PG03 FEEDBACKS

Overall comment including strengths and areas for improvement

Overall, a well rounded concise and well delivered presentation, good use of visuals and well laid out financial statements. Excellent use of SWOT analysis and good use of imagery for competitor analysis.

The business concept needs further crafting as there are some inconsistencies in it – your SWOT highlighted some of these - and it would benefit from further research and crafting. For example:

- your SWOT analysis indicates there are other companies already operating in your proposed sector. How will you differentiate yourself? What needs/desires are you fulfilling with customers? What benefit are you really offering that will make them spend their money with you rather than competitors? You need to be more specific here.

- build a clear picture of your product lines (do some sketches or gather pictures), and test with friends and associates whether they’d buy, how often, and how much they would pay.

- your hand painted products are labour intensive and therefore are likely to be expensive. What will your target customer base be prepared to spend on such items?

- you are proposing to take a shop in Notting Hill where rents are very high. Can you charge prices for your goods and sell enough volume to cover your costs and pay yourselves? You need to work this out in more detail.

- your income projections seem pretty low. You need to define your product lines, the costs of each line and the selling price of each line x sales volumes. Cost of goods figures appear extremely low for the sales levels indicated and your COGS totals are incorrect. Check your formulae.

- the anticipated customer numbers of 1000 are far too low, even for the first year. Work out how many customers at what average purchase value you need to cover your costs and make a profit.

The financials were very well set out indeed. Very well done. However, please don’t use commas as a number separator – use full points. Keep the colour plain and use red type only in the Profit and loss line of your P&L and Cash flow forecasts.

Visually, some slides were difficult to read as there was so much text on them.

Overall, a good start and a good presentation and a well functioning team. Well done!