Social Business: The Financial department

The financial services of a company is one of the most important one in order to see your business plan move forward. For the social business the financial services are built up of the social contributors. The people who are crowd funding the project.

The social business is a creation of each own social contributors. They take plan, they design, they sell, they take decisions and they fund all these actions with their pre-order of the final product. I suppose this social business department sound more familiar to most of you, as we all have the recent emerging experience of the crowd funding model like Kickstarter and other minor platforms.

But of course we all know that a business in order to operate with stability needs to follow a budget and a cash flow. These 2 important tools should be ensured by the platform that is going to host the social business. It is important for every contributor to know before his contribution where the money will be spend. By this way the contributor comes much closer to the social business, raising the trust and the transparency of the company.

But who is supposed to create the budget and the cash flow? At this point this procedure should be done with 2 ways. Not separate each other, but in contribution. The first way is to start designing the business plan by the person or the team who has the idea. That's fair, but the contributors should be able to make interruptions to the budget and the cash flow mainly in the building procedure.

Therefore there should be a separate fee in order to be payed by the contributors which will grant them access to the scheduling of the company. This method could be used for every department, as the contributor gains the access to the managing team and has his own votes interacting with the other members of the social business.

Finally the financial department in the social business needs support from the platform that will host the social business.

In the case of an eyewear company there should be a clear budget schedule and a clear cost development research. The next department which one of the most difficult to socialize is the Supplies Department.

The story of the future HIGH END brand names

The social thunderstorm of the last few months starting from the Linkedin IPO to the collosial IPO of Facebook coming by and the crazy new social trends like crowd funding and crowd rating, makes me wonder for the future of Fashion Brand names. Do these changes are able to remove the classical HIGH END brand names from their throne? At the end who has the power to change it? The marketeer or the consumer?

All these questions i suppose that come up to several people, as i have discussed with my friends and i see a gap in this direction. None is sure!

In the past we could not imagine that the power of the crowd organized through social networks could drive to revolutions, like Tunisia and Egypt, riots like Spain and Greece, funding projects like Kickstarter and its imitations, creating design through crowd designing, giving open source solutions not only to software products but also to hardware and many other expressions of social contribution.

Why not crowd through social networks to "run" a whole business? From the management of the business, to the marketing, production, design, sales, accounting and all the departments that are needed to exist this business? And why not to consume the products they are selling in this business? Is this utopia? Beware because it is coming!

People want to contribute, the reason to that, is to come closer each other. The capitalistic model has pushed the social life away. Now that the crisis of the capitalistic model is here, people want to remove the intermediates from their lives. They want to know the producer of the milk of their children, they want to know the materials a product they consume as they want to be eco friendly, they need to contribute in any effort that means something for them and finally they want to judge directly not through the political representatives who have disappointed them for many years.

We are all cautious if we do not know the true story behind the label!

But what the HIGH END brand names have to do with that? I think that the next HIGH END brand name will not come from billions of marketing! These days have passed. The next HIGH END brand name is going to be a social baby! All of us are expected to contribute to create the next HIGH END brand name.

I imagine the next HIGH END brand name to come from the crowd and be consumed by the crowd. This way not only they will have the product or service they like but also the moral satisfaction that they contributed for this. We all need to be credited!

In my next posts i will develop and explain the starting model of such a social business. Till then i hope that i have stated the problem.

Ecological Materials ==> The new trend?

In a world that everyone thinks green and eco-friendly and all future research is based in ecological practises, the eyewear industry should not stay away from the field of the eco-battle.
Energy is getting green and many new materials have managed to substitute other materials which pollute the environment. I have not noticed any major improvement till now in the eyewear production and i believe that it;s about time to see the first steps from the big players, Luxottica & Safilo.
There are people who seek for eco-friendly sunglasses and eco-friendly spectacles. Who will manage to make the first move.
Till now we have the natural horn material which is a very interesting material for the eyewear industry, but the colors and the varnish they still use is inappropriate. But what exactly are we waiting from the industry?

1. Packaging materials should be driven all 100% in ecological materials.
2. Replace several materials that are oil products with more ecological and recyclable materials, like agriculture materials
3. Use more eco effective colors in their chemical labs.

All eyewear consumers are keen on eco friendly practices and they will help the development of this trend.

Debtocracy vs Private Label

The new word that came up in our everyday life is, Debtocracy. Not only in Greece, where the national debt has crushed, but in the worldwide economy the Debt crisis has changed the status quo of the market. Psychology has reached nadir and consumption has been reduced. And whats all about with private label?
Private label products have made a massive increase in the demand instead of the high brand products. But what are the characteristics a private label product has to have, especially in the eyewear market?

1. Quality meets high standards. The advanced economies are not accepted to lower the quality of their products, so they push to good quality eyewear. 
2. Ecological methods of production, materials or recycling. Sunglasses and optical frames have made their first steps through this trend. 
3. Competitive prices (Value for Money Theory)

Debtocracy is the chance for private label to regain trust and loyalty.If you have seen the movie of Debtocracy you can understand that the turn of the customers, to private label products, is the next step of pressure to the markets.
Nea Optiki SA provides professional solutions for private label in sunglasses and optical frames with low limit order.