Last week in class we continued to work on our storefront project. After finishing parts 1-3, we had to begin parts 4-6. Parts 4-6 is the less idealistic business stuff, but the more practical. I had to draft and write up a tentative budget for our doggy day care service. While a budget is such a straightforward and seemingly basic document, it is incredible difficult and tedious to have to write up. There is so much unknown when starting a business regarding how much money needs to be spent and where those funds should be allocated. I found that whatever I imagined the price of something to be, if I doubled that value I would find my estimation to be much closer to the actual value of the goods. One of the more tricky aspects of this is that the storefront of Boylston St. is so run down and disgusting, that there is so much necessary money to be spent on simply repairing and sprucing up the appearance. This paired with the normal costs of starting a business i.e. permits, insurance, utilities, etc. means that we are spending a lot of money in places that we didn't originally anticipate.
In our $200 project we are in the process of ordering our BHS themed logo socks. The reason that it took us so long to do this is because we wanted to ensure that we are ordering the right product. Many of the sewed on designs that we found on line seemed shabby and poorly done. We really liked the idea of socks where we could print on an image because through that process we could ensure that the product design would come out a lot nicer and cleaner. We've been working hand in hand with the assistant athletic director Mr. Williams on this project, and he ordered a couple pairs from the same distributer with our design on it that we could use as models. We're happy we did because we ended up liking a design that changed a bit from our initial one, now reading "Brookline Warriors" under the spartan logo. The socks came out likely and different sports teams have expressed interest in purchasing them. Our next step it to order them and then to push them off, which we anticipate will happen completely within a couple of days.
I've been impressed by how you've stuck with the boring details of the finance sheets. Yes, they are super important, but they are tough to handle. You've been really impressive in this regard.
ReplyDeleteThe socks project ends at the end of the quarter, but your market for them will grow dramatically for them once spring hits. I'll bet you can sell to baseball, tennis, lax, track--LOTS of teams. You might think about ways that you and your team could turn this into a real money-maker (for you? for the athletics department?)