Writing a business plan with two objectives?

fugate650

I am going into a partnership with a friend of mine. We are creating a home-based t-shirt company. We want to do online novelty selling and face to face company selling. When I say company, I mean put in bids for local small business`. When we started to draft our business plan, we were finding it hard to match the two. Online consumer novelty has a different, approach, demand, market and sales strategy than selling to a business for their company shirts. At first we started thinking to just make the business plan according to the selling to companies end and not include the online. Then we thought it should include both. We don`t know how to handle this. Should we just make 2 separate business plans. And also, we plan to eventually phase out the selling to companies end of it once we are up and going. Our main focus is going to eventually be the online novelty.

StartUpSmart

Hi,
 
Those are hard decisions to make. I think you can depict both of those sales channels into one plan. However, if you are planning to phase out the "company" channel anyway then perhaps you might be better off if you just focus on the "online" piece to start with. In my experience it`s better to have a laser focus on your target customers and distribution channel right out of the gate.
 
Feel free to email or call me to talk about your options. (By the way...I`m not trying to sell you anything)

fugate650

Thanks Joe and Craig. Those replies were helpful. A few things I felt I should be more clear on. When I say small business`, I mean to get the job of producing their company shirts, not sell my shirts in their stores. I dont want that to be my main focus in the company though. I guess the way we were looking at it is, more work, more money. Don`t turn down a job. But only in the beginning. Once we are established and making a good profit off our online sales and word has gotten around, we would go down to strictly the online sales. So our focus is novelty apparel, but why not earn extra money other ways if we can. Which had me thinking, should the "small business" aspect even be included in the business plan?

StartUpSmart

I don`t know your current financial situation so it`s hard to say whether or not you should start with the "small business" element. I understand that start-ups often need to bring in revenue any way they can to eat. However, if you are in a situation where you can focus intensely on the "online stores" element without having to take revenue for revenues sake then that would be my suggestion.
 
I encourage entrepreneurs to remember they only have 24 hours in the day. So, with that said, will pursuing the "small business" channel distract you from accelerating your "online" channel? Also, which channel has better margins? Which one is the easiest to enter? It sounds like the "small biz" channel might be the low hanging fruit. If you can leverage that channel without it distracting you from your real strategy then go for it. But, if it will slow down the speed of growth of your "online" channel then perhaps you should reconsider.
 
Regarding having the two channels in the plan, Craig and I agree. Depict both channels but perhaps outline the "small biz" channel as a bootstrap strategy to drive quick sales so you can execute the longer term strategy.
 
Good luck!

infinique1

You need to factor the fact that your kind of business has got a low barrier of entry. What that means is as fast as you can grow big and successful, your future competitors can do the same and take away your customers and market share.