Business Plan for a bookstore - in English

Executive Summary

We have opened a bookstore specialized in children’s books. The books are targeted at the age group of 0-12 years. We value personal contact with our customers and want to advise adults and children to make the right choice in picking a book suitable for their personal needs.

We hire 1 full time assistant and one part-time student plus of course the owner works in the bookstore full time.

The owner entered with 30 000 euros and took a two- year loan of 5 000 euros. The loan was paid with interest of 200 euros per year (the interest was 4% of the loan). For that money furniture and pc were bought to the store for 3 000 euros, which depreciation 900 euros per year (two years for PC with depreciation of 500 and five years for furniture with depreciation of 400 euros), pre paid one year insurance was bought for 750 euro and current assets were bought – that is: 1500 books for the start and later in the middle of the year again 1500 books. Books were bought for 5 euros per piece and sold for 20 euros per piece.

In the first year the gross profit was 22 500 euros from the sale of 1500 books. After deducting all expenses -28 550 euros our loss was equal to -6050 euros.

In the second year the gross profit was 45 000 euros from the sale of 3000 books. After deducting all expenses -28 550 euros the profit was equal to 16 450 euros. Also the rest of the loan has been paid.

As profit and loss accounts show the first year brought losses, but for the first year in business that is nothing unusually. The second year was much better and brought profit. Hopefully the sales will stay still or go even higher and then extension of the store would be possible.


The Product Idea

We have decided to open a bookstore specialised on children’s books.
We want to specialise on children’s books because we like children and want to help stimulate children’s imagination. These days, children are much too dependant on media and are not triggered to entertain themselves and develop their imagination and thinking.
We want to offer the service of a bookshop in order to provide in the need of children and their parents to help stimulate imagination and education, and above all: pleasure.

We are going to sell children’s books that are targeted to children in the age group of 0-12. We value personal contact with our customers and want to advice adults and children in making the right choice in picking a book suitable to their personal needs.
We also offer the ‘story time’ service, every day there will be a reading session in our bookstore to which children can come to listen to a story told by one of our staff members. We hope that we will stimulate our target group to enjoy reading and hope to assist them on a personal level with our various backgrounds of interest in the child’s psychology. We, of course, also hope to make profit this way to provide in our personal goals. We think our reading-story telling- sessions will increase the sales; we hope to attract customers through personal approach ad further mouth to mouth recommendation and hope to build long-term relationships within the community.

Management Team

Our team will consist of the following members: 1 full time owner; 1 full time assistant; and one part-time student. The owner of the shop is the one to whom the shop was left by a rich family member that has passed away. The owner has got a high school degree and several years of experience as a teacher. Because her dedication to children she decided it would be a challenge to open a children’s book shop when the building was left to her.
However, she felt it would be too much of a responsibility to run the shop herself ,thus she hired a full time assistant, this lady has worked in an ordinary book shop for years and thought it would be a nice career shift to work in a children’s book shop.
To complete the team the owner decided to hire a student who can assist the full-timers while gaining experience for her studies (publishing). All for all dedicated to children and have the will and ability to assist potential customers in any way they can. They also enjoy reading and are very precise in carrying out their regular tasks. It would be a challenge for them to set out the extra customer service of story telling time. Because of their background and education and their expertise in the field of books, they are also able to advice the customers about the best book for the child.


The Marketing Plan

Our target market, consist of children and everyone that has got to do with children and likes them! (Parents, family, and schools)
We focus on selling books to children of 0-12 years old, and on adults that buy books for these children.

We consider ourselves to be a market nicher; with our little bookshop we only provide in a modest way. We are a fragment of the book market and are well aware of our competition. We know that we are surrounded by our very competitors; there is the market leader: ‘Broese’ to begin with. Then there are V&D and ‘Bijenkorf’, warehouses we consider to be market challengers. They offer a fair amount of children supply; books and accessories. Market followers are the smaller bookstores that are spread all over the city of Utrecht, they also offer a children’s books of course, as do the children’s specialised shops. Last but not least; there is the library. Why buy a book if you can lend them for free right. We will include our special service to keep our heads high and dry. We believe in personal contact and quality time with our customers and will do everything to make our shop run well.

Marketing plan:

We will make ourselves well know before we open the shop.
A month prior to the shop opening we will spread out flyers all over Utrecht city; especially in schools, nurseries, swimming pool, and other public buildings.
A week before the opening we will place a small ad in the newspaper announcing the opening. The day of the opening we will hand out balloons to everyone that passes the street. We hope the word will spread as soon as we have been able to reach people positively. When we are running the business and things remain quieter then expected, we will place a bigger ad in the newspaper, and also in child’s magazines.

As for our product:
We are planning on opening the store in the centre of Utrecht.
In the store we will have big shelves for about a 15000 books, a cosy sitting corner for the reading sessions, and cosy lamps throughout the shop. As already mentioned the books will be focused on children from 0-12. This means books from basic pop-up books for babies to more advanced exiting stories for the teenage child of 12.

Organization

We will run this shop on the basis of soletradership. There is one manager, the owner.
The owner has hired an assistant, who works in the shop full time. Then there is one hired part time student. This might change in the future, when the shop runs successfully and we make a lot of profit. For the next 2 years at least however, this number of staff will be the same. If business runs well, we will also consider moving to a bigger building in the future. A bigger collection of books would naturally accompany this change. This is however, not of our concern right now. For the next coming two years at least, we will focus on opening the business, getting well known by customers, covering the costs, and getting used to the business ourselves. We have a mission!


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