Reference no: EM133554628

Assignment: Business Plan for Simulation

Planning is essential in any business. This assignment is designed to help your team develop a basic "game plan" that can help you make decisions as well as to reflect on the decision-making process. Use the guide questions below to write a business plan to describing who you are, what market your business will serve, and how you will insure success.

It is very important that you use the context of Entrepreneur for your plan. For example, in describing your store, you cannot offer accessories or shoes or swimwear or anything like that. What you can offer is tops and pants that are ethnic, casual, designer, ultra-trendy, or uniforms. And you can't make any clothing, you are a retailer, you buy from vendors and sell to consumers. There are four locations where you might locate your store. Keep the current location across from the college campus, a shopping mall, a main street location, or a corner property that is between the college and downtown. And you can't choose the town, it is the fictional town where the simulation is set.

This does not mean that you don't have any flexibility. If you look at all the potential decisions that have to be made there are over 20,000 different variations of how you might want to implement a business plan. And there are certainly some creative aspects as well. For instance, the locations are described, but you can (and should) think about what different types of customers each of these locations might attract. Obviously, the college campus location will appeal to college students, but who goes shopping at shopping malls? Who likes a more main street type of store? What does ultra-trendy really mean to you? How is that different from designer? Do these two types of clothing tend to have different types of pricing structures? What market likes to buy which type of clothing and where do they like to go shopping for it?

So you have a lot of decisions which have to be made, but just make sure that you keep everything within the world that the Entrepreneur case is providing you.

Limit your plan to five pages or less.

I. Company Description: What is your name? What is your team's vision for what this business should be and what you want it to mean to your customers? For example, do you want to sell lower-priced uniforms in a convenient location with minimal service? Would you like to sell high-priced trendy clothing in a new, growing shopping area? Each of these types of stores would have pretty clear directions on pricing, location, level of staffing, type of advertising, etc. There is no one way to be successful in business. The whole idea in retail is that most consumers want diversity of options. Therefore, there is always going to be a market for a store that thinks carefully about what they want to mean to the consumer and are focused on fulfilling that promise. In this simulation because you don't have anyway to directly control the quality of your products use the idea that consumers equate price with quality. So if you want to sell higher quality goods, they need to have a higher price. And vice versa for lower quality merchandise. And how are you going to finance your business. The different methods have different influences on your business. Essentially these decisions are what you need to set the business: name, location, product line, and financing.

II. Marketing: How will you market your business? What media do you plan on using, why, and how much are you willing to budget to reach this market? Here use the costs that the simulation provides you and give a total dollar amount that you anticipate spending every quarter. Make sure your media choices matches with who your target market is and don't forget to budget in for promotions also. Think of advertising as trying to build your store name and reputation, but promotions help move merchandise out the door.

III. Management and Operations: How will you run the business? Remember that you start with two full time employees, but depending upon the level of service you want to provide and the number of hours you will be open you have to hire part-time help. Each part-timer works 15 hours a week.

What hours will it be open? This will affect how many people you will need. For example, one full time employee will always be there, but that only gives you 80 hours of labor in a week between your two full-time employees. If you are open 10 hours a day, seven days a week, and want at least 2 people on the floor at all times that is 140 hours of labor you need in a week. 7 X 10 X 2 = 140 You subtract the 80 hours for full time help and you still need 60 hours of labor, or 4 part-timers, 4 X 15 = 60.

And how much do plan on paying your help? Think about what the current pay level is, what you think your competitors may be spending to hire part-timers and come up with a pay rate that you feel will work for your firm. REMEMBER that the simulation is not LA. Don't assume that the pay levels are real money, just relative to the "city" that your store is located in. One thing you should consider is looking at the prices available for selling your stores merchandise. If the highest price for a top is $30, the area doesn't have a very high pay level. Your workers need to be paid relative to the cost of living in the area.

IV. Projections: Where do you expect the company to be after the first six months with regard to: revenue, gross margins, net profit, and cash balance. After the first year? After two years? Be sure you use numbers, not something vague like profitable or growing sales. These are specific and quantifiable objectives that you want to achieve. They are likely to change after you really start running the business, but they are important to think of because they can help you in thinking about all the financial aspects of your business like your marketing costs, your pay level and number of workers, your selling price for your merchandise, and the cost of any special activities that may come up during the course of running your business.