Evaluation

Enterprise Task 5

The Event

We have had our first event as Inpress, and i think we can safely say it was a success, plenty of people came and bought prints, t-shirts and beer. a good time had by all, plenty of people where very interested in the event and asked when we would be holding our next one and how could they get involved. But what I can say must be our best over all achievement of the night is entering into talks with someone about printing 100 t-shirts for there band. Which could equate to £300. 

 

Another great positive of the night was that my manager (the boss man at the library pub) thought it was such a success he would like us to put an event of similar proportions on one a month.  

We initially only had and events page for the group but we have now created an actual facebook page for Inpress where we can put pictures etc...

 

Revised Figures

Sadies revised figures; 

After meeting with the business manager at Natwest I decided to revise our figures to follow her advice and make them more accurate.
These are the differences I have made-

• We are now using the city car club (car rental) instead of using Kirsty's car.
• We no longer need public liability insurance as we won't be hiring out our equipment.
• We no longer need our own screen printing equipment as we will be using the colleges for the first year.
• We need to pay to register as a limited company.
• We are now hiring an accountant instead of using Sage One.

City car club: £60

Computer rental: £4,288.44

Paper, ink etc: £130.04

Adobe suite: £1,238.40

Business insurance: £30

Professional and product liability insurance: £100

Rent, including bills and Internet: £3,420

Solicitor: £70

Computer repairs: £300

Furniture: £110

We got a quote from Niall's dads accountant and also asked him how much it would cost to register as a limited company. These figures don't include VAT, but as we will be VAT registered we would get this back anyway.

 

Accountant: £850

Register limited: £75

TOTAL: £10,671.88

yearly costings: £10671.88
estimated yearly turnover (based on first 12 months): £90671.88 (earning £20,000 each)
required monthly income: £7555.99

...meaning that collectively we would have to work 76 hrs per month at £100 per hour, which is 19 hours per week.

Charging £25 per hour as individuals we would have to work 302 hours per month between us- 76 hours per week. Which works out as... 19hours per week each.

Registering Limited

Sadie went on the web and did some good research on the companies house website;

I have gone on to the Companies House website to download the application form needed to start our business. They also have a very useful FAQ page.

http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk

Here is the application form that needs to be filled out and sent to Companies House.

Company Name Availability

As a result of the meeting Sadie and Kirsty had with the bank manager, we have decided that our company needs to be a limited company as we will be urning over the thresh hold for being VAT registered,. So we looked at the availability of company names, and from now on we are Inpress Design Limited.  

http://www.ukincorp.co.uk/company_formation_name_check/default.aspx

Bank Meeting

 Sadie and Kirsty went to meet the bank manager at Natwest while I did some printing, here are there results;

Today me and Kirsty went to Natwest to have a chat with their bank manager. She was really helpful and gave us some great tips for starting up our business. She didn't really have any criticism over the figures that we showed her except that we may be aiming a bit high charging £100 an hour. So we decided to say that we will charge £25 an hour per designer, as not all four designers will be working on a project at one time.

She also mentioned that we should be a limited company as our estimated yearly turnover is £89,074 which goes over the VAT registration threshold (£73,000) we will then have to be VAT registered, the best way to deal with this is to get an accountant. We will also have to register our company by filling out a form IN01 application to register a company and send to Companies House along with a registration fee.

 

She also mentioned that our figures on car insurance, tax and MOT can't go through the company books unless its a company car. We decided that instead we will use city car club, as we won't need a car the majority of the time as we are based quite close to the train station.

She told us to take advantage of anything free, which reminded us that we are able to use the college facilities for a year after we graduate. So we do not need to buy any screen printing equipment until we have started to make an income, this will cut down our start up cost by about £300.

She said to take advantage of any chances to do work experience, wether it be doing free design work to get ourselves known both as individuals and as a collective or working in studios to watch them, learn how they run and even learn from their mistakes.

She told us about the Leeds uni and Met business sectors that offer advice and mentorship. Here are a few other names, websites and places she told us to check out.

Spark and business innovations- Barry Blake

Yorkshire enterprise- Owen Jackson 079515293865, 01132470000

Chamber and Government are trustworthy places to get loans

Natwest.com- start up business.

Competition

This is our research into potential competition in and around the Leeds/West Yorkshire area

They are Factory 4, Catalogue and Craft.

Factory Four is a company based in Leeds which provides training and facilities to people wanting to learn how to screen print this is something as a company we initially wanted to undertake, but as the company developed we decided that this would not be viable as a newly staring company.  

Catalogueare are a similar studio to what we would like to create, printing t-shirts of the own designs and others, this is something we would like to undertake as a company, they are also a small Leeds based design firm which would put us in direct competition.

Craft is a design studio being set up by four of our fellow course mates- Charlotte Bourke, Luke O'Brien, Max Gregory and Joe Warburton.they are of course similar to our selves in many ways due to the group studying on the same course and institute, but more importantly they have similar design aspirations as ourselves.

Presentation

we have started putting together the presentation we have decided that myself and Sadie will present the main body of the presentation and Francesca will present the section about the SWOT and PEST, 

the presentation will be set out as shown below;  

1. Logo and advertisement
2. Competition
3. SWOT analysis
4. PEST analysis
5. Funding
6. Studio space
7. Equipment
8. Finance
9. Marketing and promotion
10. Summary of previous nights event

In preperation for the presentation we found that there where wholes in some of the research thus more must be done! Sadie and Kirsty did some more funding research...  

There is a grant scheme by Leeds city council that helps out small businesses starting up. You have to be an established business for at least 6 months, so it would be good for upgrading our equipment once we have our studio up and running. As most of our equipment is going to be second hand or made by ourselves, this would be very useful.

Loans of up to £5,000 are also available for people to help finance the initial stage of their businesses.

befund.org is another website that offer different loans to new businesses. They have low rates and also offer mentorship included in the cost of loan.

They also provide a calculator to work out your credit, this could be very helpful to people handling their own finances for the first time.

Finance and Equipment

We have finalised the funding options, the costings and the studio space, which we have found out includes bills and wifi in the price, we then went on to look into filling our studio for as cheap as possible. Therefore we started our search on the website freecycle.org a website where you search an item and acquire it free of charge. We found all sorts of useful things we could take full advantage of.

We also managed to find a whiteboard, some scrap wood for myself to build our exposing and screen washing unit, a colour laser printer, a kettle and printing cartridges.

we then went onto look on more conventional websites like IKEA for necessities like desks etc...

Something else we looked into was accounting and fees, also insurance, and solicitors. 

MOT: £40
Tax: £120
Car insurance: £385
Business insurance: £30
Professional and product liability insurance: £100
Public liability insurance: £35
Rent including bills and internet: £3,420
Accountant software: £144
Solicitor: £70
Computer repairs: £300
Equipment- computer rental, screens etc: £4,320
Furniture: £110


When all added up this makes our yearly outgoings £9,074, minus the materials and printing costs.
We decided that £100 an hour would be a reasonable price to charge, considering that their is four of us so the work will get done more quickly. We thought that the best way would be to charge the client material and printing costs, as it may vary from customer to customer.

Assuming that we want to earn around £20,000 a year each, this would mean our estimated yearly turnover is £89,074.
This would make our required monthly income £7,423, which would mean we would have to work at least 75hrs per month at £100 an hour plus cost of materials and printing.

We also decided that we would all earn the same wage, owning a 25% stake in the company each.


We emailed Jane to double check our figures, and also to see if our rate of £100 an hour plus material costs is acceptable.

Funding

Kirsty was tasked with researching funding options; 

What the website offers in terms of funding...

Types of funding....

From this, I think we would need the 'Grants for the Arts' funding as it will provide us with a way for our innovative design company to get started.

I then looked into the accounts templates they provide for you and downloaded them...

This will enable us to ensure we have considered all areas of expenditure.

....this template will ensure that we have a target to work to and not let our money go astray.