Moc Fish: a website-design company business plan

Moc Fish is a website-design company that currently operates in Halifax, NS. The founder intends that eventually MocFish will relocate to China. The company consists of a small team of web development professionals, including programmers, writers and designers, who build high-end websites from scratch. The company is currently targeting Chinese corporate customers as the target market, with Canadian customers as the secondary target market. This product incorporates a wide range of individual services, which can also be marketed separately from the packaged "whole website" service. These include logo design, menu design, name card design, website hosting, site maintenance, online advertisement programs, internet video, graphic design and flash designs. The form of business would be a corporation, as this reduces risk to the owner and allows for the company to raise additional capital easily.

The Industry

The industry is highly segmented. Most competitors at the high end of the market are specialized website consulting firms such as our own. There is no dominant market player. The industry is growing rapidly, especially in China, as the Chinese economy continues its rapid growth trajectory. This keeps the intensity of rivalry between individual companies low. However, this high level of competition gives customer significant bargaining power over prices. Suppliers have low bargaining power, however. Most suppliers are labour, and there is a surplus of web design labour in China. In Canada, labour has higher bargaining power, and this is one of the reasons the firm expects to relocate back to China -- the availability of good, cheap web design talent there will facilitate growth. There is a low threat of substitutes -- a presence on the Internet and mobile platforms is not something easily substituted by other forms of marketing. There is a high risk of entry by new competitors, as there are few barriers to entry. The market may be crowded, but it is also growing rapidly. Overall, the high growth and lack of single dominant competitor makes this a highly attractive industry to firms that can reach customers and keep website development costs down.

1.3 Distribution

The distribution channel is straightforward -- services are delivered online. The customer and MocFish find each other online, and then work out the details of the business either over the phone, over the Internet or sometimes in person. The site design services can be rendered from anywhere in the world and delivered over the Internet to the customer. Payment can be accepted from the customer online as well, making this a very mobile business.

1.5 The Target Market

The target market is going to consist of medium-sized enterprises in mainland China. This market is vast -- and with the Chinese economy growing between 8-10% per year the target market is growing rapidly as well. These companies require, by Chinese law, significant capital outlay to become registered in China (around RMB 750,000) so these companies are generally well-financed and can afford high-end web services. They tend to face a highly competitive market that has little brand loyalty, and therefore need to have a web presence that stands out from the crowd. As a result, there is high demand among this target market for a superior web and mobile presence.