Business Plans

Plastic Pumpkin Scales

As part of our 'traces' brief we as promotors have to work within in our groups to come up with a business plan. Today we had what I'd like to call the 'golden opportunity' to meet Matt Desmier who is the head of the Enterprise Pavilion at the Arts University College Bournemouth. He gave us a brief talk on his career history and how he got to where he is today and basically showed us how the Enterprise Pavilion could be of great help to us in the coming future. I found this session very informative and a good contact to have so to speak. I do plan on having my own business within the fashion industry and Matt talked about the various contacts that he has also within the industry.

The main aim of our session with him was to discuss business plans; what they are, how to write them and what they are used for. We then were given a product from the Museum of Design In Plastics (MODIP), from these we were to write up a business plan and approach it with a 'Dragons Den' style. Within my group we were given a plastic pumpkin measuring scale (kitchen utensil), at first i thought it was quite niche and kitsch and automatically thought of a customer base aimed at people who shopped in stores like 'Cath Kidston', however through our research and product limitations we were able to refine our ideas. Here is a copy of our business plan.

Fun Plastics Business Plan

We are ‘Fun Plastics’. Set up In November 2007- we embarked on the lack of fun and interesting yet practical Kitchen utensils and used this gap in the market to produce kitsch fun-loving, eccentric yet practical utensils.

The big idea basically is to bring quirky design aesthetics to everyday kitchen utensils.

We believe that our current prototype of the ‘Pumpkin Scale 1000’ works because over (a million people own and use kitchen scales), every household needs a fine measurement scale, why not make it a user friendly scale that people of all ages can use. Ideally for measuring dry fine spices like salt, thyme and pepper, the ‘Pumpkin Scale 1000’ is perfect as it’s easy to use, easy to store and easy to clean

Our competitors consist of online stores such as; and also Urban Outfitters concession store/stands.

· Rawspace.com

· Kitsch-u-like.com

· Cathkidston.com

Our market is aimed at men and women of all ages who like buying and sending gifts for friends and family members.

Since our start up we have had great success in trading with ‘www.totally-funky.co.uk’. They have been our main online retail customer, purchasing over 10.000 units of our products. Our products are mainly made out of plastic, which means they are quite sustainable from a user point of view however we are aware of the environmental affects that plastic has on our community and are working towards further product development to produce our products out of recyclable materials.

Considering this product has a practical but decorative function, when used for dry fine spices measuring up to 1000grams, the lifespan of this product is 5 years +. All our products are produced in our sub-contracted factories in China and currently our lead-time for the ‘Pumpkin Scale 1000’ is 4 weeks.

We believe that this is a good investment because there is a gap in the market. We as ‘Funplastik’ have the ability to work on our product development and design to create new and aesthetically pleasing groundbreaking kitchen utensils.