PILGRIM & POLIS Business Plan pilgrimandpolis.london @pilgrimandpolis
Lucy MacDonald 14081162 UCL MA in Publishing 2015
Advanced Trade Publishing INSTG073 Word count:
Mr Nicholas Canty
C O M PA N Y A NA LY S I S :
CONTENTS: 3 5 6 8 11 12 13
Company Analysis Industry Analysis Competitor Analysis Marketing Plan Management Team Operations Plan Financial Plan
Pigrim & Polis produce non-fiction vignettes of the city and its creative beating heart in beautifully produced B format books primarily as part of subscription model. Travel Writing | Graphic design | Illustration | Arts | Crafts | Comedy | Music | Creative Institutions | Food | Stationary | Poetry | Fashion | Typography This is an analogue celebration of the beautiful side of the web. Anyone who can get lost in Pinterest and admire the creativite talent within their city. Along with a huge love of trade adult non-fiction books, I have an obsession with packaging, stationary, graphic design. I don’t believe I am alone in this respect. My business plan has taken inspiration from Princeton Architectural Press, Hoxton Mini Press, Spitalfields Books and Unbound. It will be taking a similar approach to Hoxton Mini Press to the other areas of London and then on to other UK regions. It will look to reflect creative industries across the UK. Although it would start in London it has been considered with a view to expand. Our ‘Pilgrim & Polis’ name would allow for expansion into cities across the UK as well as in other cities in Europe. Immediately we would look to build and expand in cities such as Manchester. Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Sheffield, Bristol, Brighton. We would consider using guest cities and guest editors from other locations in Europe. Our revenue would depend on 3 main streams of income: Stream 1. Subscription (Primary) 4 books every 3 months of 1 series for £50.00 Stream 2. Bookshops (Secondary) Books sold at £8.00 (60% discount) RRP (average) £13.99 Stream 3. Website Sales (Auxiliary) Individual Sales of Books sold at RRP (average) £13.99 We want to create the theatre of receiving a posted gift to yourself, or from someone else every 3 months with editorial decisions driven by the consumer data and insight that we will be collecting through our Customer Relationship Management programme (CRM). Our business model will involve an open dialogue with customers (see Marketing Plan p. 8) and a talking point across consumers in a community. Lucy MacDonald INSTG073
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I believe this model allows the consumer to be introduced at the inception of something current and to be contributing towards a creative venture of which they have membership and ownership. I believe this would inspire loyalty towards the project. Our books would be small but significant so that people are not inhibited from wanting to build a substantial collection through lack of space. They will be making an impact on the shelf with a continuing style. They will be created for the person looking for that identity in London or for those who already believe that they have that connection and looking for it to be represented in physical form. We want to capitalise on that sense of place and time. Possible titles and possible series: Life at the Richmix | London Book of Fabrics | The Hugenouts & Their Silks | The Canals of London | The Markets of London | The Songs of the East End | 6 Months at the Boxpark | East End London Designers | London Style Tribes
I N D U S T R Y A NA LY S I S : Although this project would be targeted towards a niche market, with enough customer discussion and community building it would have the potential of reaching a larger and more profitable market. We would be targeting people who are digital natives but who are also looking for something that would cement their experiences in reality and physical objects. There has been a lot of discussion within the trade publishing industry as to whether a subscription service for books would work as a model but a lot of it has revolved around e-book subscription services. As the model I am proposing consists of niche good quality products I believe that it would work effectively and more so than the traditional model for customer retention and brand loyalty as well as with the possibility of being more financially rewarding. The trend towards subscription models within other industries is gaining traction proving that people like investing up front money for a treat each month. Our subscription would provide essentially a routine exploration of something that they love and is a personal, theatrical moment of discovery that doesn’t depend on a screen.
We will consider mixing arts and using artists, authors that compliment each other artistically. The books that involve musicians would include curated Spotify playlists, which can be downloaded and played offline for an all-encompassing rich and interactive experience as well as a beautiful and physical one. I’m looking at books that celebrate a place and a time and a heritage and a region that also gives a voice to things that deserve a lasting manifestation. They will not be nationalistic, twee or reductive but looking to to embrace diversity and creativity and geared towards the curious and intelligent. This is challenging in lots of ways the ephemerality of the magazine model but bringing some of its flexibility of subscription and up front money to invest in high quality production. We are talking about quality not quantity but still at accessible prices.The brand would then build to be the definitive and authoritative voice on new art forms and artists as well as casting a light on past forgotten important voices. We will find our authors through our market research and our customer data. 4
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I don’t know of any publisher other than Hoxton Mini Press providing a subscriptionbased non-fiction, small celebrations of London life in book form. This might indicate a lack of appetite but this is a new market and I believe people would be looking for an authoritative and trusted creative outlet and an identifiable brand to identify with. Hoxton Mini Press’s books are being sold in shops in Brighton which I believe demonstrates an appetite for books about London culture outside of the city itself that we could capitalise on. We would be ideally placed to exploit this appetite with a fully developed and robust CRM. Hoxton Mini Press came into being through Kickstarter with 466 backers pledged £15,219 to help bring this project to life. According to Nielson Book Scan, Hoxton Mini Press have sold 7772 books through independent book shops at a average selling price of £13.66 since their inception in September 2013. This would mean a £106,182 revenue and a gross profit of roughly £75,094 to date. This profit would be considered as secondary revenue stream, as these figures do not include their subscription model revenue.
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offs but not as a series. They involve a mixture of text based books and illustrated books. It is also interesting when looking at Hoxton Mini Press’s twitter audience, and finding that a majority aren’t based in East London but they are people who obviously relate to East London or who are drawn to its creativity. I believe that there is a market for presenting South and North London in similarly exciting ways and exploring their activities.
COMPETITOR A NA LY S I S : Our Direct Competitors: Hoxton Mini Press | http://www.hoxtonminipress.com Hoxton Mini Press are our closest competitor providing a very similar product to ours. Our USP would be the continuation of their ‘kickstarter’ feel through continued and targeted consumer data. We would also have a concerted marketing campaign to encourage people to engage and to take ownership of a creative space and to see their choices presented physically. Francis Lincoln | http://www.franceslincoln.com/quiet-london Francis Lincoln make a selection of beautiful illustrated London centric books. They do not, however, offer a subscription model and they do not have a strong brand. Their key strength would be the quality and specificity of their books. Quiet London is part of a selection of ‘Quiet City’ series. They are branded similarly but they are not a clear series in terms of book dimensions. They lack of a strong brand presence and the direct consumer interaction. Batsford Books | http://batsford.com Batsford Books have a strong list of London centric illustrated books as well as a strong list of creative arts books. They again do not invest in a subscription model or a sign-up email incentive/consumer engagement model (outside of a social media presence). Their strength comes from the consistency and the range of books produced and their strong Amazon performances. Salt Yard Books | Spitalfields Books - http://www.saltyardbooks.co.uk/book/ spitalfields-life | http://spitalfieldslife.bigcartel.com Selection of small and niche books through a partnership with A Gentle Author and Salt Yard Books. These are substantial books about London that work as one-
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Our Indirect Competitors: Kinfolk Magazine | http://www.kinfolk.com/ This is a high-end magazine of exceptional quality. They have well researched articles and sell a membership to, and ownership of, a lifestyle and fashion object. They has a strong delivery and subscription infrastructure and a strong international presence. We would like to consider our books gaining an advantage over Kinfolk due to the focussed concentration on one theme, rather than a scattergun approach to articles. And we would consider the firmness of our small but hardback books to have some credence in comparison to a magazine. East London Hype | http://hypeapp.co/ The tagline for this app is : ‘Feel the pulse of your city like never before’. This product is helping consumers to engage with their surroundings much like we would want to achieve. They provide engaging content with similar aims to our books – to celebrate the creativity and excitement of the pockets of London.We would like to extend this to other cities and to put our efforts into the physical product.
PILGRIM & POLIS SWOT ANALYSIS: Strengths:
Weaknesses:
+ Strong CRM + Engaging high quality content + Accessible pricing + Up front revenue + Not dictated to by retail + Strong brand potential
- Start-up and unknown as of yet - Building awareness on a limited budget - Competing with other leisure brands - Travel TCM has been declining but this would be a new approach and something different
Opportunities:
Threats:
+ Non-fiction opens doors for sponsorship + Consistent format allows expansion into other cities and digital spaces + Partnerships and acquisitions in the future
- Could have another larger publisher repeat our model with a bigger budget - We would however be first to market and a strong brand would help
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MARKETING PLAN: We will be delivering an ‘Always-On’ Marketing Campaign and a two-tiered approach to finding our customers.
We would be placing our pricing around £12.89 – £14.00 so as to be as accessible as possible but with also preserving a healthy £8.90 (average) profit in our stream 1 revenue. This is part of our marketing strategy so as to engage a creative audience and a young audience.
We will be looking to capitalise on our USP of consumer driven and tailored content because we will be finding our authors and artists through our market research and our customer data. Therefore we would always be making it clear that customers have a guaranteed piece of culture coming to them wrapped up, chosen by them, helped into being by them. As we are targeting the digital native our marketing will have a focus on digital. This will include a subscription to relate IQ (https://www.relateiq.com/) to provide our CRM. With our use of this platform we would also include a customer survey with each book that would be incentivised with a 15% discount on the resubscription next year. This would allow for the capture of some serious helpful data and feedback that would then inform the following marketing plans. Hopefully with this approach as well we would be building early engaged advocates that would help spread the word and build that awareness amongst other potential customers. We would be looking for any local or national events regarding our topics of our series, we will look to springboard off on social media trends, or actively reach out and be a part of some online activity. The marketing would also include discounted pricing for our early online giveaways but not for our bookshop/institution selling points so that we can drive as much traffic for the subscription model.
Seco ndar
ry a m i Pr Digital natives, Our customers would consider themselves: curious, intelligent, slightly Person subversive, alternative, funny, imaginative, analytical, irreverent, self-aware and original. We would want our primary market to be interacting with our online presence, to be Objective sharing our content, giving us feedback and to be engaging with our project. We would want them to discuss amongst friends.
y
Casual readers Gifting market Older market looking for gifts or for a treat for themselves. We would want our secondary market to be intrigued by our products, drawn to their high quality production. Consider our point of sale material and to be covinced that our project was an interesting one.
We would want both markets to sign up to the newsletter and to give us their email addresses so that we can compile a list of interested people. We would create engaging and bespoke online content that spoke to our ideals and our aims. This would be where our Always-on campaign would take shape in a digital space. We would Strategy have discussions with artists, authors and create votes to invoke the spirit of the project.
Technology
Online Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Vine, Periscope, Tumbler and Facebook Our Website
We would create some point of sale materials and shelf talkers for our bookshop promotions. These would be generic so that they could be used again. We’d also put some info about ourselves in the front matter rather than the back so that casual browsing would drive people to our website. Offline Targetted booksellers Vouchers Shelf talkers Point of sale material
Once we were able to capture the email addresses we could start to put our CRM into place and we would be updating and making sure that this then informed our marketing from then on.
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1. Starting with an online giveaway of 100+ books to grab as many interested people’s email addresses. This would also include ‘share with friend’ discounts. Our social media outputs would be used to engage in real-time conversations. Our management will be very deliberately visible and quirky and authentic as a digital profile. 2. We’d also send out press releases looking to be featured in The Londonist, Time Out, Eye Magazine, Aesthetica, Wonderland Magazine and The Stylist. We’d reach out to the bigger newspapers as well such as The Guardian and The Independent as well as the more local outlets such as Hoxton Radio. 3. We’d be looking to target key twitter influencers for specific areas of London. East London Hype’s most influential followers are Boy George, Fearne Cotton, Asamsakti, KopparbergUK, and Parklifefest. We would target these people/companies with either free books or outreach of a different kind ie. http://www.londonerwalking.blogspot.co.uk/ 4. Set up a push for gifting strategy towards Christmas with a clear indication as to what type of books were in the pipeline. 5. We’d be creating a selection of other branded products to build awareness again with mugs, tote bags, stationary, postcards with individual pages on them and gift cards. With new acquisitions and book titles, we’d be doing in-depth SEO and keyword research in order to guarantee a larger audience. We’d use followerwonk to create profiles of potential customers in London and other regions. 6. Collaborative marketing with Kopperberg or London Fields Brewery. Any decisions regarding partnership or sponsorship will be looked at with our consumer insight model from the very start. Looking for that direct interaction with our consumers through incentivised feedback online forms that would feed into a discount into the second resubscription. We would also be open to, and looking for, the possibility of sponsored packaging for our books from the following: http://www.themercantilelondon.com/ http://eastlondonliquorcompany.com/east-london-liquor-company.html#distillery http://www.rococochocolates.com/ http://www.nordicpoetry.co.uk/ http://www.spitalfieldsmusic.org.uk/ http://www.ldngraffiti.co.uk/ 7. We’d also be using detailed analysis of our followers and customers to look into possible new areas of interest to exploit. For instance looking at the word cloud for @shorditchhype (East London Hype) and their twitter followers we see the following most recurring words are:
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MANAGEMENT TEAM: This start up will consist of 3 people. To see a breakdown of the finances please see the financial plan p. 13.
Lucy MacDonald
Marketing & Publicity | Partnerships | Branding | Events. Curious, creative and collaborative. Leading the vision for the business.
Libby Watchler
Editorial | Production | Curator | Consumer Insight A committed and talented individual with a superb understanding of artistic lives and how to bring them to stunning realisation on the page.
Anastasia Nikitović
Design | Project Management | Distribution A dynamic and tyrannical leader that will implement the team’s strategies with precision and clarity. A creative and visual pioneer. Like-minded individuals but with the capacity to challenge each other and with the incentive for growth and the production of books that people will talk about. This is a team who are not afraid to disagree with one another. Our management set up would be supplemented with consultancy and freelance digital skills. We would also invest in digital and production training for ourselves sporadically. We’d be looking at using interns on a biannual basis. For an average of about 4 months a year we would have an intern for a month at a time from 18 years and above looking to provide market research, reports, social media co-ordination, blog posts and in return we would show them the workings of a small publishing house. They would be paid travel and lunch cost and their tenure would be 4 weeks maximum. Any additional recruitment has been detailed in Operations Plan. Lucy MacDonald INSTG073
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O P E R AT I O N S P L A N : Our risk mitigating milestones will be as follows 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Realising the £20,000.00 crowdsourcing goal (Year 1) Securing our books in 100 relevant outlets (Year 1) Selling 500 subscriptions (Year 1) Selling 1000 subscriptions (Year 2) Securing our books in 200 relevant outlets (Year 2) Securing £50,000.00 Secondary investment for 40% Equity of the company (Year 2) Selling 2000 subscriptions (year 3) Branching out to Brighton (Year 3 onwards)
When and if we decided to reach out into other regions: Edinburgh, Manchester, Leeds, Brighton, Glasgow, our brand look and feel would need then to be revised. We would want each place to embody the regional values and its own creative visual identity. It will be important that there is an authentic sense of place and that the branding shouldn’t impede this otherwise the impact will be lost. This may mean separate websites and certainly different social media outlets. We would also consider a kind of guide-like experience in potential apps or digital products or seek a partnership with http://hypeapp.co/. The consumer data will be crucial to these decisions and we will be looking to utilise the feedback in our decision-making processes. Ideally we would be branching out with events, institutions, hospitality brands and consumable goods.
FINANCIAL PLAN: Year 1 Investment
Out
Notes To provide money and proof that there is a market
£10,000.00 £2,340.00
Software and Internet packages
£761.00
Marketing
Initial Marketing & Publicity Push
£20,000.00
Staff Tax Plant Costs
Salaries x 3 (SEIS & EIS) 2,000 x 4 books
£60,000.00 £0.00 £33,000.00
Warehousing
Littlehampton with deal with Little, Brown Royal Mail Delivery (stream 1) Delivery to Bookshops etc. (stream 2) deal with L,B Delivery from Website Orders (Stream 3)
£4,000.00
Overheads
Distribution
Advance and Royalties Revenue Subscription (stream 1) Retail Sales (stream 2) Website Sales (stream 3) Total Total Loss Loss %
£500.00
See Operations Plan for details
50% of all stock sold
£10,000.00 £25,000.00 £14,000.00 £3,000.00 £72,000.00
In
Investment
Additional Angel Investor
£50,000.00
Staff Training
Salaries x 3 Staff Training Studio Software and Internet packages Stock Carried Over (Value of RRP & Discount) Accountant Legal (SEIS & EIS)
Tax
http://ministryofstartups. co.uk/ https://creative.adobe.com/ plans & Relate IQ See Marketing Plan for details
£2,000.00 £1,000.00
Year 2
Consultancy
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In £20,000.00
Family and Support Network Invest- £10,000.00 ment Computers and other Tech Studio
Assets
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Crowdsourcing Initial Investment
£32,000.00
£143,601.00 -£71,601.00 50 Out
£60,000.00 £3,000.00 £2,340.00 £761.00
In exchange for 40% Equity in the company
£900.00 £500.00 £0.00
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Plant Costs Warehousing Distribution
4,000 x 4 books Littlehampton with deal with Little, Brown Royal Mail Delivery (stream 1) Delivery to Bookshops etc. (stream 2) deal with L,B Delivery from Website Orders (Stream 3)
Advance and Royalties Revenue Subscription (stream 1) Retail Sales (stream 2) Website Sales (stream 3) Total Total Loss % Year 3 Additional
Staff Training
Assets Consultancy Tax Plant Costs Warehousing Distribution
£3,000.00 £1,400.00 £1,000.00 £10,000.00 £50,000.00 £28,000.00 £9,000.00 £169,000.00 £31,099.00
In
Digital Asset Management System Small Business Insurance Staff (additional) Salaries x 3 Staff Training Studio Software and Internet packages Stock Carried Over (Value of RRP £20,000.00 & Discount) Legal (SEIS & EIS) 5,000 x 4 books Littlehampton with deal with Little, Brown Royal Mail Delivery (stream 1) Delivery to Bookshops etc. (stream 2) deal with L,B Delivery from Website Orders (Stream 3)
Advance and Royalties Revenue Subscription (stream 1) Retail Sales (stream 2) Website Sales (stream 3) Total Total profit %
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£49,000.00 £6,000.00
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£100,000.00 £30,000.00 £20,000.00 £170,000.00 £28,499.00
£137,901.00 0.01
Made up of Asset stock RRP
Out ? ? £3,000.00 £60,000.00 £1,000.00 £2,340.00 £761.00 £500.00 £0.00 £56,000.00 £5,000.00 £3,500.00 £1,400.00 £1,000.00 £10,000.00
£141,501.00 5.5
£8499.00 actual profit