Page 84 - Business Plans that Work A Guide for Small Business

Industry: Zoom Lens on Opportunity • 75

Americans: U.S. college freshmen come from families with a median income 60
20
percent higher than the national average.
Lazybones is focused on the wealthiest slice of this demographic at
universities with the highest tuitions, aiming at students from families with
incomes above $150,000/year.
4. We have strategic bundled services: We have integrated seasonal storage
services for students into our business model. This leverages our relationships
with out-of-state parents: caring for their child’s laundry during the school year
leads to our being trusted to care for their child’s stuff during the summer.
It then reinforces their desire to use us again for laundry in the fall. Storage
also fills the summer-long seasonal gap, when the laundry slows dramatically;
providing well-timed cash flow and allowing us to retain key
This key success fac-
personnel we would otherwise need to lay off. tor is redundant with num-
5. There is a requirement for custom systems: Most businesses ber 1 on quality control
can buy off-the-shelf systems for tracking customer and could be a barrier to
entry for competition.
accounts. A dry cleaner, for instance, can choose from
multiple systems. However, no such systems exist for the
pickup-and-delivery laundry and storage market. Lazybones
has invested years of effort and nearly a quarter of a million
dollars developing custom systems, and any competitor will
In summary, the
have to do the same to approach our level of organization, analysis is sound, but
incomplete and biased.
productivity tracking, and expense control. Generally, we prefer to
A successful pickup-and-delivery business like Zoots do competitive analysis in
a dispassionate, industry
could choose to duplicate our business model and viewpoint. In this case, Dan
compete head-to-head with us. The foregoing factors, has done it from the per-
however, illustrate that that is not a simple proposition. spective of Lazybones.
To compete effectively, they would need to invest a lot of
time and money, and either focus as tightly as we do or risk being dramatically
outperformed.

20 “American Freshman: 40 Year Trends 1966–2006” UCLA Newsroom, April 9, 2007.
http://gseis.ucla.edu/heri/PDFs/PR_TRENDS_40YR.pdf.