Sample Business Plan
This sample was located at http://www.businesstown.com/planning/creating-rainbow.asp It outlines everything that I covered in the above sections. Although it doesn’t apply directly to pharmacy plans, it does show everything that I mentioned above.
Business Plan: Rainbow Kites, Inc.
SUMMARY________________________________________
BUSINESS CONCEPT
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The Kite industry has expanded rapidly in the past several years and growth is expected to continue at a strong pace for the foreseeable future. This offers excellent opportunities for new companies to enter this market. We intend to address the needs of customers in this market who seek higher quality, higher priced kites. We will address this need by importing, selling and distributing higher end kites in the US and Canada. Distinguishing characteristics of our business will be top quality products, special emphasis on higher end independent retailers, and high level of service.
CURRENT SITUATION
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We are a start-up, incorporated in 1998 in the State of California. The principal owner is Tom Anderson whose title is President and who has many years of experience in the toy industry. Other key personnel include Nancy Anderson, his spouse who has experience in customer service, bookkeeping and office work. At this time we are seeking additional equity capital to compliment our own equity investment and seeking to arrange a bank line for inventory and receivables financing. We have firm commitments to distribute several highly sought after overseas kite manufacturers and have verbal commitments from independent retailers primarily along the West Coast to stock our products. We hope to ship our first products within six months of finalizing financing arrangements.
KEY SUCCESS FACTORS
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The success of our business will be largely a result of superior products, superior service, extra attention to detail throughout our operation, personnel and our high level of experience in the industry. In particular what really sets us apart from the competition is that we are ONLY going to sell high end kites and we are ONLY going to sell to higher end outlets. This will allow us to give absolutely top service and product selection for these accounts without getting distracted from the very different product and service demands of the more mass market outlets.
FINANCIAL SITUATIONS/NEEDS
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In order to effectively launch the business, we project a total need for $300,000 in equity financing. Principal uses of the funds will be to finance operations until cash flow becomes positive and to create a stronger balance sheet in order to help secure additional bank lending against to finance inventory and receivables. To date we have raised $132,000 from founders, Tom and Nancy Anderson, and their relatives. We project that the company will be profitable within two years. We project that within three years of reaching break-even that this new investment could be cashed out by either the founding partners purchasing this investment stake or by replacing the investment stake with additional bank financing.
VISION
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VISION STATEMENT
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Our vision of what our company will become in the future is to have developed relationships with key retailers so strong that they will view us more as indispensable partners, than just another supplier. We will work closely with each retailer we serve to recommend product assortment unique for their customer base, appropriate stocking levels, pricing and display assortments. We will constantly seek out and work with the manufacturers we represent to deliver the most innovative and exciting products possible to the retailers we serve.
MILESTONES
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1. Overseas manufacturers agreements in place...done.
2. Verbal commitments from many West Coast retailers...done.
3. Presentation to potential investors...underway now.
4. Presentation to potential banks for inventory and receivable financing...underway now.
5. Financing commitments in place..60 days.
6. Product catalog completed...30 days...
7. Additional sales reps being recruited...underway now…
8. Sales rep selection finalized...60 days.
9. Warehouse lease signed...90 days.
10. First written orders from retailers... 75 days.
11. First orders to manufacturers...110 days.
12. First shipments from our warehouse...160 days.
MARKET ANALYSIS
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THE OVERALL MARKET
________________________________________The overall size of the industry is currently $150 million in the US and Canada. Because the industry includes a very diverse group of product types with significantly different characteristics, it is more meaningful to break out analysis of the industry into roughly two groups. The first group and by far the larger unit volume are lower end kites sold primarily through mass market outlets such as discount department stores. The second group are higher end kites that are sold largely at independent and specialty chain stores. While the unit volume is much less, the dollar volume is approximately the same ($75 million) as that for lower end kites because the average price point is much higher.
CHANGES IN THE MARKET
________________________________________The most significant development in this marketplace recently has been the shift in toy and kite business away from independent stores to national mass marketers over the past decade. However, recently this trend has slowed as independent toy and novelty retailers have become better at differentiating themselves and their product selections from those offered by national mass marketers.
MARKET SEGMENTS
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The market is primarily segmented by distribution channel. The mass market retailers are looking for low-priced products and a high percentage of their products are licensed merchandise, for example based upon kid's cartoon characters. Independent specialty retailers however are trying increasingly to be as different from the mass merchants as possible and are generally selling much higher priced product and seldom want merchandise based upon licensed cartoon characters.
It should be pointed out that there are few stores that sell just kite merchandise--even among independent specialty stores most of the volume in kites is sold at stores that sell a wide assortment of other merchandise such as toys or other novelty items.
TARGET MARKET AND CUSTOMERS
________________________________________Our target market is independent and small chain merchants that are committed to selling higher end kite products. We particularly want to focus on accounts that just sell higher end kite products and that are committed to stocking a selection of at least a dozen different kite products. These accounts we feel offer the best growth potential and will benefit the most by the help we can bring to them in selecting and displaying our higher end merchandise.