How to Write a Retail Business Plan (in 2024)
Running a business can feel overwhelming, but tackling any difficult task starts with a good plan and this applies to business’s as well. In this guide, we’ll go through how to create a comprehensive business plan.
What is a Retail Business Plan
A business plan is simply a road map or blueprint on how you’re going to launch, stick the landing and grow your business. It can highlight key business aspects such as your goals, analysis on the market, projections and risks.
1. Drafting an Executive Summary
Everything starts here, your executive summary. Think of this as your elevator pitch.
It helps to draft one at the start to have goal to remind yourself as you continue writing your plan. Once everything is wrapped up, you can come back to write the perfect executive summary with everything you’ve learned on the way.
Note that this is summary, so keep it short. Provide a deep overview of your retail business, what makes it stand out from the competitors, etc. Put yourself in the shoes of the reader and really try to grab them or evoke some sort of curiosity with your pitch, leaving them wanting to learn more.
2. Describe your Business
Your business’s description is a chance to properly introduce your company. A few important information to add to this would be:
- • Registered name for your business
- • Your business model and industry
- • Short and Long-term goals for your business
- • Your business’s vision and mission
- • About your team and key staff and what they provide for the business
- • Your business structure
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Lastly, a brief history of your business and how it came to be would be an interesting addition. You could even add a little timeline showing how everything came to be.
3. Explain what your products and services are
Here, you can start going into details about exactly what your product or service does and how they would be priced. If the product you’re selling is clothes for example, you can list the clothing lines and categories of the type of apparel you’re selling.
If you’re in the retail business, another neat addition would be details on who your suppliers are, your stocks, new products you’re getting in, etc. Setting up an inventory management system would be a good idea to effortlessly take care of your inventory needs.
If any of the products or services you provide has a pending or current trademarks and patents – be sure to include that in this section as well.
4. Start researching the market
Thorough research and analysis of the market is extremely crucial for starting a business. It’s important to understand what your customers need and that there’s enough of them to guarantee success for your business.
Through enough research on your market, you can:
- • Figure out your target market
- • Form an estimate of how big your market is
- • What gaps in the market your business is filling
- • What effect your competition will have on your business
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Once you’ve laid out these points, we highly suggest backing them up by collecting data through your research and presenting that as evidence.
5. Marketing and sales plan
In this section, you can present your plan for persuading customers to buy your product.
Show any creative ideas you have for initially marketing your product when you launch, how you’re going to acquire loyal customers and your plan to keep them coming back.
6. Create a financial analysis
Time to get familiar with spreadsheets because now, we’re dealing with numbers – lots of it.
If you’re a startup, you’re going to want to create a thorough financial analysis of your costs for the location, employees, equipment’s and more. With this data in hand, you’ll be able to figure out when you’ll break even and make your business profitable.
For an existing retail business, you’ll want to present statements for profit-and-loss, balance sheet, cash flow and more. An accounting software can easily generate these reports for you whenever you want.
Why should I write a retail business plan
If you feel like you aren’t too worried about taking risks or has sufficient experience, you may not need one. But for any company that’s just starting out or is struggling to grow – having a business plan to refer back to can be very handy if you ever hit a bumpy road and need to get back on track.
It’s probably going to take a bit of tweaking till you create the perfect business plan. For investors, it’s better to present them with a business model canvas instead of a 50-page business plan. Remember, this plan is mostly for you and your company.
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