Competition

The demand for sweets and tasty treats have risen throughout the years, and many shops have opened and adjusted for consumer taste. Shops offer a wide variety of cupcakes, ice cream, cookies, pies, and pudding. The main competitors:

Sprinkles: Sprinkles located in Corona Del Mar offers cupcakes, ice cream and cookies.  For their ice cream line they offer sundaes, shakes, floats, malts, ice cream sandwiches, and a variety of cones. They have many flavors of cookies (chocolate chip, snickerdoodle, salted oatmeal cornflake, fudge brownie, etc) which can also be used to make ice cream sandwiches. Sprinkles offers an online ordering before pickup or a delivery service for their cupcakes. They have many different flavors offered daily or on certain days of the week with a large array of decorations to be used. Large orders can be customized with certain logos and engravings for corporate events, weddings, birthdays, etc.

SusieCakes: SusieCakes located more towards Costa Mesa offers cakes, cupcakes, cookies, bars, pies, and pudding. The cakes are pre made layer cakes (red velvet, carrot, marble, etc) or they can be customized. Normal sized and miniature cupcakes are available with many different flavors. They have different kinds of cookies (frosted sugar, oatmeal raisin, chocolate chip) and cookie sandwiches, buttercream sandwiched between two cookies. SusieCakes has two different pies, key lime and strawberry rhubarb, and offers a hand-stirred pudding that comes in vanilla or banana and vanilla wafer flavors.

Casey’s Cupcakes: Casey’s Cupcakes located at Fashion Island offers cupcakes and a cupcake-infused ice cream. The cupcake-infused ice cream is a new creation. A light, fluffy and silky texture is created after the infusion of the cupcake. The ice cream is available in half pints with several flavors. Cupcakes can be ordered online for pick-up or delivery. Large orders can be customized for weddings, special occasions, parties, events, etc.

Advantage: 
Competition in this industry is intense because of the few shops within our area. Each shop has its own uniqueness, offering a variety of sweets other than cupcakes, and providing different services. We set ourselves apart from the competition by allowing the customer to customize and design their cupcakes by choosing from an array of cake mix, frostings, and toppings. We do not produce any other product line; instead our main focus is on the quality of our cupcakes, and the service quality our employees bring to the customer. We strive ourselves in creating the best customer service experience possible.

Pricing

Hey everybody! We are well underway in developing our marketing plan. After looking at our resources and the cost for our ingredients, we have decided we will be selling our cupcakes starting at $3.25. A dozen would only be 36 dollars lowering the unit price to $3.00. This price will get you the cupcake with frosting and one choice of unique topping. Imagine a Thai tea flavored cupcake with vanilla frosting and topped with coconut shavings! It doesn't end there though, add any additional topping from our topping bar (imagine yogurtland) for only $.25 cents more.

We have also laid out our projected sales for the next three years. With this estimate we are predicting to sell and average of 200 cupcakes per day in the first year then gradually grow our customer base. This estimate also includes our catering services

	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3
Unit Sales	75,000	80,000	86,000
Unit Prices	3.25	3.25	3.25
Sales	243,750	260,000	279,000

Market Survey

Hi everyone! This week we developed our market survey that we will be handing out around the Newport Beach area. We included questions about basic demographic info and cupcake-specific ones as well. Feel free to leave your suggestions on what other questions we should include or how we can improve the format. Thanks!

Introducing "craft"

We have finally decided the name for our cupcake boutique: craft.

Also, here are some logo designs for our cupcake boutique:

1.

2.

3.

Which one do you like the most? Please leave your comment below.

Early Thoughts for our Marketing Plan

A Team Marketing

Product:
We will be marketing a cupcake boutique located in Newport Beach. Our cupcake boutique will specialize only on cupcakes but will have the competitive advantage of being fully customizable. Customers will start with the cake flavor of their choice which then they can add their own frosting and finish off with a bar full of toppings.

Customers:
Our customers will be between the ages of 18-24 mainly. We are aiming to have our location be modern and a place where friends can come not only to get cupcakes but to hang out in a fresh environment with great design and music.

We will cater to moms who would like to order specially themed cupcakes for their kids birthday parties or anyone else who would like specially themed cupcakes.

Our target market will most likely grow because people of all ages like cupcakes. It is just easier to market desserts to younger people ages 18-24 but the more popular our cupcakes become with the younger population, the more likely we will attract the older population too.

Our customers buy our cupcakes to taste unique flavor combinations that they create themselves. They also come to get the experience of our friendly staff and socialize with their friends in a very young environment.

Our relationship with customers will be a friendly relationship-building environment. When the customer walks into our shop they are actually walking into our home kitchen.

Competitors:
Our competitors in Newport Beach will be Sprinkles cupcakes, Casey's cupcakes, and Susiecakes.

Our competitive advantage is that our customers will buy cupcakes to get the experience of creating your own masterpiece. Not all customers like frosting and they will have that option. Many customers have not had different combinations of cake and frosting flavors so we will give them that. Our toppings will include ones you would normally find in a "yogurtland" which many cupcake stores have not offered. When you go to other cupcake stores you are often faced with a menu of options that are pre-made that day and sometimes they do not even have the one you like available.

Our barriers to entry will be finding a suitable location that attracts a young crowd. Start-up costs will not be too much but will include the price of:

-Our lease

-Interior Remodeling

-Ovens

-Tables and Chairs

-Frosting Dispenser

-Registers

-Staff