Upscaling a small natural, black hair care venture specialising in unlocking dreadlocks into a national business

Abstract

The aim of this study was to develop an upscaling strategy for Gauteng-based start- up venture, Luv Your Locks (LUL). To achieve that, a survey of potential customers was contact electronically across all the South African nine provinces. From analysis of the survey data, it was recommended that LUL needed to adopt a market development strategy, one of the four marketing strategies recommended by Ansoff. More specifically, it was recommended that LUL expand the selling of its unique product, the dreadlock detangler into the national market. To be able to implement the proposed strategy, LUL will need to put some basics into place, especially formalisation of business functions and allowing professionals to run those functions. In addition, LUL will need additional funding of at least R300,000, which the business is recommended to raise as both debt and equity in order to manage financing risk. The proportions of debt to equity are discussed in the business plan of this report. While all efforts have been made to ensure that the recommendations made in this study are valid and credible, some limitations still existed. These included the fact that the sample size was too small to be representative of the target population, the cross- sectional nature of the study which meant that the study could not establish trends in the observed market facts and the methodological bias which rose from the electronic nature of the survey. Despite of these limitations, the results of this study can assist LUL to upscale into a fully-fledging national business.