RESEARCH ON A BUSINESS

COMPANY IN MALAYSIA
1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Fashion Valet are to be seen to have grown rapidly over the past seven years. It is
a highly successful player in the e-commerce industry. Over the years, Fashion Valet
had faced challenges in terms of political, economic, social and technology such as the
current economic situation in Malaysia. They are competing in the industry in an
attractive manner, due to the ease of entry and high threat of substitution. The strength
of the companies are the high quality of the brands which targets consumers that does
not put price as a matter and their weaknesses lies within the development of access
on the shopping experience. Fashion Valet is currently penetrating the market in a very
productive manner with having investors on board which allows them to expand their
capital even more.

1.2 PURPOSE OF RESEARCH

Malaysia is FashionValet’s home market, and also the largest market it serves,
followed by expansion markets Indonesia, Singapore and Brunei. Faced with strong
regional competition in the online fashion retail industry, FashionValet seeks to
fiercely increase its brand presence and sales revenue in all markets of operation. The
purpose of this research was to investigate how a business company managed their
own business by marketing process and to study ways to overcome problems and
challenges. Why this is the case, in order to gain a better understanding of their
effectiveness and influence. At the end of this paper, I was suggest a
recommendation for FashionValet to improve their bussinss . By using right platform
and engine to search, the issue may overcome. Also focusing in marketing and increse
the brand awareness could increase the customer engagement too.
In this assignment, I choose fashion valet because it help us to get more
information that we need. The strategy that fashion valet used also can be related to
our assignment and also have many point that we can elaborate with our teams
members. This assignment also help us to gain more knowledge and learn more about
digital marketing.
2.0 COMPANY PROFILE

2.1 OWNERSHIP
The founders Fadzarudin Shah Anuar (Fadza), is the Chief Executive Officer
(CEO) and founder of FashionValet Sdn. Bhd. He was exposed to C-suite
professionals in both the public and private sectors when he joined Deloitte
Consulting Malaysia. He worked with clients including SEGi University, Tradewinds
Bhd. and FELDA for projects involving strategy development and corporate
restructuring. Vivy Sofinas Yusof (Vivy) is the co-founder and Chief Creative Officer
of FashionValet.
Fashion Valet is considered one of the biggest fashion sites in Asia, which
offer clothing, footwear, bags and other accessories. Over four hundred famous
fashion designers and brands from Asia are stocking in fashion Valet. The founder of
fashion Valet also have their very own brand named the dUCk group. Their famous
product is dUCk scarves, one of the most high-priced and luxury scarves in Malaysia.
They began their first retail outlet at Bangsar, and now has wider to more place which
is Pavilion, Singapore, and observe ahead to Brunei and Indonesia. Their company is
located at Empire Damansara and it have 201-500 workers.

2.2 ESTABLISHMENT
FashionValet (FV) is the go-to destination for the modest fashion industry.
Established in November 2010, FV curates the best selection of fashion and beauty
brands under one roof, bridging them to customers all over the world. With a large
social media following, FV has built its brand over 10 years being a platform to many
modest fashion brands as well as developing their own lineup of house brands.
Having a vision to mainstream modest fashion, FV is often seen as the pioneer in
the market with its exclusive collaborations with designers and celebrities. New
arrivals happen daily, which keeps the site fresh and always on trend. Started as an
e-commerce only brand, The FashionValet Group today has opened 10 retail stores
and counting, with the hopes to become the leading omni channel platform by its
constant technology innovations and enhancements.
2.3 MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE
FashionValet Sdn. Bhd. using Functional Organizational Structure. Functional
organizational structure are the most common in business. FV company dividing
works according its activity each of staff. Sub units may exist such as finance,
marketing, sales, production and others. The management of structure was led by
Dato’ Fadzaruddin, Chief Executive Officer and assisted by Chief Creative Officer
her own wife, Datin Vivy Yusof. Here, employees feel secure, perform well and tend
to be highly skilled.

2.4 PRODUCT
FashionValet has offered a variety of ready to wear apparel for women and men
and kids, accessories, beauty, shoes and bags. For accessories, they would have
jewelry and lifestyle products such as candles and notebooks. As FashionValet
expanded, they launched their own brand , dUCk. Other than that, FV also offered a
wide range of makeup, fragrances, skincare, hair and nails.
3.0 SWOT ANALYSIS

3.1 STRENGTH

The strength of Fashion Valet is the Fashion Valet has establish their own
existing customers which clearly have high demand from West Asia due to
FashionValet’s product and fashion that suit the local community’s taste and has high
quality of products. Vivy Yusof state that they plan to penetrate the business into
West Asia to serve its loyal customers.
Other than that, Fashion Valet also has establish its own boutique in Bangsar
Village and Pavillion Shopping Mall in Kuala Lumpur which then enable consumers
to buy their product directly. It is also one of the best way to extend product offering
to shoppers who are not shopping online.
In addition, FashionValet has collaborated with Malaysian celebrities which
are SchaAlyahya and Nora Danish. With this successful collaborations under their
belt, FashionValet has taken up another challenge this time, with an Indonesia brand,
Noona in 2015. A force to be reckoned with, Noona is incredibly popular with
Indonesians and it has been featured on FashionValet . The latest exclusive collection,
Noona.

3.2 WEAKNESS

The weakness of Fashion Valet is the price of the products. Most of the
products sold are very high price and it can lead to fewer customers from middle
income and lower income.Second weakness is delivery issue of the products. The
delay delivery happened due to mistaken and problem on number tracking. Besides,
there is an issue of mistaken addressed. It happened because of a mistake of the user.
The current issues that the FashionValet facing are the website only provide
English and without provided others language option like Bahasa Malaysia and
Mandarin for their customer. Not only that, a research done by Internet world Stats
(2016), that have 751.9 million of the internet users using Chinese and 109.4 millions
of internet users using Bahasa Melayu for browsing websites.
Next, the FashionValet live chat services only offer at weekdays from 9 a.m. -
6 p.m. Thus, customer only can through ‘contact us’ as a channel to leave the
message or to make a call for asking question to the company when the live chat is
offline. However they need waiting for a long while to get the respond from company.
It may causes the customer will leave the webpage with bad impression and negative
feeling and will discontinue shopping due to company very slow just reply the
message and the live chat is offline. Customer might expect that their call or message
will be answered promptly and rapidly and an appropriate greeting will be given by
the employee.

3.3 OPPORTUNITY
One of the opportunities for Fashion Valet is collaborate with fashion designers.
The collaboration will increase promotion of the company by hosting events and
campaign to the consumers. The event and campaign is just not for the festive season,
but it can be done for any occasion, for example campaign to raise fund for single
mothers.
The vendors selected are the established brand in Malaysia and also in
ASEAN. The examples of vendors in Fashion Valet are Rizman Ruzaini, Calacara
and Mimpikita. Besides, there are a few brands that have collaborations with celebrity
such as Fazura and Yuna. These will encourage the consumers to shop at
FashionValet as they want to buy the product endorsed by the celebrity. Vivy always
meet with designers and the vendors to maintain the product’s reputation.
FashionValet’s clientele is mostly women between the ages of 20 to 40 years
old, which is right in the cross-section of internet-savvy generations, so it was the
best possible way to reach their target market. By knowing and having a connection
with their customers, they get an insight on what they want next. FashionValet is
prompted to have daily new arrivals because people get bored easily nowadays. The
hype goes very fast as a big launch this week will be forgotten the next week.
Customers are also smart. They read and compare. Besides, Vivy also stars in her own
reality TV shows called ‘Love, Vivy’, which follows her daily life. She admits that it
helps to increase FashionValet’s sales, as it is a soft-selling way of marketing their
brand not just in Malaysia, but in neighbouring countries where it airs as well.
3.4 THREAT
The threat faced by fashion Valet is competition. The competition from different
fashion brands like Zara, Zalora and other IG shop will have an effect on the selling
number of fashion Valet. For instance, Zara has been established longer than fashion
Valet. So, fashion Valet has to think a unique way of marketing strategy to draw
customers. Therefore, Muslimah apparels brands like Bella Ammara or CalaQisya are
not direct competitors for FashionValet.
Fashion Industry is very competitive, but the advantage that FashionValet has
is that they are not competing with the fashion brand, but they are the one who carry
the fashion brands. Thus, FashionValet would consider them as the platform that
promotes and sells different fashion brands. So basically, they are not competing with
them, in fact FashionValet complements them, thus enhancing, and creating more
selling channels for the brands.
The biggest advantage of e-commerce is the convenience it offers. Online
shopping offers ease and peace of mind especially to women of today who have to
juggle hard between work and family. Even with new players coming into the
lucrative e-commerce space, FashionValet is confident to embrace the competition.
FashionValet does not have any mobile apps. Nowadays, the millenial using mobile
apps to buy things. FashionValet only invest on the desktop and their website but this
is not enough.
The other threat is the economic instability. Since the financial economy of
Malaysia is unstable, demand for goods and services will decrease. Customers tend to
saving more by reducing expenses and no longer buying unnecessary things. The
company that selling a product like fashion Valet might be suffering from this issue.
4.0 MARKETING STRATEGY

The first marketing strategies implemented by FashionValet is offer variety type

of products. Started up with around 10 designers and brands, with their continual
effort to play host to local designers now, they come a stunning visual story of over
twenty designers and 500 brands offered. The designers and brands not only from
Malaysia but also from the international. This is also become the strategies to adapt
with the differentiation of tastes, interest, demographic and geographic. The strategies
successfully expand their, market not only in local market but also in global market
especially Southeast Asian’s. FashionValet also shows its improvement in the fashion
industry through the creation of a new brand for women's scarves which is the
subsidiaries company under this company, The Duck Group. The Duck scarves have
attracted an individual or group of people that desired an exclusive scarf.

The second marketing strategies by FashionValet is product development.

Product development strategy intends to maximize sales by improving or modifying
presents products or services. In this case, the partnership formed with Brunei
Princess Sarah resulting in the collection of the third Limited Edition square scarf line
by the brand after the Kaleidoscope and Alphabet series created to celebrate women.
There are four scarves in collection in one design, comprising images of a wheel,
diamonds, bees, the grid of a sports racquet and hydrangeas, the princess favourite
flower.

The third marketing strategies by FashionValet is offline and online promotions

which means their offline promotions includes an advertising on billboard. The
billboards are normally placed at very effective and attractive locations to attract
customers. During they are going to make a promotion event such as Fashion Valet
Raya. This billboard advertisement can create a brand awareness to the Fashion Valet
and encourage people to buy their product especially when there is a sale and
promotion. Meanwhile, an online promotions of FashionValet such as social media.
Social Media platform is be applied to deliver and spread the information of their
product to the public. This method not also in terms to promote their product but also
to engage and maintain a relationship with their customers either regular or new
buyers.
5.0 RECOMMENDATION

5.1 NEW STRATEGY

For recommendation, since Fashion Valet is one of the fashion retailers that target
ladies who live in city from age early 20’s to early 40’s. FashionValet must expand
the business by having a new target market improvement. For instance, the new target
market is for male age early 20’s to early 40’s.
Step one is to identify the new target market. FashionValet’s company must
identify their new customer, the key for the targeted customer that will buy the
product and the value of FashionValet’s product that unusual from competitor. Next
step is to do the market research. Some basic market research that can be executed is
what are the current trends of male in early 20’s to 40’s and the competitors from the
targeted location. The third step is to decide whether to tackle this market or look for
some other target market alternatives. This choice has risk in terms of costing,
advertising and marketing and production.

5.2 IMPACT OF THE STRATEGY

The new strategy that could affect FashionValet, which can attract more
customers especially male customers. This is because only a few Malaysian
companies produce men’s clothing that follows the new trend for male age early 20’s
and early 40’s. Besides that, the company’s profits are also increasing. Next, the
stores will become extra big and automatically will increase the revenue of this
company. Lastly, when FashionValet has decided to tackle the target market, the
company must be cultivating new market share and maintaining current business
according to customer satisfaction.