Flexibility: key for China start-ups - Marc van der Chijs

Marc van der Chijs

Changing a business plan happens almost every three months in fast-growing China, and sometimes very drastic. Serial entrepreneur Marc van der Chijs describes on his weblog how his new start-up United Styles, relaunched after six months for a different target group and with different technology.

In April/May we realized that we made our lives, and especially that of the technical team, too difficult by letting kids and their moms design clothes in 3D. After doing more market research we found out that if you want to do it in 3D the quality has to be much better than what we had. And that was impossible with the funding we had… But we also found out that people actually prefer to design in 2D, using sketches that look like real fashion design sketches. That was good news, because that is something we could change without spending too much time and money.

What we also did realize is that kids love to design, but that they don’t necessarily buy. Originally we had expected that they would convince their parents to pay for them, but it turned out that that was a bit too optimistic. It did happen of course, but most kids that designed never got to the point that they would order a garment. We had ideas on how to improve this, but it would take too much time to implement to make it feasible. Even though kids fashion is huge online, it doesn’t work (yet) in the way we did it.

More at Marc van der Chijs' weblog

Marc van der Chijs is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

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