Varsha Sankar

 Lehto

This project was part of my Lean Entrepreneurship class. Where our team was tasked to come up with a lean business plan. That included creating a product roadmap, identifying the key stakeholders, target markets, competitive advantage, marketing strategies and making a business model canvas. To get there we also conducted surveys and interviews and then I created wireframes, website prototype for our business idea that we pitched to potential investors.

Tools - Figma, Canva, Survey Monkey, Squarespace

Areas - User Research, Product Design, Competitive Analysis and Market Research

Collaborators - Sumairha, Aubrey, Erik, Jeshwanth, Varsha

What is Lehto?

Lehto is a contemporary jewellery design company that aims to make the Indian tribal culture and arts more accessible to the western world.

Problem

As multiple cultures of the world come together, there is a lack of representation for the newly formed hybrid identities. Now, more than ever individuals are identifying themselves with more than one culture but they often have to make binary choices between their identities.

Objectives of Lehto

1. Create a sense of belonging through jewellery design, that utilizes contemporary South Asian aesthetics.

2. Create jobs for marginalized artisans in India

3. Support the empowerment of women in these marginalized communities.

Interviews and Surveys to Gain more information

To create a business model, manufacturing and marketing strategies, and an e-commerce website for Lehto. We needed more information about who our consumers were and what they would be interested in. To help obtain this information, we created a survey that we sent out on multiple Facebook and Whatsapp groups that we thought were relevant to help us gain information. After our survey, based on the responses, we identified people we felt were our ideal target market to further interview and gain insights.

Questions in the survey helped us to identify who our target market is? Where do they buy their jewellery from? What would be an ideal price range they are willing to pay for rings, earrings, and necklaces. What kind of contemporary designs do they show interest in. What material would they prefer their jewellery to be? We got over 50 responses for our survey and interviewed 10 people. We then synthesized the survey and interview responses to help create our personas, business model, manufacturing and marketing strategies, as well as the e-commerce website for Lehto.

Interview insights

1. Southeast Asians express concerns about styling jewelry with their wardrobe.

2. Consumers dress in either “Western” or “Traditional” clothes, and there is an absence of overlap between the two styles.

3. White participants are concerned about cultural appropriation and fear ‘not being able to carry/wear it the right way.’

4. Allergies, tarnishing, and other concerns with non-precious metals.

5. Participants tend to like jewelry with some color elements.

Actions to take based on insights

1. Have a low “cultural threshold” (worded by a participant) in the designs.

2. Provide information about the jewelry.

3. Provide information about styling the jewelry: mix different ‘styles’ of dressing to make people more comfortable in widening their styling.

4. Have models from different races and ethnicities to promote inclusion in the brand.

5. Focus on precious metal (silver) aesthetics.

6. Incorporate some colors in the jewelry.

Target Market

Based on our insights from primary and secondary research, we identified our target market and created two personas.

E-Commerce Website Design

Mid- Low Fidelity Mockup

I created a rough layout of Lehto’s website, to show how the website interface would work.

High fidelity Mockup

The E-commerce website is created to reflect a highend luxury jewellery brand.

Business Model

Marketing Strategies