Modish Biz Tips

Retail: Brick by Brick- Market Research

{photo by Paxsimius}

It’s the first post in the Business Plan Challenge! Today we’ll be talking about Market Research and how it applies to a business plan. If you remember last week, we introduced ourselves and challenged you to follow along with our posts and write a business plan of your own.  

A business plan breaks up an idea into four aspects or categories. Within each of these categories, Market Research will assist in determining how the business should be positioned compared to the competition.  

The four categories are:

1. Business Concept – Includes a description of your business, industry information, mission statement and business goals.
2. Marketing and Sales Plan – Describes product or service in detail, target market, competition and marketing strategy.
3. Operations Plan – Covers daily operations, production methods, costs and pricing.
4. Financial Plan – Outlines business’ projected cash flow and balance sheet.

There is one other category in the business plan, the Executive Summary. It is written to offer a big picture of the business. We’ll leave that one ‘til the end as it’s just a mish-mash of the other four categories. We hear some lazy bankers will only look at the Executive Summary and the Financial Plan.  

Throughout the entire business plan, Market Research will confirm or disprove personal assumptions and bias. It can be a daunting task and it’s difficult to know where to begin. Doing some research now, before you’ve started writing your plan, helps make sure your information is cohesive. Performing market research is similar to going to the library and reading about a subject before writing a term paper. Like a good paper, a good business plan is well informed and uses only the best information.   

Here are some subjects to consider researching: 

Retail: Brick by Brick- The Business Plan Challenge!

Hello Modish Biztips Readers!

We were invited by Jena (thank you Jena!) to share our first hand experience setting up our retail brick and mortar store. Before we get too far, I should really explain who we are and what we’re doing.

My name is Lili Nedved and my partner’s name is Henry Sinha. For about 4 months, we have been planning to open a fabric shop here in Vancouver, Canada. Henry and I hope to take the best from our jobs in the past and work together as a business partnership – we already make a cute couple.

You may have seen me around online before. I have a handbag company, iglubu, which has helped me learn a lot about online marketing, e-commerce and of course fabric. Henry brings technical and customer service skills to our business from his experience in engineering support.

Right now, we are actively looking for the perfect retail storefront (which we’ll talk about more in the future). Henry and I both have retail experience, but neither of have owned a shop before! Through this column we hope to provide a first hand, in depth look at what its like to open and run a shop. We have a few ideas for posts already, but we’d love to hear from you. In the comments below if you have any questions or topics you’d like to see covered, let us know!

Laying the First Brick:

To start off on a solid foundation, the most important thing we’ve done for our business is write a business plan. I know, I know, writing a business plan is about as exciting as it gets and it’s no problem convincing you to write one! Oh wait, you even hate the idea of writing a business plan? We felt the same way. In fact, shhh… don’t tell anyone, but I never wrote one for my handbag business. Now, after writing one for our shop I really wish I had.

There are a few good reasons for any business to write a business plan: