To the side is a suggestion of the contents and structure of a clothing business plan, but you can adjust it as necessary to fit the needs of your business.
- Executive Summary
This summarises the most important points of your business plan.
- Owner’s background / experience
Here it is important to identify your strengths and weaknesses so that you can establish what responsibilities you can be accountable for, and what other responsbilities you will need to outsource to either colleagues, contractors, freelancers or suppliers.
- The Opportunity
Set the scene and let the reader know what the opportunity is. Use facts and figures to add credibility and to highlight the gap in the market.
- The Business Concept
This section is about summarising the business concept to establish what the business will offer, who it will cater for and what needs it will address.
- Branding
Here you can include the business mission, values and aim. The brand guidelines including colours, logo and font, as well as imagery and other visual aesthetics.
- Products and services
List out all the products and services that you will be offering.
- Market Research
Demonstrate that you understand the external market and different trends impacting your industry. Read industry reports that provide detail about current trends and performance. Provide facts and figures to add validity to your report and highlight where the gaps are.
- Consumer Analysis
Similar to market research, identify the needs of your consumers and understand their behaviours, their requirements and how their values and demands are changing based on trends.
- Competitor Analysis
Having a thorough knowledge and understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors will allow you to focus the positioning of your brand and ensure a unique identity which avoids just copying others.
- Marketing Strategy
Having a clear marketing strategy can be the success or the failure of the brand. This is often underestimated by start-up businesses. You need a clear plan of how you are going to get brand recognition and need to consider online and offline tactics, paid and organic options and budgets and timelines to execute the strategy. Deciding to use social media only is no longer effective. Partnerships and proactive marketing campaigns is the best way to achieving brand awareness.
- Communication Strategy
Once a marketing strategy has been developed, this can then be supported with a communication strategy that will reach your consumers, and talk to them in a tone that will inspire engagement and ultimately lead to sales.
- Operations and logistics
To help with this section, you may want to explore using a Business Model Canvas, which will encourage you to consider all aspects of your business operations such as sales channels, human resources, physical resources, distribution channels etc. Do your research and understand how your business will operate at both sides of the process from product or service development through to product or service delivery, and everything in between.
- Costs and pricing strategy
Be clear about what you are going to charge for a product or service and how much it costs you to make that product or deliver a service. If the costings don’t add up, you won’t have a sustainable business model. Remember though that costs go much further than the direct product or service and you will need to consider other indirect fixed or variable costs such as rent, electricity, duty charges, wages, marketing costs, legal fees, insurance etc.
- Financial Forecasting
This section is about bringing together all your costs and putting these against your sales forecasts so that you can establish when the business is likely to break even, when you might need investment and if so, how much you need. It is good to include sensitivity forecasting too to establish what the forecasts will look like if they are +/- 10% of your predictions. These are also useful for investors so that they can see the length of time required before you can pay back any loans you may need.
- Risk Assessment
Consider both internal and external factors that could impact your business. We have all just experienced Covid-19 and the impact that an environmental and social disaster can have on businesses and individuals alike, but what other factors could affect your business?