Havanah Store is a business entity engaged in Muslimah fashion. The main product that Havanah sells is a women’s dress with various styles of clothes and motifs. For law, the Havanah distribution channel is the direct sales distribution model. Starting from one of the founder’s dreams, to have a fashion store business; where the business could be one of the one-stop Muslimah stores, the products are highly sought after and demanded by Indonesian women. But with some limitations in material, experiences and skills, the founder started to establish an online fashion store. With hopes, she could start learning by going directly into the field while preparing the big plan. With the help of her superfamily, they established fashion Muslimah online-store named Havanah Store (Havanah). Havanah was initially established in 2018.
Havanah certainly has visions and missions that help the team to be big. The vision is to be a one-stop muslimah-wear online store sought and known by the public, which provides trendy yet high-quality products, and become a way of sustenance for the community by opening business opportunities. In order to achieve those visions, Havanah has missions; (1) Produce excellent products. Using high-quality and comfortable materials, trendy design and pay attention to details. (2) Giving excellent service to achieve maximum customer satisfaction. (3) Expanding distribution channels by creating a system of resellers and distributors. (4) A mutually beneficial cooperative partnership.
The objectives of Havanah are (1) identify and understanding customer buying trends, (2) maintaining profitability by take care of the cash flow of the business, controlling cost and profit margin on product sold, (3) providing all the resources needed to stay productive and adjusting business targets, and (4) maintaining business cash flow to prepare for long-term projects and address short-term needs.
Havanah is employing 7 people. Havanah is managed by one Director who is also in charge of the marketer and supervises one Manager. Director in this business has a big role in leading and being the decision-maker. Manager covers all matters regarding customer service and finance.
Branding is about people’s perception. Several things have been done to brand building. To ensure the originality product of Havanah and to establish the prestige of product obtained by the customers, all the products are labelled with “Havanah” cloth tag.
The products sold by Havanah are designed to suit Muslimah women in Indonesia. Starting with the fabric that suits the Indonesian weather but still comfy and still according to syaria Islamic law, fabric colour that fit Indonesian woman skin tone, dress cutting that makes the user feel comfortable, and functional features such as pregnancy-safe and wudhu-friendly, and so forth. Havanah has collaborated with the professional vendor; which has supplied clothes to several well-known department stores – which there should be no doubt about the quality of the product result. To increase the prestige, all of the Havanah product has original label of Havanah. The product that Havanah sells is relevant to the customer segments. The product packed using a poly mailer and printed thermal sticker to the customer’s address representing the professional business.
As a business engaged in an online shop, which is different from offline shops that can be touched or held by a hand, the essential thing in an online business are trust and service. Social media platforms are a way to build and to earn consumer trust. Additionally, social media platforms allow customers to interact with other customers. Customers nowadays are increasingly using social media sites to find information about anything, such as looking for information about brand profiles and product information. Consumers satisfied with the services and products of a company can write and spread positive reviews on their personal social media and on the business’ (Havanah) page. However, compared to satisfied customers, dissatisfied customers are more likely to spam negative reviews on business social media, leading to a bad reputation. It is essential for businesses always to maintain and balance product quality and service to the customers to satisfy customers. To conclude, social media could represent a brand reputation.
Instagram is the main social media that Havanah handled. As an online store business, it is essential to utilize and operate social media as the business’s face. Social media also plays an important role to generate organic leads and transactions. Being active on social media, such as consistently post feeds and stories. It could be shared business activities such as packing process, shipment process, production process, etc. Posting testimonials regularly also would increase business trust. Being active on social media has a positive impact on the business and has been approved by Ms Azizah as the owner of BosKid, Sumedang (Interview on September 2020). She explained that being active and consistently updates in any feeds, and story platform could bring awareness to the potential customers; since the store account is active and frequently appears on their social media. This could make them curious about the store and start to visit the store profile. Content marketing plays a role in making the audience interested in the store or products. The store account could provide informative content, so the possibility of an interested person might re-share the content. Therefore, a soft-selling method is preferable.
Optimizing services to consumers and maintaining good relations with buyers so that they can feel comfortable and might become Havanah’s loyal customers. First, Havanah could apply a sales promotion strategy as an ongoing and after-sales service. On ongoing transactions, CS could persuade customers to give direct feedback on their social media and get attractive discounts OFF as rewards. Customers who are reviewing Havanah products on their social media introduce Havanah’s products to their followers and give additional traffic to the Havanah’s page.
Second, make a Membership Program. The membership program applies to first-time users with no additional terms. First time user means the customer who has purchased a product from Havanah. Added with a loyalty program to increase the number of repeat orders. The membership program is one of the initial steps in establishing and opening resellers.
Havanah can take advantage of current conditions and existing markets to create new different products. Maintaining the quality of clothes to be sold to buyers is one of the ways to build branding. As consumers/buyers, of course, they are concerned with the price paid with the quality of the goods purchased. Even though Havanah sells products at competitive prices accompanied by good quality, buyers still consider buying products from Havanah. If the above strategy is implemented, buyers likely still return to buy products sold by Havanah.
After successfully establishing and running a membership program, Havanah consider open further partnership cooperation such as dropshipper, reseller, agent or distributors. Different from membership programs (sell to end-user), partnership cooperation has certain terms applied. The highlighted term is the member must purchase a certain amount (depending on the partnership level) of product per month. This partnership program’s benefits are getting a wholesale price and promoted as an official distributor of Havanah. The partnership program member also be coached by training and seminars related to running a business and maximizing profit. Thus, this program is very beneficial for both parties. Expanding distribution channels by establishing partnership cooperatives help strengthen Havanah’s branding and help Havanah gain organic transactions with less advertising cost.