Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

Not to burst your bubble, but it takes more than a unique name to attract customers. And you and your friends having an idea because you would want to go to a tea house for specialty teas, relaxation, quality of service, and has a unique name is probably not enough "market research" to go into business.

Before choosing a name or going into business, you need to identify your customers, their needs, their influencers - words and images, and group those customers by needs. When you do that, you can tell what the size of the business is. Then, you need to take a look at your competition and how well they meet the customers' needs and where they don't. Competitors in this case are coffee houses, restaurants, bars, really anywhere where the customers will spend their money for beverage or social experience), not just tea houses (I add this so that when you tell me, "we have no competition because there are no tea houses in our area. Keep in mind one reason there are no tea houses is there are no customers for tea houses!) After that, you need to decide what it is about you and your friends that gives you an edge over the competition. What are your unique selling points? How can you package your tea house to meet the customers' needs better than the competition? Then, you put together a position statement - where does your tea house fit in terms of market segments, what's its position against competition, etc. This step helps set up your marketing actions. NOW you set your branding strategy. In this, you decide company name, logo, tag lines, colors, etc. The name will flow from the up front analysis - by what images and words affect your target customers emotionally.

If you would like to know more about the marketing work you need to do up front, click on my name and in my profile is a link to my website. I have a few pages on marketing. I also have some pages on business plans. This may help you to successfully set up your business of the tea house. Good luck!

I hope this helps.

Wayde