Working on that business plan...

Today I have been workin from 7:30 and it's now 23:30, quite a long day...

I started of with some communication with Govinda in Nepal, continued with taking some temporary pictures for the beta website that we will release this week. Have you signed up to get a chance to be one of our first customers?

After that it was time for the business plan. We have a deadline and need to be finished with the business plan before midnight. I think we will make it, but I'm not 100% sure. More like 99,5%.

We have met with the bank today and with our business coach Christan.

This evening we gave an inspirational presentation for Venture Cup at Handelshögskolan in Gothenburg. About 100 students were there and they seemed to like what we had to say. It is fun to talk about The Fair Tailor and we get so much energy in return from the audience.

I don't have the time right now, but soon I will write a post about our lecture at Rättvis Handelsforum in Malmö, but now I have to finish that business plan.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

A radio star

Today we've got a packed schedule but I have something I want to share with you.

I have told you that Lina is currently doing a radio commercial for Venture Cup, a business idea competition that we entered last year. The really liked our idé and thus wanted Lina to do the radio spot.

Jonas at Venture Cup has uploaded a clip to YouTube and here it is:

On Friday we will be in Malmö to speak at Rättvis Handelsforum. Please check it out if you are in the area.

Sebastian Stjern

THE FAIR TAILOR
-Dress Responsibly

Tailor made Fair Trade and ecological fine dress shirts via Internet

Change we can believe in

Today I have spent most of my time so far working on the business plan. The version I'm re-working is from the end of March and was the version we handed in to Venture Cup. It was written about 1.5 months ago and I'm surprised that so much have changed in such a short time.

The trip to Nepal changed a lot, the feedback from Venture Cup gave us a few new ideas, the move to IQube has changed things.

When I'm working it is easier to focus on the things that pile up on my todo list than what we actually do. It feels good to see signs of progress.

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I plan to spend a big portion of the day together with our business plan.

The plan we have now is good, but it was written over a month ago and it's a living document, it needs to be updated every now and then.

And even though the feedback from Venture Cup was very positive, there are some things we want to change based on their advice.

The Fair Tailor will start a newsletter where we will give a summary on what has happened lately.

If you want to start receiving the newsletter please send an email to sebastian(at)thefairtailor.com

More media coverage

This morning Lina was interviewed by Radio Prime, a local radio station.
It was live and it was quite a long interview, I think they talked for ten minutes.
The radio station has not published Lina's interview on their website yet, but you can listen to the interview they did with Jonas Almeling from Venture Cup http://ftp.radioprime.no/VENTURE CUP.mp3

We were also featured in a local newspaper yesterday, Värmlands Folkblad wrote about us.

Unfortunately all the media coverage is in Swedish, but hopefully that will change in the future.

Today I've had a meeting with Arbetsförmedlingen (the unemployment agency).
To be frank, Arbetsförmedlingen doesn't have a good reputation but the impression I got today was great. I spoke with a man called Magnus and it was a really good meeting.

Tied for forth place

We didn't make it all the way, we had to settle for a tied fourth place.

I must say that we had a great night at the Venture Cup final, it was an excellent event and it was really, really exiting when they introduced the winners.
We had thought we had a fair chance to win the peoples price but we finished fourth there.
And we finished didn't make it to the national final either.

We are very happy and proud just to have been nominated and a fourth place in Venture Cup is no doubt a success for us.
We would like to congratulate the three winners from tonight and wish them luck in the national final.

Now it's time to sleep, Lina has a radio interview early tomorrow.

The big day

And so it's finally here - The big day.
Today is the day of the Venture Cup Final!

We took yesterday evening off and went out with some friends instead of sitting at home worrying about the final and I think that was a good decision. We managed to sleep last night and I only woke up nervous once =)

We believe that we have a fair chance of winning tonight, even though some of the other projects look impressive.
I'm happy about being top10, but I'm not content. If we would end up among the three winners it would be a really big break for us.

Wish us luck!

Media buzz

Last Friday Lina and I sent out a press release about the fact that we have made it in to the Venture Cup final.
Today we have been contacted by reporters from GP, VF, Bohuslänningen, NWT and Metro.
I'm not sure that they all will write something about us, but I like that they are interested in our work.

If you plan to send out press releases I can recommend Newsdesk.
If you can read Swedish you can find some of our press releases here:
1, 2, 3

Today I'm once again trying to catch up on things on my to do list...

We are in the Venture Cup final!

Now it is finally official - We are in the Venture Cup final.
354 ideas have competed in this year's Venture Cup, now it is down to the final 10.
The big presentation we did on Tuesday (see earlier posts) was for Venture Cup. If we did a good enough job convincing the jury and they prefer our business plan over the others we will win on Wednesday.
Yesterday we spoke to one of the other nominees and they said that they had invested 2 500 000 SEK ($US 312 000) of their own money in their business idea.
You can read more about Venture Cup at their site.

We are the only CSR/LOHAS company in the final.

Our first major setback

I just got of the phone with ALMI, a governmental organization that can assist companies with loans.
They take a higher interest rate than banks, but on the other hand you don't have to have the same type of security for the loan.
The setback is that they won't give us a loan, and if they won't give us a loan it will be much more difficult to finance our company. Far from impossible, but without doubt more difficult. Up until now everything feels like it has gone our way, so I suppose a setback was unavoidable.

Right now it doesn't feel to good, but I am convinced that we will have many, many more setbacks before we are ready to launch our website :)
I hope to find answers to a lot of the questions ALMI had during my time here in Kathmandu.

And we still plan to win the Venture Cup, and once we have done that we won't need to take a loan from ALMI =)

Now I'll go out try to get a feel for the city of Kathmandu.

IQube

Today Lina and I meet with IQube, and company incubator that’s looking for entrepreneurs that are in the process of starting up a new business.
We were invited to them last Friday and we have been in Stockholm over the weekend, so we had to write our presentation rather hastily.

First we got an introduction to Iqube, what they do and what they can help us with. The concept seemed to fit us. Even though we might already have finished some of the things they discussed we could certainly need some help with marketing, legal issues, an office and maybe a few other things…

They seemed interested in what we had to say. They of course questioned how we think at some points, but then again I think everybody does. It is, after all, their job to find out if we are up to the task. I think they liked us, but they had 200 ideas from the start and they only have 30 places. On the other hand, when we came among the top 30 at Venture Cup there were over 300 others in the race.

I’m not looking forward to the trip tomorrow, I think it’s about 20-22 hours in total before I reach Nepal. Hopefully I will have some time to rest once I get there.
Well, I guess it's time for me to start thinking of packing...

Feeling a little bit more relaxed

After the last couple of day’s hard work on the business plan it feels good to be able to relax a little.
We still have a lot of things to do, sure, but we met the deadline and now things are a little bit more relaxed.
Money is a major issue right now, and it doesn’t seem like there are too many ways to go. We hope to be able to solve it with a mix of our savings, a bank loan, a loan from ALMI and something we don’t know about yet. And of course by winning Venture Cup. If we were to win both the regional and the national finals, that would cover our financial needs. So as long as we have the best business plan in the country we have nothing to worry about =)

We will have to investigate the possibility to try to get venture capital, but first we want to see what the bank and ALMI has to say.
If you know anyone who likes our idea and who has a money to invest, please let us know =)

Even though money is an issue, it doesn’t matter if we don’t think we can get the company up and running in Nepal. I hope my trip there next week will give us some answers.

Later today we have a meeting with Drivhuset. The meetings I have had with them before have been interesting, so I hope something good will come out of the meeting today as well.

In the nick of time

When I was travelling in Asia many years ago I met a Canadian guy who was very surprised that I, a Swede, knew the expression “in the nick of time”. I’m not sure on where I learned it, but if describes our timing today perfectly.
The deadline to upload our business plan to Venture Cup was 1pm; we uploaded the final version at 1:00:00pm. I didn’t feel exactly like Tom Cruise in a Mission Impossible movie, but it wasn’t far from it ;)

Yesterday we worked until midnight and today we started around 7am.
Six hours and no breaks later we are finally finished, and exhausted.

All we have to do now is to implement the plan and start up the business…

This morning I got a call from the banker I tried to get a hold of yesterday. We set up a meeting for this Friday, hopefully Lina will be able to join us, even though it would mean that she would have to skip school.

Today I got my new business cards, and I must say that they look nice. The front is pretty standard, but the back of the card is what I like about it. It says:

Dress Responsibly
www.thefairtailor.com

It’s all about the money

We have our meeting with ALMI and I feel that it went OK. We met with our contact there and discussed our business idea. He had some interesting things to say, and if we managed to convince him I think we might get more out of our contact with ALMI than just a loan.
It’s good to talk to someone about your ideas, because they have always a different opinion about something. They are of course not always right, but it is good to question your ideas from time to time.

Even if it is a challenge to get a loan from ALMI we fear that it will be even tougher to get a loan from a conventional bank.
We are feeling a bit low right now, but I hope things will feel better as soon as we have sent the business plan to Venture Cup…

An important meeting

Time does what time usually does when a deadline approaches, it runs out. The Venture Cup deadline is now just 27 hours away.
Last night Lina finished the budget, and I must say that it looks promising. Let’s just hope that the Venture Cup judges feel the same.

At 1pm today we have an important meeting, our first meeting with ALMI. We are hoping that the will like our idea and agree to give us a loan. I think we have a good business case, but then again I might be biased…

I am also trying the get a hold of a person at a bank that we have been recommended to contact by Drivhuset. Besides from ALMI we will also need to take out a conventional bank loan, and of course but in a lot of our lives savings =)
Drivhuset is an organisation that helps people who want to start up their own business and we have got a good contact there.

Now, it’s back to the business plan for me. I hope to be able to give a short summary on the ALMI meeting later today.

Our network keeps growing

We seem to have friends with very different, but also very exciting careers.
We have over the last couple of days realized that we have friends and acquaintances working with designing and manufacturing clothes, evaluating how businesses can increase their competitiveness, fair trade and many other things that are in some way connected to what we are doing.
Today Lina talked to a friend who could tell her the average price of fabric and the amount of fabric needed to make a shirt. Just like that.

I feel that we are moving forward with the business plan, Lina is almost finished with the budget and I have finished the risk analysis and am currently working on the layout.
Our biggest problem with the business plan right now is that we need to limit our selves; the limit is set to a maximum of 20 pages text and 12 pages appendix. At the moment we have 19,5 pages text and 7 pages in the appendix.
But I guess this is when the saying “kill your darlings” come in to play. I have spent a lot of time investigating our competitors and the marked in general, but I guess we can cut a little from that section. Or maybe move it to an appendix ;)

We keep on working on our business plan

Today we have spent the entire day so far working on our business plan. We are moving forward, but the deadline is now only about 69h away… I just hope we will be able to finish everything on time.
Lina is doing a great job on the budget, that stuff is way beyond my core expertise, to say the least. But it is fun to try to figure out how much a sewing machine would cost in Nepal, or how much we will have to pay in rent for our factory in Kathmandu.

Last night we met some friends at a Nepalese restaurant downtown. We talked a little to the manager and he gave me the phone number to his brother and said that I should call him if I needed somewhere to stay when I go.

Today we managed to set up a meeting with our Swedish contact who lives in Nepal. He is in Sweden now and has agreed to meet us in Stockholm next weekend.
I think we can learn a lot from talking to him, he has done many of the things we hope to be able to do in Nepal.

I volunteered to go to the grocery store today, just to get away from the computer for a little while. When I come back I will have the great privilege to finish our risk analysis, so at least I have something to look forward to… =)

Some breakthroughs

Today we have made some breakthroughs, I have managed to get in contact with ALMI and set up a meeting for next Monday and I have talked to a person at Öhrlings PriceWaterhouseCoopers and set up a meeting for this Friday. Luckily the meetings will be when Lina is not at IHM (business school).

ALMI is owned by the government and if you have a good enough business idea they can provide your company with seed money, a sort of venture capital light. Since we are not able to pay all starting costs for The Fair Tailor with our savings it is very important that we get some external financing and ALMI is an important piece of that puzzle.

We are competing in something called Venture Cup with our business idea. The main reason for our participation in Venture Cup is the feedback we get after they have read our business plan. They have people from various branches of business that looks at the contestants’ business plans and then give feedback. So far we have got very good feedback from them.
Besides from that you can also get private guidance from some of the companies that sponsor the competition. And this Friday we will get helm from a guy at Öhrlings PriceWaterhouseCoopers concerning import/export and our budget.

I am waiting to hear from a contact in Nepal, I have planned to go there by the end of the month but I have not yet booked any tickets. I need to make sure that I have things to do when I get there.
I am also waiting to hear from one of the companies that we hope will be able to design our web site, I have not been able to get a hold of my contact there today. But maybe I’ll have better luck tomorrow.

Tuesday 1p.m. is the deadline for the business plan to Venture Cup, that is the next big milestone. It’s going to take a lot of hard work over then next couple of days, but it will hopefully be fun.