Business Plan

Screen-Printing Business Plan

The Concept

T-shirt Heaven’s mission is to provide customers with custom designed t-shirts and other items of clothing. The items will be produced using a screen printer. A screen printer is something which can print ink onto a t-shirt using a screen layer over the top. As the business moves into a better position, we will move into stitching, for a picture logo on t-shirts, or for hats and jeans. Although were called t-shirt heaven we won’t just be producing t-shirts. We can do your designs on hats, posters, sofas, trainers or any other screen printable things.

T-shirt Heaven will start out on a market stall, selling many different t-shirt designs, and it will then move in to a bigger space in a shop. The shop will be located in either, Cambridge or London or maybe even both if it becomes a popular place to shop for clothing.

T-shirt Heaven is aiming to reach a big profit in the first year and will continue to succeed in the years to come.

Start off point

In the first two months of T-shirt Heaven starting everything will be sold on a market or even at a household. The only employers of this business will be family members. Obviously sales will seem to begin slowly, but as things go on the business will pick up, selling to universities and other local places/businesses.

The Company

The company will be owned and operated by Jahmal Crowe. Jahmal Crowe has always been interested in owning his own business/company, and becoming a successful person in life. He thinks that there is much more money and success to be made by working for yourself rather than working for someone else. He has skills in art/media/photography and is overall a creative person which helps a lot when it comes to designing and producing screen prints. He studied creative and media at Long Road College and Media Studies is his next step at Cambridge Art School. He is hoping to sell some of his t-shirt designs at his university to bring in more money to the company to make it bigger and better. This is going to be a family business and as his family is very creative with his editor father and graphic designer cousins, this should be a great help for his company.

The Market

T-shirt Heaven targets towards an audience of any age, but more towards an urban genre, unless you are going in there with your own design, then it can be any genre you want it to be, but the set clothing at T-shirt Heaven is aimed towards an urban genre audience.

T-shirt Heavens Competition:

. Other t-shirt stalls around the market

. Design Companies

. Clothing Retailers

. T-shirt Company shops

T-shirt Heaven will get around their competition and be bigger and better than their competition by making top of the range up to date t-shirt designs, using nice fitted and good quality stock. In the shop they will make it welcome and lively, and they will also have little competitions, where people come in with their designs and which ever one is chosen to be the best, it will go up on stock as a t-shirt where if sold the designer gets a cut off the profit.

Success

The company plans to 'at the start' grow and build up slowly, just to see how much sales and profit there is to be made from the business in their particular market and to see how the cash flows in. Once the money has been rolling in well, they will then move on to buying top of the range quality and will build a website where you can buy from. They will also set up more shops, and will have their own trademark design which is set to become very big worldwide. This is expected to be done in around year three to five.

Prices of clothing will be set on how popular the design is, so an average price of £10-15 will be marked out for most designs and for the trademark design prices will be around £25 and maybe even more if it becomes a top clothing line. T-shirt Heaven is forecasted to reach profitability by the first year which will lead them to take the business a step higher. Their aim is to make this family business a multi-million pound ownership in years to come.

Copyright

Copyright protects many things, from music to any designs which you have made. Copyright is an automatic thing as soon as you make it. This means that once something has been copyrighted, any person other than you is not aloud to use it unless they have your permission, but there has to be proof that they can use it.

However, copyright does not protect ideas for work, so if you have an idea which you think is good but you haven;t done it yet, then it is not copyrighted, so you have to of actually done the idea to show proof that it is yours. If you haven’t got it copyrighted, then it is always good to post it to yourself so that you have the date, otherwise someone could see your work, copy it, then say that you have ripped them off.

Once something has got the ‘c’ in a circle symbol it means that it has been copyrighted, so you can’t use take it, or do anything with it, otherwise it is against the law.

Patent

Patents protect the features and processes that make things work. This lets you profit from anything you have invented. It protects new inventions and covers how things work, what they do, how they do it, what they are made of and how they are made. It gives you the owner the right to prevent others from making, using, importing or selling the creation/invention without permission.

You have to make sure that your invention is a new creation and not something which has been made before, otherwise they can do all of the things I listed above because it hasn't got a patent to protect it. If you want to then you can let others use your patent by granting them a licence. You may want to involve others to help display, develop or market your patent. By having a patant it basically just gives you the oppurtunity to build something up and get something displayed without other people being able to take it or do anything to it at all.

Trademark

Trade marks are like symbols like logos and brand names which distinguish goods and services in the market place. You can also register your trade mark which will show that it is not allowed to be re-used or modified. To tell if a trade mark has been registered it will have an 'R' symbol next to it. The symbol is small and is in a circle, this will warn people about its registration. However, if you take the symbol and use it, without it actually being properly registered is an offence.

A registered trade mark should put people off using your trade mark without your permission and if they do use it, then it allows you to take legal action against anyone who uses it without your permission. As its your property it means you can sell it or let other people have a licence that allows them to use it.

To protect an unregistered trade mark you have to have evidence of it being yours. You can do this by posting the trade mark to yourself, so that you have the date of it being posted/created. This way you can prove that it is yours.

My final idea - Screen Printing

Out of my three ideas I have now decided on one idea to take forward. This idea is screen printing on t-shirts.

I want to continue with this idea because I am planning to start up a business with screen printing so I thought I will get some experience in screen printing by finding out about it doing research, so when it comes to starting up the business I know the whole background to my idea.

What business are you really in?

The business which I am located in would be screen printing. I am going to be known as a screen printer who does t-shirt printing, rather than a t-shirt printer who does screen printing, this way it shows that people don't only have to come for t-shirts, they could also come for posters, sofa prints etc.

I think that through my business I will get a lot of business around Cambridge, especially with all the students around. I could make a variety of t-shirts representing Cambridge, along with the t-shirts which other people contact me to do.

My aim is to one day have a shop in London selling my screen printing designs. I would love to become successful in this field and this is my ambition. I would also want to move out to Jamaica for 3 months selling screen printing designs of t-shirts, because I know that in Jamaica they would be desperate to design their own designs and share it with everyone around the nation. I know that I will one day do this.