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Help! Don't know where to start

2 replies

FatandSassy · 10/01/2019 17:04

I posted this in work from home too (I think) so apologies if you're retreading.

DP and I have an idea that seems pretty good. In order to make it happen we would need to find someone to manufacture the custom items we would want to sell. We would have a brand and (hopefully) the potential for products to be sold in retail, eventually.
I've been reading up and spoken to a few people and they say start as a sole trader and register and go from there: our problem is we have no finance and in order to (ideally) get some we have to produce a business plan and do research etc
Where do we start with this? We currently have no idea on the costs involved, since they would be custom items do we order and pay for them and go from there or do we just do it all "hypothetically"? We would need a website and a business account etc - presumably these are costs we can work out without actually doing them. And the same for the brand logo etc. We will need an address for delivery and postage. Do we just get a P.O. Box for that?
Sorry this is so long, it's only a few of the questions we have but it seems such a big challenge!

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justbeginit · 28/01/2019 12:04

you can use home, under £1k and you dont need to register. Go slow and small,
Whats the product? Manufactures are easy to find but to get them to work with you properly you need to show route to market and finance. Finance is important and banks will only match.
You need to have a lot figured before a manufacturer. depending on the product it may be best to go to a prototyper. There are a few companies out there but to get more advice you need to give more info.

website and business account are easy, you need to write down what you want from it.
Custom items will be expesive.
Which part of the UK are you in. Different area have different support/finance.

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KimLoy · 28/01/2019 20:36

Hi,
Just take things one step at a time, it sounds like you're getting overwhelmed before you've even begun, which is normal so don't worry.

My best advice to you would be, if you have a long TODO list, get rid of it now, it will only stress you out. When I've started previous businesses and even now each day I only write my 3 top things that I want to do today and only focus on them. Once those 3 are complete I'll write another 3, before you know it all the pieces will start coming together.

From what you've written it sounds like the first thing you need to so is to work out how you would create your product. You don't need to worry about incorporating your business or getting a website yet you can do all that later once you know that the product build is in fact possible. You can start speaking to manufacturers to get costs without having a business although I would suggest getting a professional email address as many manufacturers won't respond to Gmail/hotmail accounts.

So basically just relax, pick 3 tasks today and work on them. When you do get to a point that you need a website. Give me a shout :) //www.kimloyconsulting.com

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