The new generation of youths has changed the rules of the game in so many ways; today they have set a new trend in the retailing business by requesting for their products to be customised to suit their personal needs (Holman, 2019) Africa is not an exemption from the growing trend, and Mrs Grace saw this as an opportunity to earn some money. As someone who has always had a mind for business and the desire to stand out from the crowd, she immediately saw customising as a business for her. She started her business For Me by Grace which focused on offering customising services for weddings. Specifically, she customised bride and bridesmaid robes, champagne glasses, table napkins, wedding gifts. and candles. She realised that the business was very profitable as couples were willing to pay huge sums of money for her services. However, the downside of the business was that it was seasonal Frost weddings were organised during the festive season (December and January). Furthermore, she had to work with many different suppliers in order to be able to customise most of the items and it was thus very costly. For example, to get the glasses customised she had to pay about R35 per glass and for the robes she had to pay R30. Thus, to be able to make a profit she had to charge the couples R60 per glass and R45 per robe. However, competitors who were already well established and had large labour forces who could customise most of the items only charged R50 per glass, with a cost of R20 and R30 charged per robe with a cost of R15 each. As for the napkins, she had a cousin who knew how to customise them and charged her less at R10 each; she was able to charge a cheaper price of R20 compared to competitors who charged R40 with a cost of R25 each. However, knowing that it would be difficult to beat the competition as she was a very new business, she decided to put a lot of effort into research on the latest designs she could offer to her clients. Therefore, she would search the internet consistently and also think of ways to use local materials to customise various items. However, to provide these services to her clients was very expensive as most of the suppliers who were to customise these products charged highly for their services as they were not familiar with some her designs and some of the local materials were difficult to incorporate into the items. Furthermore, most of the local materials were very expensive and would sometimes be as high as R350 per material. Also, because she was not buying in bulk, most of them refused to give her discounts. Nonetheless, most of her clients loved the fact that her ideas were very fresh and most often set the pace for customising trends. In this way, she was able to build a brand for herself, which enabled her to charge superior prices to her clients and thus transfer the supplier cost to the clients. Furthermore, she noticed that marketing was also a key element to create awareness and get her services into the ears and eyes of a vast audience. She thus hired a professional photographer to take professional photos of her customised items and also created various social media accounts. Most of the professional photographers were very expensive and would sometimes charge R5 000 for just one session. Furthermore, with the social media accounts, she was not able to make that much impact as she had very few followers, thus she was advised to get influencers to advertise her products. One of the influencers charged her R7 000 to advertise her products for a month and she also had to make various customised items for the influencer, which would be worn and advertised by the latter. Mrs Grace was overwhelmed by the costs but decided to play along as it would result in more clients. Over the next months, with all her marketing efforts and the quality of thought the cost of marketing was overwhelming. her products, Mrs Grace saw a huge growth in the demand for her services but she still Source: Louw, L. & Venter, P. 2021. Strategic management - towards sustainable strategies in Southern Africa. 4th ed. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Africa. Use the value chain analysis for cost and differentiation analysis to identify the strengths and weaknesses of Grace's business, "For me by Grace". Explain how the value chain analysis can contribute to cost analysis. 2.1 2.2