Welcome The Business Plan The Prince’s Trust Business Plan Pack The best business plans aren’t long and complex; they explain only the most important information – what you want to achieve, how you will get there and the things you need to do along the way. It’s best to tackle a business plan in small chunks. The Prince’s Trust Business Plan Pack can help. This is The Business Plan divided into sections to help you develop your business idea. You can use the information in The Guide to help you complete the sections. Some of the sections of The Business Plan have tables to record the financial parts of your business. The tables are also available in MS Excel format and the sums in these are automatic. The Prince’s Trust Enterprise Programme The Prince’s Trust has helped many young people to complete their business plans and start their own businesses. If you are aged 18–30 and unemployed or working fewer than 16 hours per week, then we might be able to help you. We have offices throughout the UK and in each there is a team of Enterprise Programme staff. To take part, you need to be interested in self employment and have a business idea that you would like help to test and explore. The programme can then help you to see if your business idea will work and whether self employment is right for you. If through this process you find out it is, the programme can offer mentoring support and, if you really need it, financial support to start your business. However, if self employment turns out not to be the right option, the programme can offer support to secure other goals in employment, education, training or voluntary work. We can’t guarantee that your business will work or that we will be able to offer you money, but if you are up for a challenge and want our help to explore your business idea, get in touch and come and meet us.
Getting started Whose plan is this? Business and owner details: Joe Flanagan Lucinda Crowhurst Maisy Dodd Kerryanne Carvan Gaby Dls Charlotte Iles Matthew Morraies Business name: Mi:X Owner(s) name: Kerryanne Carvan Maisy Dodd Joe Flanagan Gabrielle Dalais Charlotte Iles Lucinda Crowhurst
Business address and postcode: Arts University of Bournemouth Business managers:
maisydodd@hotmail.com lucindercrowhurst@hotmail.com Product Designers:
joe_flanagan@hotmail.com kerrycervan@hotmail.com Social Media and Advertising:
gabrielled94@hotmail.fr Marketing and Finance:
charlotte_iles@btinternet.com matthew.morraies@hotmail.co.uk
Section one Executive summary 1.1 Business summary: A collaborative app for university students to help them communicate when in need to collaborate with in different courses throughout the university.
1.2 Business aims: We shall start off by creating a ‘Beta Launch’ for our product as a sample to intended universities to test the development process. With this feed back we would proceed by creating a ‘Soft Launch’ again only servicing to a limited audience. After we have collected the responses and feedback and if needed made vital changes; we will want to sell this app to these Universities as a subscription. By starting off with the Arts University of Bournemouth, we will then gradually expand to others. After a year of the After our live launch for the app we aim to sell up to 5 Universities in the first year. Then, within the second year we want to aim to sell 3 new app subscriptions to new Universities and renew 3 of original 5 Universities we sold to. The purpose and aim of the app is to help current students collaborate with other departments with an easy communication system to initially help each other develop their work.
1.3 Financial summary: Mi:X will cost roughly £22,700 in fees for an app developer to create. Each year updates will need to cost on estimate 15-20% of this initial development to keep it current, therefore anything from £3,405-£4,540. A small business start up loan from NatWest will cover the initial fee plus some extra for emergencies, and borrowing this over two years with a 7.71% interest rate will result in a total cost of £52,057 being payable. This could be reduced if we received money from investors and didn’t need to rely as heavily on a loan. The main costs to consider other than the app development and upkeep would be our marketing, for example costs of university visits and hosting conference talks. Focus will need to be placed on repeat subscriptions as well as new buyers to keep profits steady and reliable. Profits could also be increased with eligibility on applying for marginal relief being conditional, this is applied for in retrospect of previous tax year.
Elevator Pitch 1.4 Your business name: MI:X
1.5 Strapline: Creating Collaborative Moments 1.6 Elevator pitch: As students at the Arts University of Bournemouth we all understand how difficult it is to find others students to work with. We are not saying we don’t interact with the various departments but finding a specific person to suit the specific needs for our individual projects is a lot harder than it seems. We have came up with a new and innovative way of helping current students collaborate with other departments with an easy communication system to initially help each other develop their work. Currently there is an unsaturated market for this app, there is no other collaborative app that helps students in this direct way. This is where M:IX comes in. M:IX will eventually be the leading way for students to communicate with the sole purpose of advancing and encouraging collaboration. The app itself will have no rating or liking system. This app is not for status or competitiveness but for promoting healthy and foremost beneficial communication. With a safe and secure university login students will be able to access the app easily and sufficiently. Through an annual subscription, M:IX will be sold to Universities starting off with the Arts University of Bournemouth and updated through our company. We will also provide regular communication and feed back during the first year of sales with an option of renewing each year.
Section two Owner’s background 2.1 Why do you want to run your own business? We are interested in starting this company, and running it as a whole, because of the space in the market for our product and business. As students ourselves, we have found it hard to collaborate within our university with other departments, especially as we are fashion students and often need our finished pieces photographed. We want to run our business from theory to reality, not only to help our peers, but to make our creative lives easier whilst attending university.
2.2 Qualifications and education: Arts University of Bournemouth educated, traditionally we are Fashion students. Varying from garment engineering, fashion design, and fashion communication. Previous education and qualifications are various depending on the partner. Unfortunately for us, we are not fully qualified to create this type of business/product as we do not have previous experience. However, education wise, this has been and will be one of the best forms of learning for us as a group.
2.3 Hobbies and interests: As a group of young entrepreneurs, we are traditional Fashion graduates. However as a whole our interests vary from playing musical instruments, to writing, to different exercises of sport.
Section three Products and services 3.1 What are you going to sell? Well will be selling our product, and app, to different universities through corporate conferences such as, Cilip, Internet Librarian International and UKSG. This would be to appeal to different university Libraries to branch out awareness of out product. However we will also be preparing for different conferences to pitch, and sell, our product to different universities through the country.
3.2 Describe the basic product/service you are going to sell: The product that we will be pitching is a collaborative app for university students to help them communicate when in need to collaborate within different courses throughout the university. This product will be annually purchased and updated through our company, and will only be available to universities and students. This service will also include regular communication and feed back during the first year of sales, as to keep consumers happy with the service given. 3.4 If you are not going to sell all your products/services at the start of your business, explain why not and when you will start selling them: The product will not be sold as a live launch for up to 2-4 years after start up, due to the design and workings of the app. We would promote a soft laugh to one university as a bate product, that would be available to heads of departments and one year group only within each course. We would be soft launching this product as a means tor collect data and faults that would need to be tested by users, not creators.
Section four The market 4.1 Are your customers: Our customers are students, however our consumers would be universities. Universities Students 4.2 Describe your typical customer: Our typical customers are students, as our app is for Universities only. 4.3 Where are your customers based? Customers would, and will be, based around the UK attending numerous different universities. 4.4 What prompts your customers to buy your product/service? Our consumers would want our product because of how useful it is to students. As we are students ourselves, we have experienced these problems personally and found it hard to communicate with other departments to initiate collaborations. This app would be, and will be very helpful for university students, and ourselves, why would they not buy our product? 4.5 What factors help your customers choose which business to buy from? The contributing factors, that would push buyers to our business, is that we ourselves are overall resolving problems for ourselves. We are the customers of our own business and products. We as students have found these collaborative problems over and over, creating this product and app will not only be helping ourselves, but helping our peers. There is no ulterior motive within our company, we are purely here for students, to help students. 4.6 Have you sold products/services to customers already? No, we are still starting up as a business, developing our ideas and images, and creating us as a brand. Realistically, we will not be selling products until the product has been made and developed, this could take between 2-5years for app development. 4.7 Have you got customers waiting to buy your product/service? Until we are ready to launch a beta app we will not be fully advertising out product to our consumers, we will only be pitching to companies who are will to fund our company.
Section five Market research 5.1 Key findings from field research – customer questionnaires: UK website Waracle lists average costs for developing apps for iPhone and Google Android in the UK from between £34,000 and £51,000 for a complex three platform. Lateral Solutions give their customers the following price guide for creating custom apps: a “complex” app between £9,903.53 and £39,614.12 Instagram cost up to £99,035.302 Angry birds & BBC news up to £125,000 Executive Summary: MI:X is an app founded by students for students. It offers unique collaborative experiences for arts based disciplines to work together to create a cohesive outcome. The aim is to help others find students with similar styles and remove the awkwardness of finding collaborators. Target Market: Obviously in broad terms the app is aimed at students, however it is more specialised but not solely restricted to arts based subjects. The type of student that uses our app is male or female aged between 18-24 and uses technology in their everyday life, and places particular importance on their phone. They are creative and have a keen eye for artistic style, taking pride in their creations with quite a strong work ethic. They are kept busy between university and socialising and enjoy creating a large network of contacts. They pay fine attention to detail yet have an open mind to the world and are keen to learn more. Product:
MI:X as a company focuses purely on the app and this is our only product. In the future it could be expanded into an online web browser version but our vision currently is to refine the app for streamlined user use. It is a slicked back display to be as user friendly as possible with muted colour palettes so as not to distract from users work being displayed. It is modern and minimalistic, appealing to the future thinking market we are aiming at. It will initially be priced at £4,000 as an annual subscription for each university so as to not be priced out of the market, and develop some faith and history behind the name. Once the app is established and tried and tested the price can be increased to £5,500 when demand grows. Market Placement & Competitor Comparison: MI:X is the first of its kind in the market purely for students and this sets it apart as a USP. Because of the lack of competitors it is hard to pin point exactly where it will sit within the market, however it is aimed to be one of the more slick and professional apps so will sit slightly higher. One of the closest competitors would be Co:Lab as this is an app to help people find collaborators, however it is restricted to only industry uses so aims at a completely different market than MI:X. It is however well established and lessons on what works well can be learned from it, for example the users individual profiles and the category of work. But other things don’t work so well, such as lack of location services offering collaborations across countries or tinder style swiping system.
Section six Marketing strategy
What are you going to do? We will be marketing to:
Arts University Bournemouth University of Arts London University of the Creative Arts Royal College of Art Kingston University Goldsmiths Brunel Nottingham Trent Brighton university TOTAL COST: £22,742.67
Why have you chosen this marketing method?
How much will it cost?
We have chosen this method because we have taken inspiration from WGSN which is also a subscription base. We, as a company, have decided that it would be Quotes average more profitable.
out to: £22,742.67
Promotion & Communication Strategies: Taking inspiration from WGSN, as they also deal in subscription services to universities, the app would be introduced in a more personal and exclusive way. This would involve hosting informative talks and inviting relevant people from arts based universities across the country so they are fully aware of the new opportunities we offer for them. These would be held roughly every 3 years to keep up to date with recent app updates and changes. Leaflets detailing the apps features and costing would also be sent individually to universities to advertise in a quieter manner, this would be done annually to encourage subscription renewals. Once it has been initially launched brand recognition will be grown by attendance at trade fairs such as CILIP, ILI & UKSG to reach as many potential customers as possible. Hopefully this will improve word of mouth and help to sell as a desirable asset for universities to have. As well as this MI:X will have to have a social media presence so as to appeal to the student consumer. Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat will be used to display images of real life collaborations taking place to encourage and inspire users more. In future marketing would be kept fairly similar, as word of mouth and trust grows personal contact with universities would need to be maintained to encourage repeat subscriptions. Advertising would also be done through the universities themselves, as it becomes more well known and desirable they will advertise the fact they have it to students to sway them to attend their institution, therefore causing competition to purchase MI:X.
Section seven Competitor analysis
7.1 Table of competitors
Name, location and business size
Product/service
Price
Co:Lab
App for iPhone Free users to connect Downloadable with one another and collaborate within companies and businesses.
Strengths
Weaknesses
-Established customer base -Refined personal page system (company name etc.) -Internal messaging system -Project invitation notifications
- Only for industry -Poor user interface -Over used tinder style swiping system -No theme tagging/ searching option -Not available on android devices -No filter for ID checking and security -Only login with instagram account
7.2 SWOT analysis : MI:X Strengths
Weaknesses
-First of its kind -Easy to market and target the correct audience -First hand customer feedback -We can relate with real life experience -Safe and secure with university email login
-Not established in the market -Not run a beta version -Possibly limiting customer base by only being available to students
Opportunities
Threats
-Enter an unsaturated market -Lots of room for expansion -Working closely with universities -Link to other accounts such as: Linkedin or Issuu
-Other people copying this concept as we have no patent/copyright -Similar university run concepts -Strict university usage rules
7.3 Unique Selling Point (USP):
Unique Selling Point (USP) A collaborative app for university students to help them communicate when in need to collaborate with in different courses throughout the university. Our unique selling point is that our app and product has no competition of this nature. There are collaborative apps however, they are not for the use of students. Our whole product is a unique selling point.
Section eight Costs and pricing strategy MI:X will cost roughly £22,700 in fees for an app developer to create. Each year updates will need to cost on estimate 15-20% of this initial development to keep it current, therefore anything from £3,405-£4,540. A small business start up loan from NatWest will cover the initial fee plus some extra for emergencies, and borrowing this over two years with a 7.71% interest rate will result in a total cost of £52,057 being payable. This could be reduced if we received money from investors and didn’t need to rely as heavily on a loan. The main costs to consider other than the app development and upkeep would be our marketing, for example costs of university visits and hosting conference talks. Focus will need to be placed on repeat subscriptions as well as new buyers to keep profits steady and reliable. Profits could also be increased with eligibility on applying for marginal relief being conditional, this is applied for in retrospect of previous tax year.
Section nine Advertising and Social Media
Why social media? Why instagram? Over the last decade, social media helped businesses to connect with their customers and consumers. The average internet user spends about 1.72 hours per day on social platforms, Facebook being currently the leader. The social media Marketing is growing, it is an opportunity to improve the reputation and loyalty of the brand, communicate with you customers and reach new ones. Visual content becomes more popular and important for brands on Social Media. It gives a better idea and build a relationship with the followers who are potential costumers. The most popular platforms for that is Instagram, with more that 300 million users is one of the more powerful platform used to share photos. A recent report, from research service L2 Think Thank suggests, reveals that the photo-sharing app has the fastest growth rate in terms of scummier adoption. As Scott Galloway, L2 founder and NYU Stern School of Business professor, said: "Visual media do more than communicate information, they inspire emotion and action. Serving a potent cocktail of visual and mobile, Instagram could be the first platform that delivers on the promise of social commerce via the power of usergenerated content." Instagram is a good way of knowing and learning what people like - by looking what people share and tags, reading what they comment on your post. It’s a good way to see what they like about our business. CONNECT WITH CUSTOMERS - Instagram has one of the most active and engaged user base. On report from Forrester Research found that Instagram generates 120times more engagement per follower than Twitter. Instagram would be a grate asset to create our reputation and a good relation with the user of our app. In fact if we post they photos of works on our page it will make a 2 way relationship between us and them. It would interact them into our world, make it more approachable for them. People love seeing every days photos of brands, celebrities etc. We could show them how, we (Arts students like them) live. Later on we could even make it more interactive by creating competitions between the best work, We need to make people know about us, create a good reputation, so that they would like their universities to have our app.
Why snapchat? To attract people to use our app they need to believe in it;
Nowadays people need to see thing to believe in them. We need to give them a reason to believe in us by showing them the results of our work. Our website and app need to have a section where we show the public the results of the collaborations made through our app. In which we’ll have some photos, description on the work and maybe a quote from the students such as: “I always struggled so much to get in touch with people of other courses to collaborate with. And when I did manage to our work wasn’t completing each other because the style wasn’t matching. M:iX helped me to find the good match for my work” “I must say that being international didn’t helped me to collaborate with other students. With the language barrier I wasn’t confident enough to go and ask people to work with me. On M:iX is it much more easier because the platform is made to collaborate, I know that others need it as much as I do.” This would help the consumer to feel more confident and maybe relate themselves to one of the stories. They will feel understood and would have a good reason to want to use the app. Snapchat help brands to increase the brand awareness through innovative marketing campaigns and understand their audience. With over 100 million daily active user and 400 million snaps per day, Snapchat is one of the fastest-growing social network. 85% of their followers are under the age of 25; 77% of college students use Snapchat daily. Brands are using Snapchat to produce daily stories that engage and excite audience.
THE TIME LIMITE: Marketers have an ideal opportunity to offer teasers to your followers on snapchat; the photos and videos only exist for few seconds: perfect to give preview of an upcoming product or the service that the company may be offering. You can also use Snapchat to create contest - You can ask other users to send you picture of them using the product/app/service and offer a reward to those who do - Way to engage with the consumer; create a relation. It provide access to Live Events - perfect for real-time social media marketing; it gives the audience direct access to live events. You can also use Snapchat to provide special content to your audience; Fashion brands have used Snapchat to debut their collections to followers before they hit the runway. Ideally, snapchat should give a idea of how your business work and what do you have to offer. You need to be ACTIVE, always give a bit of personality into the photos/videos. You need the consumer to connect with the brand-HUMANISE THE BRAND ON SOCIAL MEDIA. You need to show more than the content - show the behind the scene. *underlined what is relevant for our app. SNAPLYTIC: With Snaplytics help you to find the informations that enable you to use Snapchat as a marketing channel. You see the number of OPENS - interesting to see how many followers viewed the postings, campaign or even a single story. SCREENSHOTS - Followers often take screenshots and share the content outside Snapchat. You are able to identify that content and see how the success can be repeated.
M:iX ON SNAPCHAT •
Why is it relevant for us? Snapchat would allow us to increase our relation with the consumer and have a active and live relation with them. It would be a good opportunity to give a better idea of what our app can give them - good results of work by collaboration - and increase the number of people that would want our app. More potential consumer we have and more potential customer we will have. The app will be more known through word of mouth and will be more heard by the universities and people representing them such as the Student Union.
•
Future plan: Later on we could create a live for our app, where people would post photos and video of their collaboration while they are doing it. We could also create a filter written: M:iX by AUB; M:iX by LCF etc. depending on where the collaboration is happening
SOCIAL MEDIA WITH THE CONSUMER: • •
Instagram Snapchat
SOCIAL MEDIA WITH THE CUSTOMER: • • •
Facebook Website Advertising on library fairs website
FACEBOOK: With 1.15 Billion total user and 700 million daily user, Facebook is the second more popular website on the internet. The users have an average of 8.3 hours on this platform each month and are checking their accounts five or more times a day. With all that traffic Facebook makes sense for businesses. In fact there are more that 2 billion connections between local businesses and people. 70% of monthly active FB users are engaged and connected to a local business. More other in an average week, there are more than 645 million views on local business Facebook page and 13million comments on them. If you have a business of product that you want to promote to the public, Facebook is where you need to be. You can promote your product, give to the public the information needed without any advertising cost. You can also easily reach your target audience. In fact even though Facebook is free, you can do a pay-per-click advertising system. It would allows you target your audience according to age, location, sex, personal interests. You can easily touch people that need you or your product. From that you can build and increase your relation with the customer. Such as Pinterest we can show on our Facebook page the photos of collaboration; the experience of students; How they feel about the app; did it help them? To give a reason to potential future consumer to believe in us.
To conclude, Social media such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are good platforms to connect with our CONSUMER, increase relationship, create 2 ways relations, built our reputation and take opportunity to gain feedback.
But now what about our CUSTOMER ? Our customer being the universities, it is harder for us to approach them through the social media. It is less about trying to touch them behind a screen but more face to face. It is all about going to see them, invite them to some presentations, interesting with them through fairs such as UCAS or different Library fairs. We need to show them that they need us by giving them fact - results of Surveys which show that students are struggling to collaborate between them and that M:iX is the solution.
Section ten Back-up Plan
11.1 Short-term plan: To have at least five universities interested and purchasing our product within the first year of live launching our app. We also will have wanted to make at least 75% of our money owed to companies that invested in us, and founded us at the beginning. 11.2 Long-term plan: As shown previously we have a 3 year financial plan, after live launch, in place to calculate our cash flow and business expenses. We have developed this so financially we are in the know as much as possible and secure on the lowest budget. However within our long-term plan, we will have added to our network and will of created new contacts to eventually sell our product internationally, and to have expanded our business globally, if it be successful within arts universities.
11.3 Plan B: Our plan B, if things do not end up going the way we have research and anticipated… We will be attempting to sell to private companies, or direct to the students themselves, but for a considerably lower price. As we said, this product is, and always will be about the students and for them.