This was one of the business plans we had developed for the entrepreneurship class. The class gave us excellent perspectives on entrepreneurship – the personality traits, the appetite for creative ideas, the urge to leave an impact on society, the struggles, failures and accomplishments achieved with unhindered passion, commitment and determination. This is a brief executive summary and the plan is still in works. The final updated business plan will be made available after completing the business analysis.

Borrowed and Blue, LLC

Executive Summary

A. Mission Statement

Borrowed and Blue, LLC will facilitate a unique and easy to utilize online platform, BorrowedandBlue.com, for engaged couples to plan the wedding of their dreams in the New York City, Boston and Washington DC metropolitan areas from the convenience of their home.

B. Description of Services

Given the complexities in planning a wedding, the adventure can be one of the most exciting yet stressful occasions in one’s life. BorrowedandBlue.com will be an industry first website dedicated to busy couples looking for an all-inclusive place to plan their wedding from scratch without the need of hiring an expensive formal wedding planner. From a list of venues to photographers, DJs/bands, and florists, couples will have the ability to select the elements necessary in the planning of a wedding according to their budgets.

Value Proposition

According to the “American Weddings” study conducted by The Fairchild Bridal Group., the average cost of an American wedding is just over $27,000. A total of $72 billion is spent on weddings annually in the U.S. The average price tag represents a 73 percent increase during the past 15 years, according to the study. This can be a significant burden on those who need to foot the bill, but it doesn’t have to be so painful. In spite of such huge expense, majority of the wedding couples are not happy with the services provided. As an alternative to traditional wedding planner, many internet based business cropped up, but unfortunately there is no “one-stop” internet based wedding site which can meet all the needs of the consumer in a timely manner. BorrowedandBlue wants to fill this opportunity gap by offering “all in one” exceptional, timely bound, high quality, customized wedding services to interested parties at affordable prices. BorrowedandBlue.com will employ the latest software technology available for Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms and Decision Support Systems to connect businesses in the wedding sector with couples via a business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing services model.

C. Overview of Market Characteristics

The wedding industry represents a $130 billion industry and is expected to grow at 3.5% compound annual growth. The online wedding market is worth more than $7.9 Billion and this segment is expected to grow by 8% annually. On average there are 2.4 million weddings per year in the United States in which the wedding industry is estimated to generate $58 billion in sales from wedding rings, apparel, flowers, receptions, honeymoons, gifts, and other related expenses. Moreover, the wedding industry also generates $70 billion dollars a year in purchases related to new life together, such as insurance, financial services, automobiles, etc. Recent results from a wedding survey show that 77% of couples will use the Internet to help plan their wedding. As related to their engagement, wedding, honeymoon, and time after, 43% will use the Internet to research products and services, while 13% will purchase products and services. The industry is highly fragmented, made up of multiple smaller enterprises caterers, wedding consultants, dresses, various beauty suppliers (hair, makeup), photographers, favors/bridesmaids gifts, music, honeymoon related, etc.  Our goal is to bring all of these smaller enterprises into an organized system based on the service charge requirements of the enterprises. As an intermediary agent, BorrowedandBlue will have two primary customers: bridal couples and wedding suppliers. Although BorrowedandBlue.com web services will be the first of its kind in the industry, some potential competitors would be theknot.com and the weddingchannel.com. We have chosen three metropolitan areas – New York, Washington D.C and Boston characterized by high income demographics. We are not boxed in to serving only one age group of clientele but it is foolish to ignore women in their twenties and also 43% of marriages are remarriages of couples in their thirties.

D. Overview of the Marketing Plan

As an online company, BorrowedandBlue.com will primarily market the site through online outlets and strategic partnerships with wedding suppliers and associations.  BorrowedandBlue.com will advertise to email lists that cater to the young professional woman like DailyCandy.com as well as targeted advertising on Facebook, Google search terms and Evite.com.  BorrowedandBlue.com will also advertise using sponsored emails to online subscribers for traditional bridal magazines like Brides and Contemporary Bride.

BorrowedandBlue.com will also use social networking to build a buzz around the service utilizing Facebook fan pages and Twitter.  These efforts will also be used to introduce the management of the site to build a personal connection between the users and the company.  For example, the CEO will have a twitter feed to post interesting links, stories and resources.

More traditional mediums such as print advertising in bridal magazines, brochure circulation, word-of-mouth advertising, are additional sources of promoting BorrowedandBlue.com.  BorrowedandBlue.com will attend bridal trade shows to build partnerships with vendors and advertise its services. BorrowedandBlue‘s marketing campaign will focus on driving volume to the website and converting visitors to buyers.

Product/Service Development Plan

BorrowedandBlue’s featured product will be a user-friendly Internet website that will offer free wedding planning services. Through a dynamic yet uncluttered interface consumers (i.e. couples) can search using various Q&A sequence loop applications that will generate possible vendor options based on budget and geographic boundaries. For instance, by entering a budget, location (within the three city selections), and a possible date for their wedding, a couple can view promising venues with a myriad of options that fit within their budget. The subscription-free BorrowedandBlue.com will provide a personal portal that users can log into with a username and a password. Consumers can not only use this portal to save their searches for analysis at a later date, but they can also take notes on calls to vendors and review and/or rate vendors previously utilized. Absolute privacy of information will be maintained and users will be alerted on any account changes.

Alternatively, vendors in the wedding industry, whether in the high or low end of the market, will have the opportunity to promote their products and services to a targeted audience in three of the major metropolitan areas of the United States.

E. Business Model

Access to the website will be free, but the challenge will be to attract lot of good quality traffic. BorrowedandBlue.com will generate revenue through advertising, corporate sponsorships from wedding vendors and bridal magazines, and Pay Per Event (PPE) services like Google AdSense. Web advertising will be paid for in two ways: Impression (CPM) based and Performance (CPM) based depending on how the user interacts with the website. Transaction fees for brokering the sale of wedding supplier services (expected to be 5% of transaction amount) coupled with advertisements and paid promotions will be primary sources of revenue for BorrowedandBlue

F. Management team and Company Structure

BorrowedandBlue will be setup as a limited liability corporation and will have two partners as key management personnel. Both the partners, Mr. Andrew and Mr. Johnson have over eight years of extensive experience in marketing, sales and internet technologies. They have been involved in the wedding planning business for over two years and understand the market characteristics and industry trends. The CEO, Mr. Jackson has over ten years of experience in the areas of Internet strategy, program management, software design, and development. In the initial development state BorrowedandBlue.com will have a CEO and a marketing manager and will engage a web development firm to build the website. But as the site traffic grows, BorrowedandBlue.com will hire a fulltime CTO, who will oversee day-to-day operations, and additional marketing and sales personnel.

G. Operations Plan

BorrowedandBlue will follow a two-phase startup plan. During the first phase, the website will be catering to three major metropolitan cities and all the day-to-day operations will be handled by the CEO along with the partners. Operations include business administration, marketing, sales, billing, vendor coordination and service improvements. During the second phase, after seeing credible sales turnover, we hope to raise venture capital funding of at least $1 million to launch a marketing and sales plan, hire 10 additional staff and launch the website in 30 cities across the US.

H. Financial Projections

Since BorrowedandBlue is an internet-based startup, the initial startup costs are relatively low. Initial investment of around $70,000 will come from the partners which will be used to rent office space, build website, purchase office equipment and hire the CEO and a marketer. The company will not achieve profitability until year one. During second year, with expected venture capital funding and expanded operations, we hope to be profitable by year end.