Shoe Store.

Challenge & Selection

The tools I used were Brainstorming and Concept Development; the business in which they  were implemented is a Shoe Store located in a rural town with a population of 5000 people.  The economy of the town is mostly based on agriculture activities. The Shoe Store main  focuse was to cover the local needs that are not in syncrony with the fashion in other parts of  the country. Currently we are selling only work shoes but after applying the tools we will offer  a larger variety of models and also, we will offer a credit system to allow people to have the  product quickly and with affordable payments.

The challenges we face are that the population is very conservative, they are not interested in fashion products so we must be very careful when introducing new shoes models. The  average income is very low and that was another factor to consider: the shoes that we can  sell should be not very expensive and yet high quality. Another challenge is the fact that there  is a city 20 miles away with a considerable number of shoe stores where the people can go  and find what they need if they do not get it locally.

Brainstorming tool helped us to generate real ideas to choose and introduce new models in  order to cover other needs not only work related. The Concept Development tool helped us to evaluate and structure the ideas coherently with the aim of generating steady sales through  the year and get closer to our customers and cover their needs without them having to travel  to the city.

Application

We started the brainstorming with the help of customers, whom I questioned them what type  of shoes was of their interest during the year. Also, we made a question about satisfaction of  our service including the credit system. We organized the ideas by dates with specific shoe  demand, for example starting school year, raining season, winter, Christmas , etc. Different  ways to generate publicity were also identify, for example mouth to mouth marketing, among  others.

Finally we generated, analyzed and identified the ideas that really help us to achieve our goal. We are currently in the next stage Testing Assumption where we have seen a positive  response from our customers.

Insight & Approach

I have learned that we must be in constant communication with our customers to know their  needs, but we need to constantly learn about new trends to offer to our customers. Many  times the lack of such tools or the fear of failure prevents us innovate in our business. It is  also important to hear the voice of the customer.

The Brainstorming and Concept Development tools helped us generate several hypotheses to impulse our business without affecting our core of customers and increasing our sales. Surely we still have ideas to work in long term. But for now we have to keep going with the ideas that we are currently testing to know the wows for our customers.

