Life's A Pitch - Manifesto pt II.

Today we discussed our manifesto, our current draft is 

"Matchbox" is a company of creatives based in leeds, dedicated to making high quality candles with a sustainable positive impact whilst inspiring individuals to think outside the (match) box. We believe that knowing you is essential to that process, customising our products to meet your personals wants/needs and making you feel part of the Matchbox family. 

We looked at the Snask manifesto and the architect Frank Lloyd Wright's manifesto afterwards to see how wording can bring across a tone and attract a certain clientele to your work. Responses to our manifesto were mostly that we were friendly and approachable which is what we were hoping for. 

We made a list in the session of things that we need to start thinking about, possibly for next session. 

• Yankee candle/competitor prices 
• What can you paint candles with? Can you paint candles? 
• Amazons best sellers candles, what are they and how can we differ from that?
• What burns the slowest - beeswax, paraffin, soya or gel 
• Out of those, which are the most environmentally friendly, which are easiest to customise?
• Vessels candles are carried in, how our packaging can be environmentally friendly too
• How can we get ourselves out there? Look into different kinds of social media
• What is the best forum to be on? If we are on etsy will we get lost, will we loose some potential earnings from having to be on a site like etsy or Big Cartel? 
• What websites are the easiest to build upon? 
• Can we create moulds within the college? 
• If Not where else can we make them? 
• Can we emboss the candles? 

From these questions we started to think about the brand itself. We liked the idea of beeswax candles and contributing back to the care of bee's. 

We decided to create three main streams to focus on, nicknamed the three B's: 

 "basics" range, creating illustrated candles that are a basic shape with customised smell. 

  "save the bees" range, where we focus on being environmentally friendly and giving back. 

"black magic" range where we can experiment with moulds and colours around a theme. 

We also spoke about the website and the inclusion of the "meet your maker" section where we can each introduce what we do for the company and how we make the candles. 

We also wanted to include a "outside the matchbox" section where we could show how we contribute to other communities (such as the bee's). 

Life's A Pitch - Manifesto

CORE BUSINESS CONCEPT 

• A Company of people.
• A candle selling business with a sense of involvement 
• There for any occasion or treat. 
• Highly crafted, something to keep. 

CORE BUSINESS VALUES 

• Getting people involved in the making 
• Face to face interaction 
• Creating a positive atmosphere for everyone involved
• Knowing your maker "meet your maker" section on website where you can see who designs what and what we do. 
• Thinking "outside the matchbox", showing that we are more than just a candle company. We are interested in getting involved with the community and giving back to a positive atmosphere. 

CORE BUSINESS GOALS 

• Having a well known brand in our region (leeds) then expanding throughout the UK. 
• Moderate growth, growing but still retaining the hand crafted and personal experience with our customer base as we do so. 
• Taking the innovative when we see it
• Keeping sustainable and creative
• Keeping it made in the UK 

CORE FINANCIAL GOALS 

• Moderate growth
• Enough to branch out to try new things in the business 
• Profitable, eventually charitable and giving back to the community 

CORPORATE CULTURE 

• Trusted
• Conscientious towards customers, product service and clients
• Geniune 
• Accommodating 

Life's A Pitch - Business Concept

Life's A Pitch: Business Concept 

WHAT IS YOUR BUSINESS IDEA?

Matchbox- a candle selling business essentially but with a sense on involvement. Customisable candles, candle workshops. A company of people. Sustainable.

HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH IT?

We wanteed a project that would involve our personal interests. Some of us liked the idea of creating something to do with inhibiting a space and creating an atmosphere, thats where the idea of candle making came from. Others liked the idea of learning a new process and being able to incorporate illustration into that.

WHAT EXCITES YOU ABOUT IT?

Learning a new process, the possibilities for the project and room for expansion. Creating something that is creative, marketable and useful too.

WHAT INDUSTRY DOES IT BELONG TOO?

Service - Because there will be an element of fire safety awareness in there.
Mostly manufacturing - selling the candles and making the candles for the public to buy.

WHAT IMPROVED FEATURES/ SERVICES DO YOU PROVIDE? SOMETHING NEW? BETTER? 

A designable candle to suit an individuals wants (size, colour, scent), involving the customer to create our own community for the product. As well as raising awareness for different issues (fire safety, earth sustainability.. bee's). Postable with birthday cards as well so they could arrive as a ready made present.

WHAT IS YOUR MARKET? WHO ARE YOUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS?

Our primary audience is 18-29 year olds who are on social media and more likely to see us than a higher age group.  Our audience is the people that are more likely to buy something handcrafted/something out of the mainstream. More likely to spend for a birthday, wedding, anniversary present.

Our secondary audience is 40 - 60. These people are not so reachable by social media and may not get on so well with the internet format. They are just as likely to want a candle it's just reaching them will not be as easy as the primary audience.

WHAT COMPANIES/ TYPES DO YOU THINK ARE POTENTIAL COMPETITION?

Yankee Candle is our main competitor as they are well established with the general public.
Fred Aldous/other craft companies are also competition as they offer kits to make candles and these are customisable also.
Clintons (selling candles, their own brand and others).
Internet companies.

Colours May Vary Visit (ft. Joan Cornella show)

(Two colour screen print, thought this was nice and took a picture as reference for my author work). 

Today we visited Colours May Vary ahead of our exhibition (in february) for a talk with the curators. 

They both said that quality was very important to selling a good piece and that if something has a good finish to it, it will sell more than something that is just as nice but been printed on a lower grade of paper. They explained that people are often buying to keep and that print is making a comeback in the illustrative/graphic design world. 

When asked about pricing they said to consider:

How many hours did it take to make? How much did it cost to make?

What would you pay for your own work? Under pricing and overpricing is big in the industry and its important to consider where you are selling and who you are selling too. Presentation is key to selling work, something that sells in M+S for £12 could be sold in John Lewis for £80 with the only major difference being the way it's presented. 

They explained that knowing your seller/curators was really important, Don't Presume and be coherent. How you present yourself is important, being presumptuous is not good. Always visit the space if you can and don't just think that anywhere will want to stock your work. Contact people accordingly. Collaboration is important for survival. 

Whilst at colours may vary we also saw the Joan Cornella Exhibition. I enjoyed the pieces and thought that the colours were vibrant and also that the paper he used was suited to the medium. 

Thoughtbubble + Zine

This year I participated in thought bubble as well as actually visiting the festival. 

I really enjoyed the festival itself, I attended on Saturday. It was good being able to talk to people that were out in the field and actually making work. I came away with lots of motivation and with the hope that by next thought bubble I might be halfway to having my own table at least. I learnt that you need to engage with the people on your stall, the people that I spoke to I (mostly) brought stuff off because I learnt things about the way their items were made that made me want to invest (such as two plymouth students that had created most their zines from using a risograph and had used a laser cutter to create their badges). 

For our summer brief we were asked to keep a sketchbook of what we did, I struggled with this exercise because I worked over most of summer and felt like I didn't really do much that was worth drawing about. 

This really slowed down my zine development, I finally picked up on a concept from one sketch (from watching period dramas) and pulled from that. 

As a result I started working on a small western comic named "way out west". I really enjoyed making it and spent a lot of time converting it to digital (as the scans were not coming through strong enough). 

Soon I realised that a lot of my colleagues had finished and with the deadline being so near, it seemed unlikely that I would finish the zine in time for thought bubble. I kept all the images and plan to finish it as a zine for myself at a later date. 

There was nothing else in my book that was worth scanning in, so in a last minute decision I decided to  do it all digitally about nostalgia (something that always happens when I go home at summer). 

I was actually very pleased with the final product, there were numerous problems with printing. Mainly this was me creating the images as RGB rather than Greyscale images so when they printed out they were coming out the wrong colour (and also size). With some help from the technician and other illustrators I finally got it to print at the right size and colour. These went on to be sold at thought bubble. 

If I had had more time, I think I would have probably stuck with "way out west" because I really enjoyed changing my artwork from basic ink to digital drawings. 

I think the whole zine making process was really eye opening for me, I am more comfortable with photoshop and In Design than I thought I was and was able to produce a zine in just over a day (not something I would try again unless for a zine a day project).