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Executive summary
Cards and gifts industry is always growing. We are always receiving gifts and we give these gifts in turn. In all special occasions, people must give and receive gifts.
Cards will always be in demand and as population grows around the world, the demand for the same grows. People give out cards and other gifts during birthdays, graduation ceremonies, for good luck wishes for those doing exams, during weddings and major holidays in the year.
That is why we invented special type of cards, which will serve the needs of the consumers. When people go to buy cards they find it hard to choose cards because of some few factors. Some do not have the background pictures they would want to have. Some may not have the words they may wish to tell their friends, relatives, and colleagues. This project is out to design cards according to the customer’s description.
The project will move so close to the customer that one would order for cards from their homes while chatting and watching television. Finished products will be available at customers’ nearest market center.
Introduction
Cards are always in demand, so it is a worthy business venture for anyone that pursues it. We have many holidays all around the world. Festive seasons are always recurring. In that view, we have decided to come up with a special type of card service. This product’s design has the aim of fitting the customer’s needs completely.
Product description
The cards will not be made until a customer requests. The customer is required to make a special request with specifications that are best suited to him or her. The specifications are the wordings, the general calligraphic design, and the background of the card. The background of the card refers to the paper texture and its general layout, for example a portrait, a landscape or the size.
The major categories are cards containing nature pictures, pictures of manmade features, and the third category is the picture supplied by the customer directly. Several subdivisions will be assigned according to the specific pictures and drawings that will be available on the company’s database.
The products are exclusively cards that are made to suit the customer’s requirements. The customer will be required to make an order of the cards he or she wants, and at the same time pay 75% of the whole price of the finished card. The 25% is then completed on collection day.
The orders either are made to our customer care representatives at various regions of the country or can be done online through website. The website is to set up alongside other physical amenities. The main printing center will be at our company headquarters. The company may decentralize printing centers to reduce transportation costs.
The customer will collect the printed card from the customer care representatives who are nearest to where they stay. This applies to those who apply online too, if they want a hard copy of the cards. It will not be necessary for those who will want a soft copy. The finished product will be sent directly to them via email.
If a customer chooses to make an order through the customer care station, they will have to go to a station that is within their reach. Here, they will find a display of the various cards’ categories.
They will the select one of their own choice and submit the wordings which will be limited according the design of the card they choose. Each category has a cord that identifies it. The customer then pays the deposit and is issued with an invoice for the payment. This too will act as an identifier during the day of collection.
For those customers who will choose to submit their orders online, the website will be YourCardChoice.com. If this will be given out to American Greeting Cooperation, they will include a sub page on their website by a choicest name, or even Your Card Choice (indeed.com, 2009). Customers will visit the particular site and access the facility. At the web page, we will have a form that requires the customer to fill in the following:
- Name
- E-mail address
- Phone number
- Center from which printed work is collected
The next page will ask the customer to make a specific choice. This is for the case of those choosing designs that are already in the database of the company. The choice made will finally submit the code number of the card category just as it would be when interacting with the customer care representatives. After making the choice, the customer moves to the next step where he or she is required to type their word choice.
This will then lead them to the payment stage. The money may be paid through wiring it electronically by the various payment methods. This step will now submit the order to the printing company, at the same time make an invoice of the payment, and send it to the customer’s e-mail address.
For the customers who have their own pictures, drawings or photographs, they will have a section of uploading them and making a simple description of how they want the calligraphic work done and then submitted. This step leads to the stage where the customer is requested to give the words she or he chooses and then payment and submission.
The major materials for this product are paper and ink. Others include linen sheets for ribbons, glue, laminating papers, vista foils, propylene, cellophane and graphic design software.
The equipment needed are printing machines, cutting machines, computers and different software depending on the departments of the card production company. The software is the common operating systems, either windows XP, Apple operating system. We also need business accounting software.
All these raw materials are locally available. All our stationery for printing will be bought from store in New York. These are stores like, Hayman & Sumner Stationers, Kate’s Paperie, Paper Access, Pearl Paint and Sam Flax (ny.com, (n.d)). The computers and printers will be ordered from dealers in the New York City because the pioneer project will be done in this state.
The testing of the viability of the business idea will be in the New York state. Representatives will go to different regions and station themselves there to receive the potential customers. This is after elaborate awareness campaign for the new product in the market. After the first three months, an evaluation will be done and its viability will be proved.
After the first three months, the whole idea should be able to move to several select states of America. Within the first one year, the business should have been able to move to the whole of USA.
Technology used
We will employ technology in printing the cards. This will be using things like laser printers, using modern graphic design programs for example, Adobe photo shop, Corel Draw, and Adobe Illustrator (tigerdirect.com, 2009). The other area technology will be employed is the making of orders online.
It has earlier been described and we need Information Technologists, and Computer Science specialist to come up with an appropriate website. If we will sell or license the product to American Greeting Cooperation, this will be included as a subpage in their main website (indeed, 2009).
Projected market atmosphere
If a person purchases goods, he or she is a customer. For those who put the goods into use are consumers. In gift production it is usually hard to tell if the customer is simply a customer, or also a consumer. One can decide to say that the process of giving out is the consumption. This qualifies the gift buyer to be the customer as well as a consumer. However, another person may decide to see form another point of view.
The person receiving the gift is the consumer. This should be as perceived by the person analyzing the event. This company targets the gift givers who may be consumers and the same time customers. Customers may not contribute a lot if there is no one to use the product. Nevertheless, for cards there will always be a market so long as people continue making friends, festive seasons and students continue to do their exams.
People send greetings, happy birthday wishes, exam good luck wishes, and good wishes for public holidays. The target is on all of these things. We are anticipating a high turn up of customers because the domain of wording is completely their choice. This is the unique thing about the new card to be produced.
This card service offered will be very beneficial to the customers. This is primarily because they chose their own words to present to their friends, relatives, and colleagues. For instance, the current card system does not allow the designer to include the name of the final recipient of the card artistically. This will give the designer of the card the opportunity to design everything professionally, including the name of the recipient.
Secondly, the card users will choose the pictures they want or even give their own for design work. This will make it more customer oriented, than designer oriented. These are the major benefits that the customer will have with this card.
In my pursuit of my hobby as a domestic card maker, I have found many people expressing the need to have designs that fit their desires. They have given me their own words, and some have been very grateful when I used pictures that are familiar to them. This has played a major role as a research finding of this project.
This service will definitely attract many people. This will make use of opportunities such as weddings, birthdays, good luck wishes in events such as exams, in holidays like Christmas, Easter, and major public holidays and love cards. Definitely, it will attract many people and so win many customers.
Competition
In essence, this invention is out to get customers who always buy the normal cards that we know. The system will address the need they have perfectly. Not all people are artists, and so they cannot make cards by themselves even if they have the resources. This system is unique, and it is a projection that it will compete favorably the current system.
As time goes by, the existing companies may try to venture into this market niche. We have set in place the mechanisms to counter their completion. First, we will establish how they are getting in to the market, and what variation they will bring to the card making service. The point here is to know them well (Millions 2009).
We are also making sure that the customer service that will be set up will be of high quality, and always there to serve the customers’ needs. We will work on the product perfectly according to the customers’ order. We will also listen to their views to establish concepts to help us keep improving on the product.
Industry
This business venture is a merger of two types of industries. It will be both a secondary and a tertiary industry. Our raw materials are the products of other industries such as paper industries. We do not also sell out our products to intermediaries. Our customers are also the consumers of our products. The category is based on what pebbleshow.co.uk presents (pebbleshow.co.uk, (n.d)).
Model of the business
The business will get its revenue mainly from selling of the products. The selling will be mainly retail, as we have said that we will be dealing with the consumer customer directly.
Sales and Marketing Strategy
We will have centers distributed over the state of New York where our customer representatives will be receiving orders as earlier described. At the same time, we will establish an order making software that will be in cooperated in our website. This will enable customers to order the product from their comfort zones.
Advertisements will be through media services such as the daily newspapers, radio, television and internet.
Our pricing is much dependant on our strategic goal, the demands that the market will present, and the internal costs that we will incur during production (gaebler.com, 2009). We will use the recurring expenditures as our internal costs determine the prices of each product.
It will not be general for all the cards because customers may choose different qualities of paper, which will result to different prices. The table below shows the initial projection of pricing on a standard A5 card.
Requirements for production or operation
The company will need a printing bureau for the cards. The pioneer one will be in the New York City, and will be serving the pioneer centers within the state. On expansion, we will have between one to three printing bureaus in each state. They will be serving distribution centers over the respective states. This distribution centers are also the order collection centers.
The printing bureau to be set up in New York belongs to the company. It will also own some few centers over the state. The company will lease rest of the distribution and order receiving centers.
Personnel and Management required
We will have a chief executive officer of the organization. He will oversee the activities of each department. The departments will be; development and research department, sale and marketing department, accounting department, customer service department and human resource department. Each will have a head that has relevant qualification. As the company grows, we will employ the matrix structure (Distelzweig, 2009).
Financial projections
Balance sheets for the first three financial years are as a shown below.
Breakeven analysis
A unit product is a combination of complete prints from paper of grade A, B, C, and D. The total cost of buying the unit is 0.37 dollars.
BE = FC/GM
Where BE is breakeven point, FC is the fixed costs and GM is gross margin.
GM = GP/S, Where GP is the Gross profit and S is the sales.
GM = 1217950/1372350 = 0.887492
BE = 240000/0.887492 = $270424.9
For the company to reach the breakeven point it must sale 270424.9/0.37 units of prints. These are equal to 730878 units of prints. These imply that we have 730878 prints each of grade A, B, C and D.
Cost Benefit Analysis
It is necessary that we do a cost benefit analysis to determine if the venture will be worth taking. This technique is necessary to determine whether to move on with the venture or not (.mindtools.com, (n.d)).
Costs
- Land: $300 000
- Building: $600 000
- Furniture: $10 000
- Machinery: $400 000
- Vehicles: $100 000
- Total costs: $1 410 000
Benefits
Considering that this card production system seeks to know what the customer needs, the following factors will improve on the sales. This is as shown below:
- Efficiency and consistency of customer follow-up: estimated returns: $350,000 / year
- Better customer retention and service: estimated returns: $450,000 / year
- Better precision of customer information: estimated returns: $470,000 / year
- Easier to administer sales: estimated returns: $330,000 / year
Total benefits.
$1 600 000
Costs benefit analysis.
1 600 000 – 1 410 000 = 390 000
$390 000
Payback time = total cost/ total benefits.
$1 410 000/$1 600 000 = 0.88125
That is approximately 11 months.
Considering environmental issue
The company will not have any problem with environment since not all the production process will involve production of any bi product. If there are any, they are papers and polythene ware that will be recycled. Before setting up a recycling facility, these products will be sold off to the existing recycling factories.
Recommendations
When the business will start, many investors may card makers may get interested with the idea. This will cause a surging competition. It is then wise to train good customer care representatives who will know how to deal with the customers with great balance.
A tem should also be set up to continuously do research and get findings that will help improve the technical team. That is the design team. The managerial team needs continuous training and retraining. This is to enable them to continue managing the company well to make sure that everything is done cohesively.
References
Distelzweig, H. (2009). Organizational Structure. Web.
Indeed. American Greetings. Web.
Millions, D. (2007). Dealing with Competition. Web.
Mindtools. Cost/benefit Analysis. Web.
Ny. Stationery stores in New York. Web.
Pebbleshow.co.uk. Types of Industries. Web.
Resource For enterpreneurs. Pricing. Web.
Tigerdirect. Software graphics. Web.
Do you need this or any other assignment done for you from scratch?
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