SME ANALYSIS OF "BLOSSOMS AND STARS"

Name – Saleh Md. Sadi

ID- 1831757030
Course Title – INB 372
Section – 11

Submitted to
Mr. Mahmud Habib Zaman,
Full Time Faculty
Senior Lecturer,
North South University.
Abstract – This case provides an overview of “Blossoms and Stars” owned by Miss Sarah
Kabir. Miss Kabir faced multiple challenges while establishing her small business . She
had to over come self-doubts, parental issues and other challenges. Now she faces new
challenges like quality or quantity, attracting the right audience, social issues etc. It
remains to be seen that, what and how she will do to sustain her business from here on.

Introduction – Blossoms and stars is facebook based business owned by Sarah Kabir.
Miss Kabir has always been passionate about art and during the quarantine period in 2020,
she chose to turn her hobby into a business. In spite of pursuing degree in a very difficult
subject like CSE, she always finds time to paint. Painting is her way of relaxing and she
is a master at it. During quarantine, when she had ample to do her paintin gs, she made a
number of paintings and started posting those on her social media stories. Those paintings
received a lot of attention and some were interested in purchasing them. That’s when she
got inspired to open a facebook based business, so she opened a page and named it
“Blossoms and Stars”.

The Making of Blossoms and Stars – Blossoms and stars has started its journey back in
September 2020, now it is only three and a half months old. But in this short while, it has
gained about 1400 followers and receives about 50 likes per post. Miss Kabir in this short
while, has sold paintings worth 20,000 tk. and made a profit around 17,000 tk. This
emphasizes on the fact that “Trust in a social networking site has positive influence
on purchase intentions” (Ahmad Samed Al-Adwan1, July 27, 2018) . Consumers trust
in these facebook based businesses has increased over the years. With the increase in
trust we see an outburst in the number and sales in e-commerce market. “Bangladesh’s
e-commerce market stands at $1.6 billion currently and will double to $3 billion by
2023 on the back of a digital foundation laid down by the government and a young
and tech-savvy population, a German research firm said recently” (Islam, 2021).
Facebook has been around since 2004 but from around 2010, many based businesses have
grown to where it is today. “Such platforms (social media) have proved a boon
especially for startups having restricted budgets. Despite easy accessibility of social
media platforms, startups fail to maximize their potential in favor of their
businesses. With the help of statistics, and their outreach, this study shall evidence
the significance of social media in startups and unleash its tremendous potential and
trustworthiness to promote businesses and even align it with business strategies ”
(Siam, 2017). Miss Kabir is yet to boost her page but she plans on doing it in near future.
She has doubts in the fact that does boosting actually help in getting the attention of the
right audience. In spite of her doubts she plans on doing a strategic boosting. “As one
social manager said, Facebook boost posts are about trial and error as you try to
access what works best for your niche and audience. It is, therefore, critical that you
track the performance of your ads and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Consequently, it's advisable to start with a lower budget as yo u work out the
adjustments in your plan” (SocialPilot). The title ‘Blossoms and Stars” comes as Miss
Kabir believes blossoms indicate growth in a beautiful way and the stars from Van Goghs
starry night. Her favorite artist is Van Gogh and she draws inspiration from his life and
paintings. In the construction of this business, Miss Kabir had a lot of doubts and
challenges that she had to overcome. The most significant one being the quality of her
paintings, she always doubted that her paintings lacked in quality and also her family
members have never inspired her by praising her paintings. Her parents also told her that
she was just wasting money and time in painting and further suggested her to concentrate
more on her studies. She also had doubts about the culture regarding art in Bangladesh,
she thinks that people in Bangladesh like art but they aren’t willing to buy art in exchange
of money. She further thought that general people really do not understand the value of a
painting and the hard work that goes in the creation of it. “Friends and family (or
basically anyone who comes to know about your art skills) ask you to just give them
your art for free or with negligible compensation for all your hard work. This can
be quite infuriating and embarrassing since in most cases, they make these requests
in very public settings and all you can do is nod your head unwillingly to avoid an
awkward situation, while you die a little inside” (Khan, 2021). It was not easy for her
to overcome these challenges and doubts but when she got such positive views from her
friends, she decided to take a step further. With help from her brother and cousins, Miss
Kabir opened a facebook page. Her brother helped in the marketing department and some
of her cousins helped in creating posts and contents. She got most of her followers most
facebook based talent groups, where she posted her paintings and received a positive
response. Miss Kabir received her first order within 3 days of opening her page, the order
was worth 1600 tk. Following that she has received 20+ orders so far and one of those
orders is to set up paintings for a studio. The studio order is worth 10,000 tk. and also a
huge achievement for Miss Kabir, though she believes she has a long way to go.

Challenges and Barriers – Miss Kabir says, Art is her passion and she will always be
connected to it. But the major challenge she faces is maintaini ng a balance between
painting and her studies. She states “CSE stands out as one of the most difficult subjects
to study and I really have to concentrate in coding, it takes a lot of time from my daily
life. It is hard to paint when you are tired or have something else on your mind.” At the
moments she is not taking any orders due to a tight examination schedule. She says “I
cannot place my business over my studies as a degree in CSE promises a great future but
painting is something that gives me peace, so I will always paint whenever I get free
time.” She believes her studies is restricting her, from growing blossoms and stars any
further. Another challenge she faces is, creating various and diverse paintings, she says
“A painting that stands out has a lot of depth and variety in it. It also reflects the deep
thoughts of an artist. I want to achieve that”. She further states that “As I cannot increase
the quantity of the paintings, I must increase the quality”. A painting that stands out will
fetch a greater price, so she might be doing only three paintings per month but earning
more than before due to the quality of the paintings. “When it comes to digital
marketing, quality trumps quantity and makes your brand more personable in the
long run” (Craig, 2018). But achieving that level of skills and ability is a great challenge .
Also reaching towards the correct audience is a challenge, she says. Boosting her page
will bring more audience but what number of those audience is actually interested in
paintings, she wonders. Miss Kabir ends with saying “When it is just your hobby, it is
not challenging but when it’s a business, it is a great challenge.”

Future Plans for Blossoms and Stars – At the moment, Miss Kabir does not have any
big plans regarding blossoms and stars. She is quite happy with how it is going right now.
But she wants to add new elements to her business. Elements like digital arts and graphics
designing. She also plans in bringing her cousin in her business who is a graphics
designer. She thinks there will be a great demand for digital art in near future, so she
would like integrate that in her page. “Graphic designing at present is more than just
creating attractive visuals. It has become an integral tool of online and offline
marketing” (Why Graphic designing is a rapidly growing industry!, 2018) . As both
graphics designing and digital arts require technical abilities, she has an upper hand in
these due to her study material. She plans that that once her page reaches around 10,000
followers, she will only paint once or twice in a month but those will be of really good
quality. She wants to make a name for herself as an artist and a succe ssful woman.

Conclusion – Blossoms and stars is one of those businesses which was established during
lockdown. Miss Kabir stands out as an example of a young entrepreneur who turn ed her
hobby into a business. Yet the response surprised her and she has managed to earn some
bucks from blossoms and stars. Now the future of blossoms and stars is completely in her
hands, she has found primary success but the question remai ns will Miss Kabir be able to
make it sustainable?

LINK- https://www.facebook.com/Blossomsandstars
References
Ahmad Samed Al-Adwan1, H. K. (July 27, 2018). The Driving Forces of Facebook Social Commerce.
Journal of theoretical and applied electronic commerce research, 1.

Craig, W. (2018, May 8). The Importance Of Quality Over Quantity In Digital Content Marketing. Forbes.

Islam, M. Z. (2021, January 02). The Daily Star. E-commerce sales to reach $3b in 4 years.

Khan, A. (2021, January 03). Struggles of being a young artist in Bangladesh. The Daily Star.

Siam, W. S. (2017). Maximizing the Social Media Potential for Small Businesses and Startups: A
Conceptual Study. International Journal of Economic Perspectives, 241.

SocialPilot. (n.d.). Retrieved from Is It Worth Boosting Facebook Posts - When and How To Do It:
https://www.socialpilot.co/blog/worth-boosting-facebook-posts-when-and-how-to

Why Graphic designing is a rapidly growing industry! (2018, November ). Retrieved from Graphic Design
Junction: http://graphicdesignjunction.com/2018/11/why-graphic-designing-is-a-rapidly-
growing-industry/