Life's A Pitch - SWOT analysis

At the end of our session, we were asked to make an individual SWOT analysis of our business proposal and then get together to generate a collaborative SWOT analysis.

My Analysis

Strengths

- Gives people an opportunity to sell their and advertise their work

- Anyone can enter into it

- It's free for people to enter

- Fair to both buyer and seller

Weaknesses

- Other websites are a little similar

- How to tackle ordering prints, do we buy in bulk or to order?

Opportunities

- could earn to buy own printer, this would make profit higher each month and no waste of too many prints

Threats

- Have too many prints

I didn't spend a lot of time on my individual analysis as we started talking about choosing a name for our business, we have spoke about this over Facebook i.e. posting name ideas, but we have not yet chose one yet, so its quite hard to get on with branding etc.

Because we spent time talking about the business name i found it very helpful that we then made a group SWAT analysis, as we could chat about all the points and came up with more points through discussion.

Group SWOT analysis

Strengths

- Art community is huge

- It's free to enter

- The winners don't have to produce the prints themselves

- Supports unknown creatives and puts everyone on a level playing field

- Respects artists and customers through fair pricing

- Temporary advertising, almost like an agency

- Online based - doesn't require a large space, reduces rent costs

- No house style - only 2D media that can be digitally reproduced

- Always refreshing and the themes allow consistency through varying styles

-Similar websites are successful

Weaknesses

- A lot of the profit relies on the sale of products

- Slim margins

- Short run printing/ print to order is high cost

- If we print long runs we might have leftovers

- Using a printer company gives us extra costs

- Do people want a middle man

- Limited to 12 winners - we don't know how many entries we are going to get

- A month is a long time - people may get bored

- Only having a website will take a lot of promotion to get noticed

- Upkeep of website - cost of coding? web design?

Opportunities

- Buy our own printer when we have enough profit to be stable (we would need a bigger space)

- Forums, blogs, social media presence - newsletter

- Opportunity to get ourselves noticed as well

- Advertising in physical locations

- Build relationships with printers etc.

- Top sales category on the website?

- Calendar - Many qualms 

- Expanding products

Threats

- What if nothing sells

- Leftover prints means lost money

- Other competing websites - illustration friday

- Not enough people entering

- There is no good work

- copyright and ownership