T — Share, a storytelling Journey: Why presenting a business plan was an important step for our startup. So, what is T-Share? Pragmatically speaking, it’s an online platform where you can exchange, sell or donate your unwanted clothes. Taking a look through the lens of a modern day person though, you’ll realize it’s far more than that. It’s a necessity, an answer to an economy marred by crisis, an alternative for people reluctant to spending money on things such as clothes. It’s a perfect fit in our diverse and ever-changing society and its trends. It’s more than just about exchanging clothes, it’s about (T-)sharing the love!
The following piece is a part of a story-telling journey of the members of T-share’s team, recounting how the whole initiative began and what the next steps are.
T-Share is a startup that started as a humble idea by five (5) students at Panteion University, as a project for a class. What we didn’t know the day we started working on the idea was that we would be very enthousiastic about making this idea, a reality.
At first, it was not clear to us, as students with limited experience on startups, how we would continue as a team. After two (2) presentations and helpful guidance by our mentors and teachers we found ourselves working on presenting a business plan, as the final presentation of the semester. This presentation came to be a very important step of our startup journey. By organizing and analyzing our initiatives so far, we were able to better understand our purpose and prepare a marketing and business strategy that will help us continue our work and make our idea, a reality.
More specific, writing and presenting a business plan helped us:
1. Have a clear mission for our business idea and vision
Getting to know what your initiative really is, in a organized and structured way helps you determine the next, effecient steps for your startup or project. Though it seems easy and unessecary, it can actually be very complex and it is very risky not to establish a clear, cohesive vision, as it may lead to uncertain and tricky decisions.
2. Analyze the market we our stepping to
A very crucial step in making a business plan, is to research about the market your business is related to. For us, realizing that the market we were stepping to was worth $4,5billion of the Global Industry, helped us see our potetials and capabilities, and giving us the needed strenght to continue in small but brave steps.
3. Map the way to support growth and secure funding
At some point, seeking external funding will be essential in order to continue with our initiative. Having a business plan shows that we are an organized team and will help investors feel confident in us and show our thoroughness with which we have considered future scenarios.
The most crucial component for them will be clear evidence of the company’s future ability to generate sufficient cash flows to meet debt obligations, while enabling the business to operate effectively.
4. Have a thorough timetable for our goals and actions
Keeping a specific timetable for your goals and future actions as a team, can help your initiative plan ahead and meet important deadlines. A timetable is crucial since not only it allows you to focus on specific goals, subgoals and actions but also to keep track of your actions so far.
5. Get to know our competitors
Researching for a business plan, also means to conduct a research on your competitors in the market. This allows you to have a clear view on which challenges your business will face in the future, regarding competition. Furthermore, it allows your team to come up with great ideas on how your business will stand out in the market, “beating” the other projects. In order to accomplish that, though, it is critical to have a fundamental difference that will make you differ from all the other projects and startups.
6. Organize our marketing strategy
A business relies around 70% of its efforts, resources and time for marketing actions. This means organizing a marketing strategy as well as following it. A marketing strategy is very crucial for a business to get recognized and acknowledged publicly.
7. Figure out our target group
Getting recognized and popular also bears the difficulty to get known among the right people, in other words your target group. Realising who is among your target group and your costumers helps you make an effective action plan that will address their needs and desires. Moreover, it will help your team draw an effecient B2B and B2C business and marketing strategy, which will prove to be extra useful in the future.
8. Keep track of our progress
A business plan can help in a lot of ways. For me, most important one is to know where your idea, your team and your business stands. By making and presenting a business plan, you can keep track of the progress you have made and the actions and goals you have to face ahead. By making small updates and variations to your original plan every several months (three months is most recommended), you can have a thorough view on what you have achieved so far, how and when. After all, knowledge is always power.
To sum up, conducting our first business plan as the leading T-Share team was an excellent way of getting to know where we stand, what our vision is and which are our future plans.
T-Share is a project for the Ad Discovery Workshop: an experimental peer-to-peer learning hands-on workshop conducted by Betty Tsakarestou at the Department of Communication Media and Culture, of Panteion Univeristy, Athens, Greece.
T-Share Facebook Page
T-Share Instagram Page
Team:
Frossini Drakouli, CEO
Jason Verbis, COO
Nikos Geramanis, Product Supervisor
Iakobos Vlachos. Social Media Strategist
Christina Koromila (christikor11) , Social Media Manager
Follow our storytelling journey:
- T-Share: Our startup journey, our global wardrobe by Iakobos Vlachos: http://bit.ly/28VSsvs
- T-Share: Our startup journey by Nikos Geramanis: http://bit.ly/29cGIBB
- T-Sharing the love : The vision behind the startup by Jason Verbis: http://bit.ly/28V8bYL
- T-Share: Our startup journey by Christina Koromila (christikor11) http://bit.ly/2901QwT
