An excellent case study in The Sunday Times today tells the story of how Ricky Thomas set up Petmeds after spotting an opportunity from a change in legislation…
The story of the Petmeds start-up has lots of useful insights, particularly for AQA AS Unit 1 & Edexcel Unit 1 students starting their courses in the next couple of weeks. Some of the points I highlighted are:
Source of business idea - change in legislation allowing pet owners the freedom to choose where they get their pet prescriptions supplied
Importance of cash flow forecasting and management - the danger of overtrading if sales rise too rapidly
The workload challenge faced by entrepreneurs - Ricky had to cut his honeymoon short in order to handle the work (not a good move!)
Strong competition - a start-up business plan should always assume that the competition will be harder to beat than first thought. This caused Petmeds to sell “loss-leaders” do they could attract orders
Start-up losses - £80,000 in the first few months
Employing people - getting high quality people to support the business (e.g. advisers) takes some of the workload off the entrepreneur
A great case study to add to your SOW. To find out more about the business, visit the Petmeds website
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