After talking to the Sushi Boss just on Monday, we were really surprised to see those huge umbrellas being displayed outside the stall! So we decided to take photos, and hopefully to be able to track down the progress of the sushi stall.

Looking at the photos again, I realized how clutter the shop is situated at and how it does not stand out from the rest of the stalls around it. So this is an area we definitely need to look into. While changing the signboard will be costly, what can be done instead is perhaps adding a mini stand board to indicate to consumers to the sushi stall.


Along the 步行街 in Fudan, there are also 2 other competing stalls. They technically sells similar products as the sushi stall. But we found out that most of the sushi are pre-made, as compare to the sushi stall, where they vow on fresh made sushi. This clearly shows a contrasting difference, and can be used to our advantage. Also in terms of shop size, clearly they are much smaller, and hence have lesser products as compared to the sushi stall.

So hopefully with all that we have in mind, we can create a blue ocean stratgey for the sushi stall!

It was the first time that Nicholas and I patron the sushi stall HaoDaWan, together with Christine Seymour and Elena. I have been a regularly sushi eater since my 1st semester in Fudan. All these while, I have been frequenting their competitors' stall, and that makes me ask myself, why would I go to the other stores more often? Is it due to the location? or due to the varieties that the other 2 stalls offer? Or is it due to the nice aunty? and the pretty lady? ohh.nonono, there's only aunty there unfortunately :P
So, with Christine's idea, we got off thinking, why not we help this sushi stall to repackage themselves by applying a blue ocean technique? Through this project, we can :
1. We can use this as your deliverables to tell a story of what competitive strategy is all about.
2. We can watch this little project grow in time, by using sales figure as our KPI.
3. Real hands on experience with Blue Ocean, learning valuable experience.
Hence, we decided to take a plunge and meet the stall owner to discuss with him.

It was quite a daunting experience going there, not knowing what to expect from the uncle. If he rejects our ideas, we will need to go back to the drawing board and think of new ideas again for our NVC presentations. Everyone who is taking NVC knows how CHALLENGING it is to think of a fresh idea to present, given the time constraint and the quality expected. Nevertheless, iTEAM relishes the challenges!
So we started of by buying 5 roles of sushis from him, each having different flavours. Only then I realized what that I've missed. These sushis taste fantastic! But why didn't I discover them earlier? Hence, after finishing the sushi, we started talking to uncle with regarding our big plans for his little shop. We came to a conclusion that a revamp was needed!

Through out the discussion, we, as future entrepreneurs, tested our NEGOTIATION skills with this nice uncle. It was a long but fruitful discussion, mainly to ironing out the issues that we planned to address for his shop. Among our ideas for improvement was :
1. A new bi lingual menu. We realized that there are quite a number a foreign students in Fudan university. Hence, there is still large growth potential for this shop as the foreign students market are mainly untapped. Therefore, we would like to be the 1st shop to around here to have bilingual menu to boost our sales.
2. A sushi making course recorded on video
3. Revamp the looks of the store to be more vibrant
4. Designing a logo, so that the shop will be instantly recognisable.
5. Membership card. We give special privilleges for frequent customers.
6. More to come!!!

Through the power of negotiation, both parties left the discussion feeling that it's a win win situation. We have set a direction of how we want to move on, and we'll get the ball rolling NOW!

We first coined up the idea of working on the Sushi store along 国年路 in late Feburary 2009 after our first New Venture Creation (NVC) class.