Cupcakes

A good way of marketing - cupcakes.

Microcredit

"Microcredit" is offering financial services to poor people such as saving and small loans (micor loans).

So called "micro loans" is lending out a small amout of money to poor people (especially women) in the "third wolrd countries".

An example is:
A woman somewhere in a villige in South Asia has no money and can't support herself and her children.
She takes a small micro loan from a bank and for that money she buys a cow.
With this cow she produces and sells milk. She pays of the loan and earns money.
Later she want's to expand her business and takes an other micro loan, a slightly lagrer one but still a micro loan.
This time she buys hens and agricultural region and tools.
Now she sells milk, eggs, germs and her own homemade bread.
She pays of her loan and earns even more money.

She can save her money in the bank as well. Microcredit offers saving as well - saving that is good for people with smaller amout of money.


The goal with this is to make more self employed persons in poor countries.

You might think that you can earn a lot of money on giving microcredit, but according to BBC's radio interwiev with Mohammed Yunis, the key person of the Grameen Bank it's not about raising money, byt about raising the living standards.

In the interwiev it's also mention that they have a safety of payback because people who they are working with care a lot about their reputation.

Read some interesting stories about how microcredit change peoples lifes here.

Break even analysis

http://efbusinesseconomics.blogspot.com/search/label/Break-even

Total revenue







Total revenue is the when you multiply the output with the selling price. It tells you how much money you will get in.


Unit contribution







It’s the profit you make for each unit that you sell (before subtracting the fixed cost). To count this out you have to take the selling price and subtract it with the variable cost.

Total contribution








This is the profit you make for selling all of your units before you subtract the fixed cost. To count out the total contribution you have to take the variable cost and multiply it with the output.


Break-even
















The break even point is when something starts to be profitable. It’s when you got all your money back that you invested. You can count out when the break even by taking the fixed cost and divide it by the unit contribution (see in the beginning of this post).

Profit












The profit is what you earn, the money you get extra from your business. The opposite of “profit” is “loss”.
There are two ways of counting out the profit. The first one is total contribution (variable cost x output) – fixed cost. The other one is total revenue (output x selling price) – total cost (variable cost x output + fixed cost). I prefer the first one because for me it’s easier.

The Swine Flu

While the British government doesn’t seem at all interested in giving vaccine to the population, the Swedish government counted out that it’s cheaper to give the whole population vaccine. Why is it cheaper? Because when the pandemic will break out, then people won’t be able to go to work. Having the whole population sick for one day would cost much more then the 1.3 milliard (US billion) Swedish krouns that they will pay for the vaccine.

Not to mention that it makes the population more satisfied and secure.

Advertising

After WH Smith’s successfully rolled out a chain of about 80 hospital shops, the company is now planning on open stores in office blocks across Britain. The new stores will carry 2,500 lines and be bout 1,000 sq. They will mostly sell confectionery, stationery and magazines.

One store in an office block with 2,500 people employed in Liverpool is already opened and according to the chief executive, Kate Swann, another 8-10 stores would be opened in the coming year.

Open a stationery shop in an office block sound like I great idea ad you wonder why nobody have already done that. But when you think about it a little bit more then you realize that most offices have their stationery suppliers. But WH Smith is not only a stationery shop and if somebody at the office needs to get something quickly then they don’t have to wait until the supplier shows up.

Also it is a smaller competition and therefore you can be more sure that people from the office block will go to your store and buy.

NLP and etc.

Today Lau and Ignasia had a very impressive presentation about NLP. They only had one day to prepare and they did great. I especially enjoyed Lau’s talk about getting women. I think that he could run a business and teach others how to do it and earn a lot of money.

Today I decided that I want to talk about advertising in my presentation. Most people find commercials annoying. Not me, I often think about the work that’s behind a commercial. Of course I think that some adverts are really ridicules, but otherwise it’s interesting.

I took this picture below in Hamburg last Christmas. It shows that I simply idea can stand out and get a lot of attention. (It's an advertise for hous isolation)

A Good Commercial

Good commercial is good marketing, here is proof.

Suicide?

This is just crazy.

The Lapdesk

I’m gong to write a business plan for the revolutionary invention “The Lapdesk”.

The idea with the Lapdesk is that people can work comfortable everywhere. You save space because instead of tables you only need the Lapdesk. If you need to take notes and you don’t have a table available, then it’s much better for you to use the Lapdesk and write on it instead of crossing your legs and breaking you back.

You can use the Lapdesk everywhere; on the bus, train, airport, at home and even in school! If a school have small classrooms and to many students, then it’s much better to use the Lapdesk in class instead of tables who takes to much space.

The globalisation makes people travel a lot, especially business people. Travelling takes time, so why not spend it well and get some work done so you can spend more time with your family or friends? With the Lapdesk you can feel like in a comfortable office where ever you are.

Improvements that I would do before expanding this business:
- First of all I would change the martial to leather. No business man in the world would walk around with a plastic bag.
- “Less is more”, but this is just “nothing is nothing”. Small details on the desk and make the Lapdesk in different colours.
- Remake the website.
- Change the silly slogans.
- Make new higher quality photos with better, better looking models.


Marketing the Lapdesk
- Send “the Lapdesk” to some famous bloggers. For example; I would sent the Lapdesk to the Swedish blogger “Blondinbella”. Personally I don’t like her, but she has 300.000 readers each week and she calls her self a “businesswoman”.
- Affiliate marketing.
- Give brochures at big conference meetings.

I would sell the Lapdesk mostly in stationery shops like Ryman, Webb shops and I would have salesmen (women as well, of course) in big business cities like NY and Hong Kong.

Right now I'm uppdating my 25 points and doing my business plan. We'll se which one of them will be finnished first.

Examen the impact on a business of trade union power

Trade union is the employee’s organisation. Their purpose is usually to make it more comfortable at work and more democratic.
The employees should be more satisfied and should have better results. But there is a problem: when they have a fulltime contract which says that they can not be fired from their place then they don’t have such a motivation to improve their skills.

A product made with trade union is more expensive then without trade union. This can lead to changing of customers preferences. Products without trade union are selling better and that can cause worsening work environment.
Companies without trade union will thrive.
More employees will have a work in bad environment.
In a way it’s a support of “dictatorship”, because trade unions are more democratic.
Companies without trade unions make more profit; so they could give their employees higher salaries.
Trade unions are a part of a social cycle; the workers are more satisfied if they are in a trade union.

If you have a short time contract and you are not in the trade union, then you can get sacked at anytime. It’s harder to start a family and keep you job.

Considering the population in the west Europe is getting older, so it’s important to make it easier for people to start a family and get the population younger.

Klick here to find my (my group's) marketing plan. Have a little problem with my blog, will try to fix it later.

Homework

Right now I'm doing the marketing plan with Karla and Theodor, just so you know!

Pre IB

Hi there!