Case study | Black Quadrant

Read more about our approach to solving problems.

1

Understand the problem

Not everything is as it seems.

In our Hamilton office, we are a big fan of locally sourced organic foods and natural cosmetics. We religiously visit the local farmer's market and the gourmet market. During one of our visits, we noticed that a couple of our favourite stalls were missing. We traced them down and got to know that they had a demand shortage. They couldn't compete with bigger local brands because of market share.

2

Analyse the problem

Every battle is won before it is fought.

We had several brain storming sessions in house. Our market analysts analysed the organic market in Hamilton, then Waikato and New Zealand as a whole and concluded that the market was already saturated with organic food brands and there was very little scope for new players. Consumers had already developed brand loyalties and would take sizeable convincing to try new products and shift their tastes.

On further analysis, we saw an opportunity in this supply glut, international markets. Immature organic markets like India, Philippines, the middle east provided an excellent opportunity for these local businesses. These were markets which totalled more than 2 billion people, looking for healthier food choices. These markets were looking at an exponential growth in organic and natural consumption.

3

Draft the solution

No research without action, no action without research.

Our business analysts, systems architects, solutions architects and the rest of the relevant team members of Black Quadrant came up with an e-commerce platform of New Zealand owned, grown & operated organic foods & natural cosmetics, powered by Hyperautomation. The platform would be optimised to outperform local and international portals in digital marketing & search engine optimisation.

We also built a transparency & traceability dashboard for New Zealand suppliers to help them track every product sale. This way, they could be assured that their exported products were ending up in the right hands, not on the grey market.

Our market analysts provided in-depth competitor analysis and market analysis to suppliers and helped them craft an effective marketing strategy. By knowing their competition, suppliers on Epicly Organic had a far better conversion rate than other platforms like Amazon or Flipkart.

4

Begin development

Build!

The product took 19 days to build and costed roughly $102K. During operation, the solution costs $3 per month for 10 million users. We followed an agile approach to development, which gave our suppliers access to our work and progress from day 1, instead of having to wait 30 days to feedback. More information about our drafting process can be found by emailing us.

We conducted a 90 days testing period, during which we exposed the portal to 1,500+ real testers spread across India to get an estimate of expected sales volume. The data driven approach helped us reduce waste and improve our forecasting models.

5

Launch & support

It's showtime!

The problems which the solution solved were,

Demand shortage. By exposing local small businesses to an international audience, demand exploded. These businesses are looking at million dollar international revenues by mid-2020.
International marketing. By providing suppliers with market insights and marketing support, they could price their products competitively and reach a global audience, for the budget of a local marketing campaign.
Outreach & loyalty. Epicly Organic asks buyers to log in using facebook. This information is accessible to suppliers on their transparency dashboard, which they can use to connect with buyers personally. This personal touch helps brands garner international brand loyalty.
Black Quadrant owns and operates Epicly Organic.