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Well Sunday the GF came over and we got cracking on the Business Plan.

There are six main sections to a business plan according to the book “Business Plans for Dummies”.  The sections are the Executive Summary, Company Overview, Business Environment, Company Description/Strategy, Action Plan and Financial Review.

Yesterday we did probably 90% of the Company Overview.  There’s a small amount of cleanup work to do but we can leave that to a final draft probably.  Our original goal was to try to push to do one section each day but after reading up a bit I think it’s pretty clear some sections are going to take several days of research.

I guess we’ll just push ourselves and get as much done each day as we can.  I’d still like to get the site finished this week and go live this weekend if possible.  We can manage to get by without a full business plan as we first start out but we really must get it finished at some point.

On the technical side I’m moving forward with getting the VDS setup.  A major big thanks has to go to my friend Josetann at Arshost for setting me up with it.  I’ll report on the full specs and such later but if you’re in need of any type of webhosting check Arshost out.  Even if it’s something not listed on the site he will probably work something out for you personally.  That’s the kind of guy he is!

Well, things are going pretty good on the technology side of the new business.

I’ve made great progress in the website design and should be finishing up by tomorrow night.  It’ll be just a matter of doing the shopping cart templates so it matches rest of the site.  I should have a full working demo site up by the end of the weekend, hopefully.

Hosting is kind of in limbo right now.  We have to get new hosting because the current web host she’s using doesn’t support the features we need.  I’m working on getting a VDS account on a friend’s server but he’s been on vacation the last week and I haven’t had a chance to talk to him at all this week.

I’ll keep trying to work to get setup with him but if not I may go out searching for other options.  We’ll just see.

On the merchandise side this are also going very well.  My girlfriend has been a dynamo and sewing up a storm!  We should have a good stock at launch.

The one lacking area is in the business plan.  We really need to buckle down and get working on that.  I think maybe this weekend I’ll have her come over and we’ll spend a whole day Saturday or Sunday and just plow through as much as we can.  It’s really just a matter of getting the ball rolling.  Right now the idea of basically writing a 20 page essay seems daunting but once it’s starting it’ll just flow really quickly I’m sure.

Well it sure takes a lot to start a business properly.  Since the last post we’ve made some good progress.

In general planning we’ve worked on creating a mission statement.  It may sound silly but it’s important to create a mission statement.  The point of a mission statement is to define what your business is all about.  It’s usually just a sentence or two that tries to incorporate three major points.  Those being:

- What do you plan to do?
- Who do you plan to do it for?
- What will you do to succeed?

We answered the three questions but haven’t put it together in an official statement yet.  We should be able to get that done tonight.  Along with the mission statement we created four goals to have for the company.  The idea of having company goals is to give tasks to make the business a success.  Just throwing up a website to sell something will not make you a success.  You need tasks to focus on and work to improve the company.  Goals like actively promoting your business in order to get featured in a fashion magazine.

Finally, we just glanced over starting to write the business plan.  A business plan is basically a big document that includes everything you need to know to run your business.  Products you sell, industry overlook, marketing strategy, business operations, competition, finances, etc should all be there.  The average business plan runs anywhere from 20 to 50 pages in length.  This is going to be a major undertaking!

On the technical front I’ve managed to find the right shopping cart system for us.  After some major time spent playing with demos, reading feature lists and reviews I picked Zen Cart.  Zen Cart is free open-source shopping cart system with a nice feature list.  It supports plenty of different payment systems which is what was probably the most important feature.

We’ll be going with just Paypal out of the door.  Paypal recently changed their system so you could accept credit card payments without having to have people create Paypal accounts.  In the past everyone had to make a Paypal account before they could pay you.  There was enough demand from businesses that they finally changed it.

So, the plan is just to use Paypal for payments as long as it works out.  Should Paypal become a problem to deal with then we can easily switch to a standard merchant account/payment gateway without having to switch shopping carts.  It’s as easy as changing the backend payment options.

I’ll be working on page design and layout this weekend and hopefully this next week it’ll be finished and I’ll get the page content finalized as well.  Then it’s just a matter of getting the new website setup and configured and upload all the pages, shopping cart, etc.  When we’re ready then we can just switch DNS to point to the new website and watch as it goes live. 

Man I can’t wait!

My girlfriend for a while has been making hand-made tote bags and selling them.  She became rather famous too!  She was featured in Elle Girl magazine, the local newspaper did a big article on her and one of the local TV stations Saturday morning shows interviewed her.

Unfortunately, all the press had a downfall.  She became overwhelmed with orders and dealing with flaky customers.  It ended up such a hassle and she ended up basically throwing in the towel.

Well fast forward to now.  With the need for some extra cash flow and something to do fashion related it’s time for small business take two!

This time however things are going to be different.  There were many problems with how the business was run last time.  The lessons of what not to do are now known and we’ll be trying to make a go of it doing it proper like.

Notice that I said we.  The biggest change this time is I’m here and going to help her out.  Now, I’m no expert at running my own biz but I do have a certain area of knowledge that I can help her out with.  That’s technology!  Technology alone cannot make your business a success but it can make it easier to manage and operate when done properly.

This was one of the major downfalls of her previous attempt.  All her sales were through her website but she did the entire product listing by hand and used email for sales.  There were too many instances of customers saying they want to buy one of her one-of-a-kind custom bags but would never go through it.  They’d say they’ll mail her a check or money order but then a week or two would pass and no money shows up.  All the while others want to buy the bag too but she can’t because she believes someone is going to pay.  Then a month later the person finally contacts her and says they changed their mind or they couldn’t get the money, etc, etc.

This time the major change is we’re going to run a true e-commerce site.  It’ll be a paypal/credit card driven click to buy site.  Customers will have to pay up front immediately.

So, last night she came over and we sat down and started brainstorming.  We didn’t do anything to structured.  It was mostly just bouncing ideas off each other, looking back at the previous attempt and finding out what went wrong and what we would do different.

I’m going to try to keep a running play by play of everything we do here because honestly this is pretty interesting stuff.  I’m sure my GF will make posts from time to time about our activities too so feel free to stop by her blog Critics Darling as well.