GRADIENT

Entrepreneurship and marketing strategy to bring up the funds from the investors.
Branding & Marketing Strategy I 3 Months
Delivering frictionless and engaging personalized e-commerce experience for the target audience.
Methods
Industry expert interview, user interview, Qualitative research, Quantitative research.
Tools
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe AfterEffects
Snap lense Studio
Webflow
My role
Individual project
Entrpreneurship that represents myself and setting up a marketing strategy to bring up the funds from the investors.
Goal
Delivering frictionless and engaging personalized e-commerce experience for the target audience.
Overview
Have you ever imagined a tea flavor just created for you and by yourself?

The gradient is an entrepreneur e-commerce tea brand. Designed to deliver customizable, personal, hand-build, systematic, and aesthetic teas. It meant for everyday tea drinkers willing to create their own tea flavors, especially tea lovers with dietary restrictions.

The project included designing the logo, business conference poster, delivery box, tea bag, tea case, and website app.

Click to view: Gradients Website prototypes
Brand Identity
Pain point
Ever since undergraduate me and my roommates were big tea lover, It was our daily routine to gather up in the living room and have some tea and chat. Whenever we go to grocery shopping we usually stop by tea aisle to browse some tea collection, and this is what we have encounter. Bunch of teas, just a lot of them. It is so hard to find exact tea that we want to drink, or checking each tea ingredients from it’s small tea box packaging.

This is the reason why I am launching my brand GRADIENT.
Motto
GRADIENT is a brand reimagining tea industry since current traditional supermarket tea industry is not customer friendly.
Tea customization
Not much people knows about the fact that teas are more interesting, and beneficial than how we think. Teas are able to mix and layer just like perfumes and cocktails, therefore u can create your own unique tea flavors by mixing different ingredients. Tea are taste great but they also has a lot of benefits. Some teas help decreasing anxiety, decreases cholesterol level, or helps you to fall a sleep. Not much people knows about this even though they are consuming them
Who are we
Gradient is an online tea brand that sells customized tea blends and pre-mixed tea bags to customers that want to learn about the benefits of tea, customers who want personalization when it comes to their health. Gradient  acts as each customer's personal tea butler, by matching ingredients with their mood, choices, preference, and needs.
Logo
Gradient's logo was created with sooth, artistic, and non-genetic feelings. It got inspired by tea leaf, and one line hand drawn experiment. The photo above showcases the logo variations based on background colors, with black and white set up.
Market Research + Pitch
Conference Poster
Business conference poster with market research diagrams including brand identity, mottos, target audience, business model, problems & Challenge, Market opportunity, core product process, and fund asks. This poster was created with the intention of attracting investors and encouraging them to invest in our start-up by effectively conveying Gradient's business strategy.
Conference poster detail: Why personalized product?
These are some user survey about how they think about personalized product. About 80%.
Conference poster detail: Our service
Most people drinks their tea at home. By statistics it came out to be 80% of tea drinkers consume their tea at home. Doing e-commerce is great because people these day enjoys convenient less effort oriented behaviors. To get a delicious tea does not need to be a journey to go to local supermarket anymore, Gradient would deliver it right at the door.
Conference poster detail: Opportunity
Another reason why Gradient will start with e-commerce is, it’s affordable for the start up, and real e-commerce revenue in US has bright future.

Ever since COVID-19 more people are familiar with Online shopping ever before. Nowadays more people knows how to buy items from online shops. This great change is keep on going because of it’s accessibility and convenience.
Conference poster detail: Target audience
We will be targeting the US market only for our first 3 phases. So we have set up our target market mainly in US, young millennial and Gen Z who loves tea will be our target market, mainly those ones who gets their tea through online. Since Gradient will sell both tea bags and loose leaf, this will be our market opportunity. And 10% of this would be our realistic market opportunity
Conference poster detail: Go green (How to bring back customers)
One of the unique feature about Gradient is our metal tea container recycling campaign. Most of the tea industry produces awesome tea packaging but they are usually get disposes even though that they are able to recycle. This is on going campaign that does not expire. Our customers can just take this simple three steps to support environments and gets discount for their next purchase. This will encourage our customers to come back and make another purchase with positive mind that they are doing good for earth.
Conference poster detail: Product process
Our core product process is fairly simple. It starts from the app and comes back through sending a recycle metal tea containers and receive benefits such as discount, or event tea flavors. In order to achieve this we need resources.
Conference poster detail: Business model
These are the key resources we need to operate our business with every touch point that we will fulfill to attract customers.
Conference poster detail: Fund pitch
With a precise calculation, we will need $669,204 US dollars to start a business.
Conference poster detail: Profit break point
But don't worry we will make a profit from the 5 years of starting the business!
Touch points
E-commerce website
E-commerce website is strongly focusing on easy access, straight forward design system for navigation. We highly focuses on seamless customer experience. A simple questionnaire to give exclusive experience for customers, and educate them on which ingredient will benefit them the most.

E-Commerce mobile
Mobile version of Gradient e-commerce site. Every function works identical to the desk top website except some flex box vertical settings for the UI spacing.

Social Media: Instagram
Gradient's marketing place and one of the main touch point. By utilizing Instagram as a touch point and main marketing strategy for Gradient, I'm aiming to showcase Gradient's unique offerings, engage with potential customers, and drive awareness and sales for the personalized tea products.

Mailer Box
Delivery box design for the Gradient customers.
Conclusion
Through my research, I have discovered that younger generations have a strong preference for personalized products compared to other age groups. Many of them desire a frictionless customer journey while also wanting to be treated as unique individuals, and they are willing to invest an extra effort to learn about themselves through customized products. This realization has made me reflect on how the mass market has established a norm of standardized features, such as clothing sizes like S, M, and L, which often overlook individual variations. In the past, when machine mass production was not yet available, individuals had to visit tailor shops and undergo a longer and slower process to get their clothes. However, these custom-made garments fit perfectly and were tailored to each customer's needs. With advancements in technology and the advent of AI, I believe we can merge the advantages of mass production and personalized processes to deliver superior products and experiences for our audience.

Next step
For my next step I am willing to collaborate with coders to establish a list of code functions that will enable my tea test to function like a real product. During the blind testing of the Gradient website, I observed that many participants earnestly engaged with the tea test in order to discover their ideal tea match. It was disheartening to inform them that it was just a prototype and that I hadn't implemented the code to provide personalized results.