I don't want to put my whole business plan out here for everyone to see, but here is a piece of it.
| 3.1 Product and Service Description |
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Strategic Greetings is a full service agency that sells personalized greeting cards and related services to small and medium sized service focused business'. The added value of Strategic Greetings is its knowledge and expertise. Clients needs are evaluated and assessed; ideas and solutions are offered for each client to meet their individual needs. Most companies require a number of varied greeting cards in order to market, and communicate efficiently to their clients.
| 3.2 Competitive Comparison |
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The card sending industry is relatively young which will give us a competitive edge in the market place. The way we differ is to define the vision of the company to be a reliable and customer service driven company to our clients. Through personal touch we will be able to address the needs of the smaller market. Business today is driven through technology, but Strategic Greetings brings that personal touch back to the client. Our research has shown that the small to medium sized business are looking for more of a personal touch then a website. Strategic Greeting will sit down with each and every client to develop a relationship with them.
The business will begin with an introductory greeting card to all prospective clients sharing our exciting news of the creation of our business. We will include our business cards with each letter to ensure easy access to our business number, mobile numbers, fax number, email address and physical address. This greeting card will be developed as part of the start-up expenses.
Strategic Greetings has established relationships with several greeting card companies. Two of the greeting card companies have been selected as our primary vendors. We have been able to identify opportunities to capture margins of up to 60% for most of out greeting cards. Sourcing opportunities will be continually evaluated.
We use QuickBooks Pro^TM^ software for accounting, purchasing, taxes, estimating, and invoicing. Act 2000^TM^ is a sales based software that enables us to keep track and effectively manage client accounts. Talkworks Pro^TM^ is a communication software that acts as voice mail, fax machine, and message notification, so that we can keep in close contact with our clients and vendors. These three previously mentioned software programs integrate with each other so to minimize redundancy.
Our business plan will be generated on an annual basis using Business Plan Pro^TM^ software, and will be evaluated quarterly.
Most customers provide artwork on electronic digital files in order to customize their cards. We will maintain contacts with vendors who use the most current versions of graphics, printing, and publishing software from such companies as Adobe®, Corel®, Broderbund®, among others. This allows for the artwork to be recreated exactly to the clients specifications.
Within the next year we will implement a website for Strategic Greetings to process quote request and repeat orders.
Strategic Greetings focuses on local small to medium sized businesses that are service oriented. Doctors, car dealerships, realators, vets, brokers are just a handful of the business' we will be going after.
Our market segmentation scheme allows room for estimates and non-specific definitions. We focus on small to medium companies, and it is hard to find information to make exact classifications. Our target companies are large enough to utilize a great deal of greeting cards, but small enough that they do not have in-house printing equipment. We say that our target market company has at least 25 clients.
