Project ProposalTeam Wonder

Brand One: Retrospect

Retrospect: Brand Background

Located at 534 South St., Retrospect is a thrift/consignment store that has been open since May of 2001.

It specializes in selling unique, vintage clothing and accessories for both men and women.

Current Situation

Retrospect is indeed unique, but it has a high price point for the vintage clothing that they do sell. Being located in Philadelphia’s South St. is beneficial due to a large consumer presence but there is no known advertisement for Retrospect other than their web presence and other user driven rating sites such as yelp, etc. Also, they do have a ebay presence, but without any items currently listed.

Missed Opportunities & Fixes

There is no known advertisement for Retrospect. If their best advertisement is word of mouth, they should

have a better reputation in regards to their digital existence (yelp, citysearch, etc.)

Their website is limited in both the interactive as well as informative aspect of their services and products.

Potential for a facebook page where users can post about things that they’ve purchased there or some kind of feedback that is visible to the public instead of only available to the site owners.

Brand Challenges

Create a richer user experience for the website.

Create more informational content in regards to Retrospect’s service and product.

Create synergistic relations with other web sites to increase awareness, reputation, functionality.

Staying relevant in the eyes of consumers and timely in posts and updates.

Web Presence

Competition

Retrospect’s direct competition is fairly limited to the other thrift shops in Philadelphia. The only other thrift shop that seems to see as much traffic as Retrospect is Buffalo Exchange which also has a web persence. Their website is far more sophisticated than Retrospect in terms of their social media presence and creation of a newsletter of sorts for their

patrons.

Sugar Philly Truck

Brand Background

The Sugar Philly Truck is a food truck specializing in desserts such as …

It moves around everyday, and is widely popular. It has been seen on television as well as around the

Penn campus and has been highlighted in several online publications

Current Situation

Currently, the Sugar Philly Truck is doing very well. It has decent following at Penn’s Campus and

Drexel’s campus and they are looking to be noticed nationally on TLC and the Food Network.

Its website is updated fairly frequently and although its twitter does not get as much traffic as some other food trucks, it does have over 600 followers.

Twitter is used to communicate with some of its customers as well as other food trucks in and out of the areas.

Missed Opportunity & Fixes

Lack of online ordering function. Lack of third party website support (Campusfoods.com,

delievery.com, Grubhub.com) Poor use of social media sites available to them and lack of

presence on many of them.

Potential order system on twitter as well as location posting there.

Building relationships with those working through blogging

Web Presence

Competition

In terms of competition, Phillysugartruck.com has very little web competition in its immediate area. There are no other dessert trucks in the university city area and the most competition that they would be facing might be from cafes and restaurants in the area.

One cafe in the area is Mark’s Café which is located in one of Upenn’s libraries, however this café does not specialize in dessert like Phillysugartruck does. Some competition that spans Philadelphia

includes the Sweet Freedom Bakery, Naked Chocolate, and Philly Cupcake, some of whom have more sophisticated websites, although many are still fairly basic.

Mitchell & Ness

Brand Background

Mitchell & Ness is an authentic sports apparel company located on 1318 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, PA.

This store specializes in authentic retro jerseys, hats and other sports apparel.

Current Situation

Mitchell & Ness is a very well-known national brand. Although its store is mainly located in Philadelphia, they do a majority of their sales online.

Missed Opportunities

Mitchell & Ness has not taken advantage of the interactive possibilities they could have on their site.

With most of their sales taking place online, it is a huge wonder why they do not upgrade to a more interactive site.

Brand Challenges

Create more of a tie with the sports leagues. Links to Mitchell & Ness website from major sports sites

would increase traffic to the site.

§ Create a interactive world on the website that allows the user to interact with the colors, sizes, and design of their favorite sports teams.

Create this modern feel without interrupting with the old school authentic look that is apparent with Mitchell & Ness.

Web Presence

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Competition

Mitchell & Ness has a few competitors. M&N sells only authentic apparel from the

NFL, NHL, NBA and other sports brands Some competitors include

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Online Shopping

Authentic jersey's are also available online through ebay & other outlets.

There is a problem with FAKE apparel that has flooded the internet.

When people come to M&N they can guarantee that what they are buying is 100% real and authorized by the teams.

Summary

The brands we have chosen (Retrospect, Sugar Philly and Mitchell & Ness) are all viable options and have a good amount of room to grow in terms of website development and use of web 2.0 technology.

Finding new ways of coming into contact with their target audiences is necessary for all of these brands as well.

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