The Business Plan
Assembling what the modules produce into a plan a reader can act on
Module 18 tells you not to buy a business-plan template, and that’s still true. The plan isn’t a document you write. It’s the set of decisions the curriculum forces you to make, written down in the order a reader needs them, with the financial model as its spine. This page gives you that order, says which module produces each part, and shows you what an experienced reader checks first.
Who reads it, and what they need
| Reader | What they want to know | Length |
|---|---|---|
| You | Did I actually decide, or did I postpone? Which assumption, if wrong, kills this? | One page, re-dated every Friday |
| A factory | Can you pay, do you know what you’re asking for, will you reorder | Two paragraphs in your first email, plus the tech pack |
| A stockist | Does the product sell, will you deliver, is there insurance | A line sheet and a one-page brand story |
| A bank, grant body or micro-lender | The standard format: product, market, operations, financials, risks | The full plan, 10–15 pages, model attached |
| A partner or early money | All of the above, plus what they get and when | Full plan, plus a conversation Module 19 suggests you shouldn’t be having yet |
Write the one-page version first. Everything else is an expansion of it.
The one-page plan
Twelve questions. Each has a module that produces the answer and an artifact that proves it. If you can’t fill a row, that’s this week’s work, not a gap to write around.
| # | Question | The answer comes from | Proof |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Who buys this shoe, for what occasion, and what do they wear now? | Module 20 | A customer description and three named comparison brands |
| 2 | What is it: silhouette, construction, materials, colourways, size run, price? | Modules 7, 9, 10 | Tech pack, line plan |
| 3 | Why you: what do you have that an equally funded stranger doesn’t? | Module 20 | One sentence, tested on someone unkind |
| 4 | Where is the primary market, the US or Europe, and why that one first? | US vs Europe | A decision, with the second market dated as phase two |
| 5 | Who makes it, where, at what MOQ and lead time? | Modules 11, 12 | Factory scorecard, a quote, a proto sample |
| 6 | What does a pair cost landed, and what does it sell for? | Modules 13, 16, 18 | Cost sheet, landed-cost tab |
| 7 | How does it reach the customer: channel mix, fulfilment, returns policy? | Module 22 | Store live, policy written |
| 8 | How do people find out: list, seeding, press, events? | Modules 21, 23 | Email list count, seeding list, launch calendar |
| 9 | Where does the cash come from, and what is the lowest cash point? | Modules 18, 19 | Cashflow tab, pre-order mechanism |
| 10 | What is legally required before the first pair ships? | Modules 16, 17 | Entity, trademark filing, broker, insurance, labels |
| 11 | What are the three things most likely to go wrong, and what do you do then? | Everything | The risk table, below |
| 12 | What does success look like in numbers at week 26? | Module 25 | Sell-through, return rate, cash, repeat intent |
Deliverable: the one-page plan. Twelve rows, twelve answers, no answer longer than three lines. Dated. It sits at the top of your capstone folder and gets re-dated every time an answer changes. The history of those changes is the most honest account of your business you will ever have.
The full plan
Needed only when someone outside asks for it: a bank, a grant programme, a serious stockist, a partner. Standard sections in the order readers expect. Nothing here is new; it’s the module deliverables, arranged.
1. Summary
Half a page. What the shoe is, who it’s for, where it’s made, what it costs, what it sells for, how many you’ll make, how it’s funded, and what you’re asking the reader for. Written last.
2. The product
Silhouette, construction method and why, materials and their provenance, the sole (open mold, which one), size run, colourways. Photography of the sample. Two pages; the tech pack goes in an appendix.
3. The customer and the market
Who buys, where they buy now, what they pay, what’s missing. Three comparison brands with their price and construction. The primary market and why. Half a page on the segment, using the structure on the industry page. No market-size slide.
4. Brand
The six answers from Module 20. Name and trademark status, the visual identity in one spread, the packaging.
5. Making
The factory (region, size, what else they make), the relationship so far, MOQ, lead times, the QC plan from Module 15, and who the agent is if there is one. Sample history with photos: proto, revisions, confirmation.
6. Selling
Channel mix, store platform, pricing with the three-input logic from Module 18, returns policy, fulfilment plan, first stockists if any. The launch sequence from Module 23 as a dated calendar.
7. Operations and compliance
Entity, bank, bookkeeping. Trademark filings by office. Customs broker, classification, labelling. Insurance. Every line of the Capstone’s Business checklist with a status beside it.
8. Financials
The seven-tab model from Module 18, summarised: unit economics at three price points, an 18-month cashflow with the lowest point marked, break-even, three scenarios. Then one paragraph on funding: pre-orders, deposits, your own money, and what each covers.
9. Risks
A table, not prose.
| Risk | Likelihood | Impact | What you do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Factory misses delivery by six weeks or more | Likely | Pre-order customers waiting; refunds | Buffer in the promised window, weekly updates, refund policy already written |
| Fit problem found after bulk | Possible | 30%+ returns | Wear-test five pairs across sizes before bulk release (Module 14) |
| Duty rate higher than modelled | Possible | Margin falls 5–10 points | Broker classification before shipping; price set with headroom |
| Only 50% of the run sells in year one | Possible | Cash tied up in boxes | Pessimistic scenario already funded; private sale to the list, never a public markdown |
| Trademark opposition | Unlikely | Rename | Cleared search before filing; no boxes printed before filing |
Readers trust plans that name their risks. They distrust plans that don’t.
10. Milestones
The 26-week roadmap with dates, compressed to one page. Mark the irreversible ones: bulk order placed, boxes printed, pre-orders opened.
11. The ask
If there is one. What, from whom, for what, and when it comes back. If there isn’t one, say so. A plan with no ask is a plan, not a pitch.
Appendices
Tech pack, BOM, cost sheet, factory scorecard, sample photos, the model itself.
What an experienced reader checks
Anyone who has seen footwear plans before goes to these, in this order.
- Price divided by landed cost. Below 3× and they stop reading. Module 18.
- The lowest point on the cashflow. Is it funded, and with what? Module 18.
- Tooling. Custom tooling in a plan with a budget under $10k is fiction. Open molds, Module 5.
- MOQ against run size. Does the factory’s real minimum match the number of pairs in the plan?
- The size curve. Are you buying sizes nobody wears? Module 10.
- The return rate. Is one assumed at all? 15–30% for online footwear. Module 18.
- Who the customer is. If the answer is “people who like sneakers,” there’s no plan.
- The founder’s time. 25 hours a week, written down, with the reach-out block in it.
The plan changes with the market
Several rows have a different answer depending on whether the primary market is the US or Europe. The US vs Europe page covers each in detail. The short version:
| Row | US | Europe |
|---|---|---|
| Entity | LLC in your home state | The national company form: SAS, GmbH or UG, BV, Lda, Ltd |
| Tax on sales | Sales tax, state by state, shown excluding tax | VAT, included in the displayed price, one OSS return for cross-border sales |
| Returns | Your policy, clearly posted | 14-day withdrawal right by law, plus a two-year conformity guarantee |
| Duty on your import | The Chapter 64 rate plus country-of-origin tariffs | None if made in the EU; roughly 8–17% if not, plus import VAT |
| Labels | Country-of-origin marking | Origin marking plus the material pictograms |
| Trademark | USPTO | EUIPO, one filing for 27 countries; the UK separately |
| Size run | Half sizes expected: more SKUs | Whole sizes common: fewer SKUs |
| Reaching people | National media, English, paid-social heavy | Country by country, multilingual; press and stores matter more |
What to leave out
- Market-size slides. The global sneaker market being worth some number of billions has no bearing on whether you can sell 200 pairs.
- Five-year projections. Nobody believes year three. Eighteen months, weekly, is what you can defend.
- A competitor matrix where you tick every box. Readers know what it means.
- “No direct competition.” There is always a shoe the customer buys instead.
- An equity ask. Module 19 explains why not at this stage.
Do this
- Fill the twelve rows (2 hours). Leave the ones you can’t answer blank, in red. Count the red rows. That’s your honest status.
- Write the risk table (1 hour). Five rows minimum. Each mitigation must be something you’ve already done or have scheduled.
- Run the reader’s checklist on your own plan (1 hour). Be the unkind reader.
- Only if someone has asked for it, expand to the full plan (6–8 hours), and have one person who runs a small product business read it before you send it.
Self-check
- Which single assumption, if wrong by 30%, breaks the plan? If you don’t know, open the scenarios tab.
- What is the date of the first irreversible commitment, and what has to be true by then?
- Could a stranger, reading your one page, repeat your pitch back to you accurately?
Traps
- Writing the plan instead of doing the modules. The plan is an output. If the rows are empty, the work is elsewhere.
- Polishing a full plan nobody asked for. The one page is the working document. The full plan is for a reader who requests it.
- Letting the plan drift from the model. One set of numbers, in the spreadsheet, referenced by the plan. Never typed twice.
- Softening the pessimistic scenario because it’s uncomfortable. It’s the only scenario that decides how much cash you need.