1. Lake Washington Running Company
Hello, my name is Katrina Reed. Welcome to week 5 of my Business Startup Project: Lake Washington Running Company – a retail store for runners.
Katrina Reed
BUS
Dr. Rick Mann

2. Marketing Customer Overview Product Differentiation Logo and Branding
Our marketing efforts will begin with an overview of who our customers are and what goods and services we will bring them. As previously discussed, this will include runners and soon to be runners in Madison Valley, and we will provide running apparel and training programs to our customers.
Next we will focus on our product differentiation. At Lake Washington Running Company we are selling the achievement of fitness goals. When we sell a runner a new pair of shoes, we are selling a finish line dream.
Our next marketing effort will be to establish our logo and branding so that we are easily recognized. We have a rectangular logo, which is shown here, and a circular logo. From those two main images we can build the look of anything from our website and store signage to logoed apparel.
We will hire a marketing consultant and a web designer to help us with our initial marketing efforts. We will go live with our website and publicize our marketing campaign 3 months before our grand opening. We estimate an initial budget of $3,000 to cover our consultants’ fees.
Customer Overview
Product Differentiation
Logo and Branding
Consultants

3. Advertising Facebook Community Papers E-mail Newsletters Race Expos
Advertising will be focused on active people primarily in the Madison Valley and secondarily in Seattle at large. Our electronic advertising will include new product arrival, upcoming sales, and store events. In our newsletter we will showcase running legends and heroes of the local running scene. This will be an avenue for informing and inspiring people, and then encouraging them into our store for supplies and inspiration. Our budget will be $100 per month for the electronic and print advertising.
We want to be out in the community and one way of doing will is through booths at the annual marathon expos for the Seattle Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon in June and the Seattle Marathon in November. The combined cost of advertising at these two expos will be approximately $3,000 for our first year. At the expos we will heavily promote our training programs. Many runners train alone, but would prefer to train with other runners if only they knew where to find other runners.

4. Sales Sales Associates close the deal Comprises 54% of Staffing Budges
Our sales associates will be the closers on sales. They will be interacting in person with our clients and will be in the store to provide our clients with relevant product information and help them to make informed decisions about their purchases. Sales associates will be paid an hourly wage and will not work on commission. We want our associates to be available to provide helpful information to customers, but we do not want a culture of high pressure sales. If we allow customers to walk out of our store well informed, empty handed, and guilt free, we believe that we may have those same customers come back when they are ready to make a purchase.
Our estimated sales cost is $70,000 in our first fiscal year. This will cover two sales associates on the floor during our standard business hours. This estimated to be 54% of our total staffing costs.
Here we have two graphs showing the number of sales and sales totals for a 4 day snapshot in June.

5. Data Items Sold Seasonal Merchandise Patterns Return Customers
Training Program Participation
Seasonal Training Patterns
We will be set up to track sales patterns with data including what items are selling best at what times of the year. From this we can better order inventory to match the demand. We will track when customers are most likely to register for training programs and how far in advance of their goal races they purchase the programs. This data will be used to determine when to schedule our major advertising efforts for training.
The pie chart here is a representation of the items sold in our four day snapshot of sales. We see that shoes were the most purchased item. As we collect this data over time, it will help us make wise decisions on how to purchase inventory and where to spend our advertising efforts.