Hockey Business Plan the Concept

Hockey Business

Business Plan

The concept for this business is a retail supplier of hockey equipment, clothing, games, and licensed team/league products and memorabilia. A basic retail model will be used, with good purchased from agents and directly from suppliers at wholesale prices and sold to end users with retail markups. Company ownership, management and leadership will be embodied in the sole proprietor; any additional investors will be silent partners in the business at most. Sports including hockey maintain a fairly constant population of customers, especially amongst members of youth and community sports leagues, though there'd also significant industry saturation. In addition to demographic targeting, the business will target a specific geographic location that has been identified as underserved in the hockey industry. Competition in this area will be limited to large-scale retailers dealing in many different goods, without a specialization, and this will enable the business both to differentiate itself through enhanced customer service offerings and to limit direct competition altogether.

As the business will be a retail operation, prototyping and design are not paramount concerns, and the operational facilities will be fairly standard and will not require significant alterations. The company will be committed to building the community at large and the hockey community specifically through sponsoring and hosting events and charity drives. If success is met with the first retail location, which should take less than six months to have running at full operational capacity, there are plans for expanding the business by adding one store at a time within the same general geographical region, but at a great enough distance to avoid self-competition.

Finance Plan

Due to the relatively simple and straightforward nature of the proposed retail hockey supply business, the financing concerns and plans for this business are not incredibly complex or arduous. The bulk of start-up capital will be needed to make initial product purchases, make a year's worth of lease payments, and to make whatever equipment, shelving, display, and storage adjustments are necessary for the physical store itself. It is expected that these costs will not exceed $100,000, and it is possible that they will be considerably less. Most suppliers will provide credit terms of at least 30 days to initial retail customers such as the proposed business with evidence of adequate funding; this will help to offset start-up costs and provide a means of generating positive cash flow early on in the business's life cycle, which will in turn make generating further capital much easier.