Context

letter
A business plan is an important document for your business. The business
plan should be created before you launch your new business venture, and you
should review every few months to make sure youre covering all your plans. A
business plan is required when you go to banks or other financial institutions in an
attempt to receive a loan for your business.
This business plan is written for a bicycle retail store in an attempt to receive
a loan from Small Business Administration. Beantown Bikers is a bicycle retail store
that sells all kinds of bikes and also accessories and apparels, as well as provides
repair services.

Beantown Bikers
Business Plan
Huiying Zhao

1 2 0 1 N e w b u r y S t . , B o s t o n , M A 0 2 1 2 0

1.0 Executive Summary

Beantown Bikers is a bicycle store offering retail sales of all kinds of bicycles,
parts, accessories, apparel and repair services. It is located in a heavily trafficked
and university-focused area - Newbury Street in Boston. The primary market for
Beantown Bikers is the university student population, which has a growth rate of 25%
each year. The secondary market is the university faculty and staff who have a
healthy lifestyle.
1.1 Objectives
The business plan is being prepared for presentation to Small Business
Administration. The Beantown Bikers is always consistent about to provide with
high quality customer experience. The objectives for Beantown Bikers are:

Provide a high quality of sales and services.

Maintain a financially healthily business.

Focus marketing on new students to maintain the current growth in sales

and service revenue.

1.2 Key to Success

Our premier, high visibility location will immediately attract the Northeastern
University students to our store. Providing high quality of bicycle sales and services
has been critical to our success. Besides that, awarding and promoting the current
employees are also essential to our success. Employees build connections between
customers, and professional employees also attract customers to visit the store.
Long-term relationships with customers would help build connections at local area.

2.0 Products and Services

Retail Sales

Bicycles: We sell new bicycles and also used bikes. The mountain bikes are
our primary product, and road bikes are secondary product. Beyond that, we
also sell youth bikes.

Accessories: We offer a large variety of accessories such as locks, water

bottles, gloves, comfortable seats, headlights, helmets and back packs and so
on. We know it is not possible to carry every kind of accessory in our store.
However, we try to cover the most useful and desirable items by our target
market.

Apparel: At Beantown Bikers, we rotate our apparel based on the seasons.

For example, before the fall with high frequency rain, we stock jackets and
waterproof rainwear. And in winter, we offer helmets, gloves and shoe
covers for the snow protection. Come spring with melting snow, we start
displaying summer T-shirts and shorts.

Service

Repair Service: We offer full-service for all of our bicycles. First year of
warranty, we offer our services for free. Beyond one year, we charge for
maintenance or repair services depending on the condition of bicycles.

3.0 Market Analysis Summary

The primary market segment for Beantown Bikers is the university student
population. The local market in Boston is driven by the lack of parking. Bicycle
transportation is more convenient, economical, as well as time and space efficient in

the crowded neighborhood. As long as new students enrolled in university each year,
our market growth is stable.
4.0 Main Competitors

As a new to town business, we consider Back Bay Bicycles as our main

competitor. Back Bay Bicycles is a retail store located in Back Bay area. They carry
different kinds of bicycles like us and also provide repair services. However, they already
have more than 5 years of experience of doing business in Boston and have a certain local
loyal customers.
4.1 Competitive Edge

The primary competitive advantage of Beantown Bikers is our location. We

located at Newbury Street, which is one of most crowded commercial area in Boston.
Besides, schools are few blocks away from Newbury Street such as Northeastern
University and Berkeley College of Music.
5.0 Sales Strategy

The pricing of bicycles is very tight and almost not open for negotiation like

automobiles. Apparels and accessories are generally keystone priced. Some small
items cost more in handling and sales than they do to buy from supplier. The
Beantown Bikers attracts customers by providing coupons or discounts.
5.1 Sales Forecast

The following chart is our sales forecast in three years. The chart is made

based on historical data of existing stores and conclusions from industry researches.

 100,000
90,000
80,000
70,000
60,000
50,000

Year
3

40,000
30,000

Year
2

20,000

Year
1

10,000
-
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun

Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

6.0 Management Summary

The owner of Beantown Bikers, Huiying Zhao, will also manage the business.

She has a Bachelor degree in Finance and Entrepreneurship from Northeastern

University. Her passion has always been bicycle business and she is familiar with
the local area and also connected with Northeastern University students. She also
needs to mechanics at service area and at least six sales in store.
We estimate staffing needs to be:

Rotating staff of 6-8 salespeople: 2 needed on regular days, 3-4 for weekends.

1-2 bike technicians on any given day depending on seasonality and volume
of repairs.

It will be necessary that staff keep close contact and maintain good communication
with the manager. The manager will need to be close in tune with all operations of
the business, and decisions made will need to go through them.

7.0 Financial plan

The financial plan is developed based on previous years data of the existing

stores. We did a lot of research on bicycle market in Boston to make this financial
plan be more accurate. The seller, buyer, and the accountant worked together on the
plan to balance optimism with reality. We require total funding of $200,000
including start-up expenses and assets.
7.1 Operational Expenses

The operations require start-up expenses of $17,700. Huiying Zhao is

investing some of her own money, partially a home equity in the company. This plan
calls for these loans to be repaid in the first year.

Start-Up & One-time Expenses
Legal

$6,000
Stationery etc. $250
Promotional Materials $300
Consultants $800
Insurance $350
Lease Deposit $10,000
Total Start-up Expenses $17,700

Capital Equipment Y1 (costs):

Inventory $30,000
Other Current Assets $10,000
Long Term Assets $80,000
Total Capital Equipment $120,000

Operating Expenses Y1:
Rent/Utilities $11,000
Payroll $150,000
Misc.


$4,000
Total Operating Expenses $165,000

Total Start-up Expenses $17,700
Total Capital Equipment $120,000
Total Operating Expenses $165,000




$302,700

7.1 Break-even Analysis

The Break-even Analysis gives us a rough estimate on how much product and

service we need to sell each month to cover all our expenses. The following chart is
drawn from data in the Sales Forecast tables.