Business Plan
Owners
Nathan Scully
Michigan city, in
[email protected]
Brendton Williams
Cincinatti, OH
[email protected]
Executive Summary
E-Z Shop is a business started with an idea by two business students at the University of St. Francis, Nathan Scully and Brendton Williams. Our business consists of a mobile application for the IPhone that will allow its users to experience an easier, pleasant, and more efficient shopping experience. What makes our product so successful is that there are several approaches that can be taken to make it work and work well. Our main avenue or plan A is to work in collaboration with Walmart to make this application function. Walmart uses something called RFID (radio frequency identification) tags to wirelessly keep track of their top 500 items and exactly where they are from they time they get sent from the suppliers to when they leave the shelves with consumers. By using this technology we will enable users to put a grocery list into the application and in turn receive the general location of every item they entered as it is in Walmart. Not only will they receive the location but the application will route the shortest path through the store and the approximate price of the list. This will not only cut down the time it takes to find everything but they distance they will be traveling to get there. In doing this we feel we are creating a more efficient way to browse through the store, and improving Walmart’s customer service.
If we cannot get Walmart to collaborate with us then we have a second option or plan B. We can work with local stores such as Kroger, Target, and Meijer to use our app to improve their customer service. However, the functions of the application will be a little different. We would have to work in close relationship with these stores to keep track of the floor plan and item changes.
Company Description
Our product affects several industries but in the same doesn’t belong to any one in particular. We affect the cell phone industry because for startup we are only operating from IPhone, and IPad. This will add to the competitive edge IPhone/IPad already has.
Secondly we are competing in the application world that ITech users already have, and we plan to overcome challenges by asking ourselves questions like why will users use my app? Will my app last? Who will use it? People will use our app because technology itself is driven by increasing customer service, anything a consumer can get their hands on to give them more leisure and makes things easier they will use it. Besides storage space there is a large capacity for people to download any application that seems to be interesting.
Walmart is known for gaining their success by innovating and applying the newest Information Technology and applying it to retail. Now even though our company is not limited to the cooperation of Walmart we do believe that they would be the best fit for this company. Technology that they have already invested in can be improved and used to increase their number one mission in business, “Customer Service”. They believe and being everyone’s number one retail store by being the best in customer service. By adding this feature to their application they will gain viewers on their application, customer loyalty, and customer satisfaction and at the same time obtain more value in technology they invested so much in.
Structure
Our company has a unique structure because of the small and specific team we need to operate. Our CEO will be Nathan Scully, President Brendton Williams, Head of marketing-Doug Marshall, Financials-Devin Holland, Head of R&D/project operation-Christopher Engel.
We are a limited liability corporation (LLC). We believe that we all are equally responsible for the success of this business and each have our own set of skills and assets. We consider ourselves a board of decision makers and all play key roles in the business. For organization Purposes we formed ourselves into a corporation hierarchy. Nathan Scully and Brendton Williams are owners in this partnership so there is limited liability for the companies members. As a start-up business we don’t need a lot of employees, or specific location. If the company grows an LLC gives you the option to form into a corporation to raise capital. Being an LLC will allow low setup costs and ensure the same protection as a corporation.
Marketing Strategy
We plan to create a better shopping experience for customers shopping in retail stores. Our app will apply to people who want to get in and out of the store, people looking for an organized efficient way to shop. Our target market will be people who fit this category:
· Shoppers on-the-go
- consumers restricted in the time they are allowed in the store
· College students
-usually low income, can budget and articulate exactly what they need before entering the store. Also very busy which usually means they have little time to do their shopping
· Infrequent shoppers
-eliminates issue on the location of products, allows them to find exactly what they need most efficiently
· The organized shopper
-allows e-z shop user to organize their grocery list before entering the store.
By serving all of these different target groups we believe we have a wide range of potential users to ensure the success of this company.
Walmart has retail stores overseas but for startup we are focusing on the stores here in the US. Walmart has 3,942 stores and 616 Sam’s, that leaves us with a total of 4,558 stores to work from if all Walmart and Sam’s club locations are required to use RFID.
There were about 29 billion applications downloaded across the mobile application world across every system. As you can see by starting with IOS we are securing 30% of that and out of that 30%, 300,000 are downloading and using mobile applications. This gives our app of about 300,000 viewers so weather we sell the app, use it for promotions and advertisement, or sell the idea we have a wide range of potential customers that our app can be exposed to.
As you can see the above figure age group 25-44 takes up 45.6% of cell phone users in the US, and 53% of these users are male. With this information we narrow down on what our target should be. We can pinpoint key factors such as:
· What to advertise for this age group
· What percentage of these users have IPhones/IPad
· Improving Walmarts customer service in all of these age groups through advertising.
Our mobile application is only limited demographically to the locations of Walmart in the US. According to Walmart statistics 90% of Americans live within 15 minutes of Walmart. Any IPhone or IPad user can download so as long as you can get to Walmart this application will be useful to you.
Pricing
If we decide to sell the download of the mobile application we would sell it for $1.99. Walmart Statistics show that walmart gets 100,000,000 customers per week nationwide. The age group 18-55 takes up 82.5% of that 100,000,000 leaving us at 82,500,000 smartphone users. If only 300,000 of those people download the app we can make almost $600,000 on just application sales.
Advertising will allow us to make more revenue. By charging companies that Walmart carries to advertise and make special promotions we can generate more revenue. We will be continually making money on this so this will be a long-term revenue generated for the company.
SWOT Analysis
Development
Christopher Engel Head of Research and Development. Christopher will be responsible for the development of our product. Christopher will be a partial owner within the company. We have an agreement with Mr. Engel that once our product is on the market he will take a certain percentage of the earnings. Within the next 3-5 years we plan to develop our market by offering our product in places outside of the United States.