It can be said that comprehensive plans certainly do take many resources to formulate and appear as formidable documents. These large plans do however still follow a basic structure which is fleshed out to suit the purpose that the business needs the plan for. The process of writing a plan for your own business is also a great journey that will allow you to focus and elaborate on each element resulting in a clearer business path.
There is no specific right or wrong way to write a business plan but the seven key elements as mentioned below will be suitable for nearly any arts and crafts business.
1. Executive Summary
This section is often written last as almost a precis of the body of the plan. Normally the purpose of the arts or Craft business and how you intend to achieve this purpose is written in a very succinct manner.
2. Company Information
Generally a few paragraphs on essential contact information including start up date, incorporation numbers and so forth will do the job here. If the craft business is not yet formed, your intended dates and information can be entered here.
3. Craft Products or Art Services Offered
With regard to any designs or processes that you may use, you would provide in some detail an explanation of the origin or inspiration of any art or craft piece and what components may make that up. This would include techniques that you use to manufacture these products. There are subset areas within this heading such as the operational plan which defines who by and how the product is manufactured or if parts are outsourced.
4. Market Analysis
Here is where you elaborate on your niche art market, the size and potential growth of that market and who the main competitors are. Often a S.W.O.T analysis ( Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities and Threats ) grid is useful in defining how your art and craft business will fit into the market overall and how you will beat the competition.
5. Organization and Management
For a one man show this is a fairly concise section. Larger businesses should use a flowchart to detail job roles and accountabilities such as who is responsible for financing, production or human resource issues.
6. Craft Marketing Plan
Paretos rule is often applied by the business man in the street which states that any business involves 20 percent internal administration and 80% marketing. This is one area that you should brainstorm heavily. All your efforts are in vain if nobody even know's you exist. Searching to see how your successful competition promotes their arts and craft business is a good way to start your marketing juices flowing. Note all your ideas down and then present them in a bullet format.
7. Operational Plan
Imagine waking up in the morning and heading down to your arts and crafts business whilst writing down every process and system that you use to order stock, create your gifts or artwork, fix the plumbing and pay your employees. Describing how all these essential daily elements work is essentially the focus of the operational plan. A successful operational section should enable an external manager to come to grips with the day to day running of your business very quickly if it has been written correctly.
8. Financials
An established business can draw on history if presenting a business plan to a bank for funding, but a start up arts and crafts business has to do a lot of guesswork. If you have spent the time in the sections above with regard to market size, costings etc, you increase your chance of being somewhat accurate within this area.
Each of the areas above are explained in much more detail at [the website mycraftbiz.com cannot be found].
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