Home Accessories and Gifts Business Plan

Privately owned and operated by Deirdre Staab and Shelly Dozier-Mckee, The Scarlet Tassel is a newly established retail store offering stylish, eclectic and affordable home accessories and gifts to consumers wanting to create a personalized home environment.

Located in the Sandy Springs/Lower Roswell area of Atlanta, Georgia, The Scarlet Tassel will cater to middle- and upper-class consumers who look beyond the national chain stores for home accessories and gifts.

After having established a successful and growth-oriented business, we look to expand our business to e-commerce during our third year of operation. This additional business channel will allow us to reach a broader customer base as well as expand the level of customer service and personalized services we are able to offer the consumer.

STORE LOCATION
The Scarlet Tassel will be located in the Sandy Springs/Lower Roswell area of Atlanta, Georgia. With easy access from Interstate 285, the Sandy Springs/Lower Roswell area is well known throughout greater Atlanta and attracts shoppers from many parts of the city. As a destination shopping area, consumers come here because of the diversity of business venues available.

National chains such as Target and K-Mart enhance the community that offers many local service establishments such as coffee houses, dry cleaners, restaurants, banks and unique specialty shops. The Scarlet Tassel looks to open a 3,500 square foot store located in an urban lifestyle strip mall offering high visibility and established foot traffic.

The surrounding tenants, primarily small gift, stationery and food-related stores will enhance the shopping experience of The Scarlet Tassel’s customer base. Shopping at The Scarlet Tassel will be easy and convenient due to the following factors:

• High visibility store front from the street level.
• Lighted exterior signage.
• Easy in and out driving access to the shopping complex – traffic light parallel to store location.
• Plentiful parking spots adjacent to the store.
• Lighted parking lot.

STORE OPERATION
The Scarlet Tassel will be open for operation Monday-Sunday, closed major holidays. Hours of operation will be 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. Monday-Saturday and 12:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. Sunday. Hours will be extended to 7:00 p.m. during the Holidays.

The Scarlet Tassel will initially be staffed by one full time employee, working 40 hours a week and one part-time employee working 30 hours or less a week. When not traveling or attending to outside business, both owners will be on site daily and will provide additional sales and customer support assistance. Additional details on this subject are provided in the Personnel Plan section.

STORE POLICIES
To most effectively service the customer, The Scarlet Tassel will accept the following forms of payment: cash; check; credit Card: Visa, Mastercard and American Express; debit card; traveler’s checks. When accompanied by a sales receipt, merchandise returns will be granted a full refund within 14 days of purchase. A store credit will be granted within 30 days of purchase with or without a sales receipt. Gift recipients can return items for exchange or store credit. Damaged and defective items can be returned for exchange or refund via original form of payment.

2.1 Company Ownership

The Scarlet Tassel is a privately-held S corporation owned by Deirdre Staab and Shelly Dozier-McKee, each with 50% ownership in the company.

2.2 Start-up Summary

Total current and long-term assets will make up 86% of start-up requirements. Start-up expenses, which are detailed in the following table, comprise the remaining 14%.

As detailed below, start-up funding will be a combination of equal investment by the two owners and a long-term commercial loan, calculated at 10.5% for six years.

Capital Equipment Listing

(Quantity, Description of Asset, Brand/Model, Total Cost)

• 1 4-Line Phone system, Panasonic KXTG4000B: $500
• 1 All-In-One Printer-Fax-Scanner-Copier, Hewlett Packard, D135: $500
• 1 Barcode Label Printer, Eltron: $575
• 1 Local Appserver, Pentium 4, 1.8 GHz, 512 RAM, 40 GB Harddrive, 10/100 NIC, 48x CDRW, 17″ Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse, Windows XP Professional, Norton System Works 2002, PCAnywhere Host & Remote 10.5, Dell Dimension 4500S: $1,329
• 2 Point-of-Sale Systems, Pentium 3, 700 MHz, 256 RAM, Windows 2000, 12″ Touchscreen, Thermal Receipt Printer, Cash Drawer, Credit Card Reader, Hand Scanner, Customer Display, Keyboard, Mouse Posiflex, JIVA PL Series: $6,790
• 3 Battery Power Backup, 3-500 VA UPS APC:  $480
• 2 Laptop Computers, Pentium 3, 1.2 GHz, 512 RAM, 30 GB Harddrive, CDRW, Double Capacity Battery, Windows XP Professional Sony, VAIO R505GC: $4,360
• 1 Digital Camera, 3.3 Megapixal Sony, Cybershot DSCS75: $500
• 1 Camera Battery, Lithium Ion Sony: $60
• 2 Camera Memory Sticks, 128 MB Sony: $120
• 1 Camera Carry Pouch LowePro: $11
• 1 Retail Management Software, POS & Inventory Management Celerant ARMS: $5,560
• 1 Accounting Software, QuickBooks Pro Quicken: $249
• 1 Credit Card Software, PCCharge Pro Go Software: $299

Total:  $21,333