Startup Fashion and Proctor & Gamble leadership workshop

Hi everyone. First I would like to thank those who read my first post, although I only got 25 views within 12 hours but I didn't think I would get that much since its a new blog. Its a lot to me lol. And also, I got a comment from a class mate. ^.^ Thank youuu.
Anyways, today's will be about 2 events I attended on Wednesday. I went to Startup Fashion in London Bridge and then in the evening I went to a leadership workshop organised by P&G held at my university.

source: Startup Britian

If you follow me on Twitter, you've probably seen my tweets that I tweeted during the fashion event. ( please follow me ^.^ @missyungquainth).  In my previous post I mentioned that I'm working on a fashion business idea with 2 girls from my class, Nele and Roxy. Nele and I went to this event because we thought it was going to be useful for our business but no it was pointless. Glad it was free though. The event started at 10 am and finished at 5pm but we left early as it wasn't useful. So I'm just going to briefly talk about it.

Most of the things they spoke about we already knew, i.e. how to write a business plan, our course has taught us how to write one. Most of the speakers basically said the same things, like you must be passionate and be clear of your vision, etc. Nele and I thought it was like an exhibition where lots of retailers, new fashion designers and brands would be exhibiting and obviously thought it would be an opportunity to get contacts and find possible customers. It was just a lot of listening to the speakers.

Source: The Cambridge Raincoat Company

The best part of the event was when 3 fashion designers pitched their idea to major retailers, such as; Kim Humphries from John Lewis, Kevin Rogers from House of Fraser and Lucy Dunn from Zalando. To me the best idea was from The Cambridge Raincoat company established by Sally Guyer (their website here). They produce stylish raincoat for cyclists which would 'look good on and off the bike'. (see left)

The host of the event was Richard Hurtley, the Founder of Rampant Sporting. He started the event by introducing himself, his business and experience. Other speakers were, Alison Lewy, Founder of Fashion Angel, Joseph Wan, CEO of Harvey Nichols, Mark Hammersely, CEO of Zoggs, Richard Alvin from Angel Investor, Johnny Martin from Intuit, and many more.

Source:  savingmoneymom.com

I decided to go to this workshop pretty much the last minute. My lecturer Dave sent us an email about this workshop which is a fast track to their graduate schemes. In the e-mail it says that if we impressed P&G at this workshop, we will be given a "golden ticket". Well I can tell you now that they didn't give any anything apart from a feedback form. The email also mentioned that a current P&G graduate who will act as 'mentor' and will offer advice and guidance through the application and assessment process.There weren't any P&G graduate either. The 3 P&G staff did explain the process but not advice. The only fast track they mentioned was applying for the 48 hour commercial challenge, if you do well in this you will be guaranteed a place. We still had to apply for that so the workshop didn't offer any 'golden ticket'.

Anyways, I'll still tell you briefly what happened at the workshop. We were split into 3 groups and were all given the same task. The oral care brand Oral-B have dental floss, mouth wash, tooth whitening and electric toothbrush but just not toothpaste. They have now developed their own toothpaste and was introduced to the market recently- this was a real life launch. Our task was to prepare a 5 minutes presentation in 30 minutes for the UK & Ireland GM on how we will launch Oral B toothpaste. We had to create a 3 month sales and marketing launch plan which delivers the greatest sales at the best return on investment  and a financial analysis.

A few people from my class went and so we formed as a group- the TE group! (TE stands for Technology Entrepreneurship btw). Our main marketing strategy was distributing samples across all 3 months; getting dentist to distribute them to their patients, attaching samples in magazines and handing them out at the stations. We used others forms of communication channels like TV advert, print advert, PR activity, in store promotion, and internet.

After all 3 groups have presented, P&G didn't announce who did the best etc, they just told us their actual sales and marketing plan. They said we all touched on the essential points, sampling was one of them.  Yay!

It wasn't hard at all, it felt like doing the usual group tasks we are given in class. Still I guess it was a productive day. Went dinner with the girls and some drinks after. I deserved it!