December 2020 – January 2021
The Client is a lifestyle brand promoting sexual wellness, exploration and education. The firm, in its entirety, is minority and women owned. Through their products, media and entertainment functions, and consulting services, they help individuals improve their sexual health and wellness, community, family relationships, quality of life and work performance.
Bear Studios worked closely with the Founder to construct a comprehensive and convincing business plan to be used in investor pitches. Alongside thorough industry and market analysis, the plan addressed marketing, pricing, and resource allocation strategies. The final deliverable was a branded, 29-page document built to impress investors and lay the basis for the Founder’s business for years to come.
Setting
Before reaching out to Bear Studios, the Client was hard at work supporting budding artists and fashion entrepreneurs in the DC area by leading a local non-profit . The Client oversaw several concurrent initiatives, all of which aimed to further the success of minority designers and artists. Some of her mentees have gone on to see their designs on Parisian runways during Paris Fashion Week! In 2020, she decided to formalize some of her side hustles and began to build her new Media & Entertainment business.
Challenge
The Client’s business is truly a lifestyle brand promoting sexual wellness, exploration, and education. As a minority and women-owned business, its purpose is to uplift and support Black women, and women in general, across the country. However, the many moving pieces of starting a business weigh heavy on any single Founder’s shoulders. The Client asked Bear Studios to construct an investor-facing business plan that would provide the Client a foundation with which to apply for various funding opportunities.
Approach
The Firm met with the Client on multiple occasions to learn about the business, the Founder’s ambitions, and current growth bottlenecks. In constructing the plan, the Firm developed the Client’s (1) Marketing (2) Product and (3) Sales strategies. First, the Team began by conducting extensive market research into relevant industries and concepts: tobacco, alcohol, sex & wellness, travel media, influencer branding, and subscription model boxes.
As experts in said industries and with new knowledge of best practices associated with the Client’s sales strategy, the Firm built the product, marketing, branding, and sales strategies. This same knowledge bank was used to carve out the Client’s Value proposition, Operations Strategy, and 5-Year Financial Outlook.
After the completion of each section (market research, strategy, etc.) a draft was sent to the Client for review. Meetings were scheduled, when necessary, to discuss modifications at length, other times an email with a few brief bullets sufficed. Through this iterative feedback process, the Firm was able to deliver a comprehensive business plan to the Client within a month.
Figure 1: A look into the business plan’s contents.
Impact
With 6 years of similar work for diverse clients feeding into a still growing library of work and expertise, the Firm was able to adapt quickly to the Client’s needs and tailor a custom business plan. The Consultants’ work saved the Client countless hours better spent developing her products and coordinating with media outlets to identify potential podcast and travel show producers. Now, with the business plan, the Client is set on attracting Seed investors to jumpstart her products’ manufacturing.
The Team
Garrett Passamonti – Strategy Consultant, Project Manager
Emily Su – Strategy Consultant
Industry: Media & Entertainment, Alcohol, Tobacco, Sex & Wellness
Location: Washington, DC
At Bear Studios our mission is to empower problem solvers. We leverage top quality talent from Washington University in St. Louis to provide our client businesses with impactful and game-changing solutions. Since our foundation in 2014, we have worked with over 100 businesses across the country. These companies have gone to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in seed funding, partner with global industry leaders in their respective fields, and change the world. If you are a small business owner, hoping to take a break from the ‘safe’ and start your own business, send us a note and ask for your free consultation today.