, a pen and the honey itself. But most importantly there was no costly rental agreement. I  decided on a timeframe of one month in order to observe customers’ behaviour at the different times  in the month. Everyday I would go the stall with my smile and business cards and talk to people about  honey and its benefits, I made sales and established relationships. I collected data about my clients  and their preferences with regards to how they would like to be sold to. The biggest challenge was the  covid-19 pandemic where most people avoided human and social interaction.

Insight

The Learning Launch taught me to think about my assumptions and to identify them as such in order  to test them. I learned to be open-minded about the experiment in order to avoid seeing things that  were not there.  I also learned how important it is to build businesses based on what people want and  not what and how we want to sell, which I feel is the true essence of Design Thinking. This experiment  validated the importance of Design Thinking as a human-centered approach to solving problems as  stated by Martin Houdek & Sarah Hood (2011). The Learning launch not only helped me with establishing a  shop in a mall but also in determining the size of the shop. The result of the Learning Launch was that  based on the data collected, customers preferred a physical shop but a kiosk rather than an actual  shop would be needed.

Approach

The biggest challenge I had with the learning launch was the inconsistency of the data I collected.  Because I had not designed a process for selling and collecting data, the data I received was haphazard  and quite challenging to collate. In some instances I had not collected telephone numbers as the  conversations were random and often customer-led. In future learning launches I will prepare a script  ahead of the launch so that my interactions with my clients are systematic and can yield high-quality  data that is consistent.

