Contemporary Ti Design is a start-up company operating out of the owner's home.  Marketing will be key to raise visibility and awareness of Contemporary Ti Design and their products.  The basic market need is for unusual pieces of art jewelry crafted out of titanium.  Titanium is used because of its hypoallergenic qualities (ideal for necklaces and earrings that touch the skin), its incredible strength, and light weight.

Market Summary

Contemporary Ti Design has a lot of information regarding the market and attributes concerning their target customers.  This information will be leveraged to continually determine who the customer is, their specific needs, and how Contemporary Ti Design can best communicate with them. 

Market Needs

Contemporary Ti Design is providing its customers with innovative, creative, handmade jewelry. It will provide the following benefits to their customers:

• Selection: A wide range of jewelry styles, creations, and anodizing schemes.
• Accessibility: Ti design sells direct to the consumer, through a network of art/jewelry galleries, and at art fairs and shows.
• Customer service: The patron will be impressed with the level of attention and service that they receive.  This level of service occurs during all transactions with Ti designs from answering questions, to order taking, to warranty repairs.
• Competitive pricing: The pricing structure provides the consumer with a good value for handmade jewelry and the craftsmen with a fair profit.

Market Trends

The market trend within the jewelry industry is a movement toward custom, unique pieces as well as limited production items.  This trend is in response to the climate of the industry in the mid-nineties where the jewelry market was flooded with thousands of identical pieces of jewelry.  Within a few years, people were running into others who had the same piece of jewelry.  This element of commonality or "run of the mill-ness" fueled demand for artistic jewelry that was in low production and unique, not something that you would see very often. 

Customers are using similar pieces of jewelry as a way of creating distinction from the common population, a way to stand out.  This desire is part of a broader desire to be different.  Contemporary Ti Design has leveraged this trend by creating unique pieces that are distinct.

Market Growth

The artistic jewelry segment of the larger jewelry industry is growing at a healthy 9%.  This growth can be attributed to the value that people place on having distinctive, unique pieces of jewelry. 

Another factor that is supporting the growth is the blending of art and jewelry.  Traditionally jewelry was ornate pieces made out of precious metals.  The nice pieces were a symbol of wealth or status.  As long as the piece was made out of a precious metal, there was value attributed to the piece just by virtue of what it was made out of, regardless of the creativity of the actual piece.  The younger population that recognizes the aesthetic value of art work is now demanding jewelry to have artistic elements.  In essence it is art that you wear.  These trends are helping the industry grow.

SWOT Analysis

The following SWOT analysis captures the key strengths and weaknesses within the company, and describes the opportunities and threats facing Contemporary Ti Design.

Strengths

• Unique designs and construction methods.
• Strong relationships with suppliers as well as galleries.
• The flexibility to provide custom pieces.
• A comprehensive distribution network from a robust website and a network of galleries.
  

Weaknesses

• A large portion of the target market that is unaware of Contemporary Ti Design's products.
• Limited time and budget to market the company to the segmented target population.
• The struggle to constantly create new designs.
• The possible inability to meet demand due to the small size of the company.

Opportunities

• A growing market that, to a large degree, is unaware of Contemporary Ti Design.
• The possibility to grow the size of the company so Steve is spending his time creating and allowing others to deal with the administrative details.
• The injection of fresh, creative designs in a somewhat stagnant industry.

Threats

• A decrease of availability of raw materials due to demand from other industries.
• Artistic copycats that enter the market and mimic Steve's designs.
• A slowdown of the economy that will have a reduction on individual's discretionary income.

Competition and Buying Patterns

As previously stated the jewelry industry is composed of thousand upon thousands of people. Some work and distribute locally, others have national distribution systems set up. Some artists will design products for larger companies to manufacture, others will design and make the pieces themselves. This plan will have an abridged competition section. This is because of the very large and distributed nature of artisan jewelry design, the market is entirely too dispersed to have a complete catalog of the competition.

Competition takes the following forms:

• Artists creating designs that are manufactured on a large scale and distributed nationally. The artists might be famous enough to have their own one-name studio that creates designs and the product is made and sold under the larger companies name. If the artist is not famous enough to have national name recognition, the designers might belong to a firm that is hired to develop designs for a company who will manufacture and sell the product.

• A company that has their own designers in-house. In this case everything is done internally, design, marketing and wholesaling. Another variation would be in-house designers, marketers and wholesalers with the manufacturing contracted out.

• Artists such as Steve who design and make all of the pieces themselves, and then do the wholesaling or retailing themselves.  In essence, one-man shows.

The buying patterns of consumers fall typically into two types. Gifts and impulse purchases. A gift purchase occurs when the buyer is looking for a gift for someone, sees the art piece, and then purchases it. In this case the plan is to make a purchase, it is just not known what or where that purchase will be made. The other buying pattern is an impulse purchase. Someone will be shopping, they are not in need of anything, will see the item and have to have it, buying it on the spot. One last pattern, that occurs less frequently is if someone was looking for an "accessory" that would match an outfit and happens to come across the piece of jewelry and buys it.

Product Offering

Contemporary Ti Design manufactures titanium jewelry. The jewelry takes the form of pendants, earrings, and pins. All of the jewelry is made out of titanium. All of the products are designed and made by Steve.

Steve has chosen titanium because of its unique characteristics. It is stronger than steel, yet similar in weight to aluminum. It is inert and hypoallergenic.

Most of the jewelry is left unfinished. The gray of the titanium by itself looks quite nice. Some of the pieces are anodized. Anodizing adds a broad range colors to the titanium. Anodizing occurs by immersing the titanium in electrically charged water or hooking up the titanium to a electrical power source. When charged with electricity, a light film or oxide will form on the surface of the titanium and this produces color.

Contemporary Ti Design's pieces are constructed out of titanium sheets. The material is cut using a saw blade. The interior of the pieces are cut by piercing a small hole through the interior and inserting a saw blade. All pieces are made form several pieces of titanium. The pieces are held together by rivets. Small holes are drilled through the different pieces and a small wire (rivet) is inserted through. The head and end of the rivet is tapped with a hammer and that enlarges the end holding the pieces together. In addition to the utility of the rivet, it is aesthetically pleasing in terms of the overall look of the piece.

Keys to Success

• Customer service.
• Unique designs.
• Creativeness.
• Professionalism.
  

Critical Issues

Contemporary Ti Design is still in the speculative stage as a start-up venture.  Its critical issues include continuing to take a modest fiscal approach, expanding at a reasonable rate, not for the sake of expansion in itself, but because it is economically wise to. Contemporary Ti Design will continue to build brand awareness to assure growth in the customer and gallery base.

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