Nick Scott - writing a business plan
Keith Evans - mission and values / managing money
Anna Franks - marketing
Keith Arrowsmith - legal and intellectual property
Russell Smith - self employment
Myself and several other friends on courses across the college had an idea to start a collective under one name, allowing us to collaborate and work professionally under one brand. We believe that our range of skills can be used effectively if we work together to produce both commercial jobs and social assignments about world issues we feel strongly about.
We looked into the structure of our business, what skills we can offer, our target audience, and how we will compete. Our values as a company involve keeping the attitude informal which creates a better working environment, and in turn, we produce a higher quality of work. The advantage of being friends will allow us to crit each others work without any hesitation to be straight forward and honest with feedback, as well as taking criticism on board without taking the comments personally. Managing our own time means it is up to the individual to get the job done, however we all motivate one another throughout each brief.
Our skills and services include a broad range of creative disciplines, such as art direction, graphic design, illustration, photography, film, branding and advertising which enables us to cover the market for businesses looking for creative assistance. By providing work across different fields, companies can get all their promotional material and branding (e.g.) from one business, which will ensure consistency of design throughout all aspects they require (such as branding, website, adverts, etc). The package deal also means that we can charge a more reasonable price for start up businesses - one audience we are targeting - because they will be more likely to need work from each discipline at once.
We were introduced to several different business models including sole traders, LTD companies, partnerships and not-for-profit's. We felt that the best model for us was a limited liability partnership, as it is suitable for the number of people in our collective to work with no rigid hierarchy and eliminates the risk of bankruptcy for the individuals - only the business will suffer if anything were to go wrong.
One of the business consultants we spoke to, Anna Franks, talked to us about marketing plans and the best way to expose your business. We needed to consider what we had to offer and how this would compete with other, similar companies or design agencies. Identifying our target audience is also a step towards successful marketing. What are the benefits of the features of our business?
Using the COSTAR business model introduced to us by Keith Evans, a consultant from CIDA, allowed us to explore every aspect of our business so that we knew the idea was completely viable. This pushed us to look at areas for customer, opportunity, solution, team, advantage and results.
http://www.gannons.co.uk/blog/llp-vs-ltd/
No comments:
Post a Comment