In fact, my intervention is a large multi-session event which includes theoretical learning, new concept presentation(proposal and pitching), market testing, expert and investor interviews. The most important aspect of this is a sample evaluation test at this stage of the process because of the suggestion from investor and actual demand for market data. It is taking place both online and offline.
The online portion of the event was conducted in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Chongqing and Sichuan, seven of China’s most dynamic consumer provinces. The online intervention attracted more than 200 participants from a wide range of occupations, with white-collar workers and students being the main occupational backgrounds of the participants (accounting for more than 15 per cent of the total number of participants). More than 90% of these 200 participants expressed positive expectations for bio-synthetic fur. However, it is interesting to note that more than half of the participants were not willing to pay the premium price of this new technology or even felt that it had to be cheaper than real fur, while less than 30% of the participants said that they would accept an end product that was more expensive than real fur. This data set provides an anchor guide for future pricing and positioning of the project. In the final recommendation section, most respondents expressed their support for environmental and animal protection, while requesting some features of bio-synthetic fur such as value for money and market endorsement.
The offline part of the intervention took place in the shopping streets and financial districts of Hangzhou and Shanghai, which were chosen to get more feedback from fashion practitioners and financial investors. By visiting the neighbourhoods of Xintiandi in Shanghai and Wanxiang City in Hangzhou, the intervention gained the views from a large number of students in the fashion and creative industries (due to the weekend and summer holidays) as well as some financiers. Almost all of the respondents expressed support for bio-synthetic fur, but even more extreme than the results from online interviews was the fact that none of the hundreds of respondents were willing to pay the high premium for such a product, with more people seeing alternatives to genuine fur as being cheaper than genuine fur. Due to background similarities and other reasons, most of the opinions of the entity visitors are in favour of the development of the market dimension at the same time, some extended thinking in the field of fashion, many people feel the need to dock more designers and fashion celebrities to expand awareness, while some people also talked about future large-scale production about bio-synthetic fur.
Overall, this was a very practical and well-planned intervention because essentially this intervention is under the guidance from tutor and some stakeholder. Therefore, it is very targeted and the preliminary market survey largely ensures the significance of the bio-synthetic fur development while providing strong guidance and support for its vague pricing and positioning. At the same time, for me personally, the interviews on the street were a brand new experiment, and this intervention expanded my comfort zone, giving me the opportunity to communicate with strangers and get their fair and objective evaluations. This part of the voice may not express support for the project, but its authenticity is a reminder that I don’t need to be blindly optimistic about my own project, and that I need to add more dimensions to my thinking.