Start-up help for retail and service businesses
So you have decided to take the big step and start your own
business. Congratulations! The City of Littleton has a number of services
available to you to help you succeed.
- Start up check list
- Business plans examples
- Financial templates and forms
- Marketing lists
- Available space and vacant land
- Maps of potential customers
- Other resources and information
The only requirement to receive these services is that you must be inside the Littleton city limits.
Core Strategy
The very first step for any business owner is to determine whether
you are going to run your business as a commodity business, or whether you are going to compete as
a specialized niche business. The decision will affect both how you manage your company
(will you focus on lowering costs or will you innovate?) and where you will invest resources.
Watch this short video at right, and then make a core strategy decision.
Profit and Loss Projections
The best way to organize your activities is to open this profit and loss (P&L) sheet and save to your computer. A P&L sheet simply subtracts all your expenses from all your income to see if you have made a profit or loss. Everything you do in building a business plan will feed into this key financial sheet. Start with estimating expenses. You should be able to fill in the expense categories by getting estimates of goods to be sold, rent, insurance, utilities, accounting, etc. and put them in your P&L projection sheet. Be sure to include your salary and a profit on your investment. To estimate income, go through the following steps.
Customer Profile/Market Size
Now that you know your total expenses, you have breakeven income targets to shoot for. You will need to develop an ideal customer profile from which you can estimate sales. A customer profile lists the common characteristics, often demographically defined, of all of your customers. For example, is your ideal customer a woman between the ages of 35 and 50? Do they all make incomes between $35,000 and $75,000? Do they watch the Disney Channel or drive SUV’s? How many of those people live in your trade area?
Check Competitors
You will not have all of this market to yourself, however. Competitors will cut the "pie" up into "market shares." To get a sense of which competitors are out there, go to Littleton city limits map and enter the kind of business you have (e.g. restaurant).
You may also want to look at the economic census to divide the "sales" by the number of "establishments" in your industry to get average sales per store in Colorado.
Do not use commas when entering data in the calculators below.
Estimate Income
You are now ready to estimate your income. Your "market size" will give you an idea of how many potential customers there are and the competitor intelligence will give you an idea of how many ways that market is going to be split. Go back to the P&L sheet and enter estimated sales by month, keeping in mind that there will be variations by month.
A little feasibility trick is to take your total annual sales and divide it by 260 weekdays in the year. This will tell you how much you have to sell every day to hit your breakeven sales number. This "gut feel" is probably the best feasibility study you can do.
Business Plan
You are now ready to write a business plan. You have completed the core elements of a business plan in the above steps; you just need to write it down so bankers and investors can look at it. By going through the above process first, you should have a good idea of the viability of your business. By relating every step to the income and expense columns of your profit and loss statement, you will get a much better sense of the relationship between the important elements of your business. Below are a number of examples of business plans by industry:
Starting Up
You are now ready to start your business. Take a look at the Start-up Checklist to make sure you have all your necessary permits, licenses and tax forms filed. You may find other useful resources at our Tools for Business Success.
Come in to see the B/IA
At this point, we’d like to meet with you to make sure everything is in order. We’ll go over your business plan with you and check your market research. Having a fresh set of eyes review your plans is often helpful in spotting critical issues and questions. You can email us at info@littletongov.org to set up an appointment.
Marketing List
Once you have started your business in Littleton (and registered with the Sales Tax Division), you have the option of receiving $150 (around 1,000 records) of free direct marketing lists. The City of Littleton has teamed up with SECO Financial to provide these free consumer and business marketing lists. If you determine that a direct marketing list would be beneficial, contact Business/Industry Affairs (info@littletongov.org) to begin the process of creating your list. Please note that anything above $150 is at your own cost. |
