Financing

Where are we with a contract for potential investors? They would want to know what recourse is in case of default (or in general, what protection they have), and probably some other terms & conditions I'm not aware of.

Is the 3% of sales on all sales, or just sales of Virtuous? (If more products are launched, not sure initial investor should benefit from that as well...would limit our working capital.)

When would repayment start? We get money NOW, start returning 3% on any sale...even in month number one?

Update 7/14
Spoke to someone at Virgin Money. They facilitate person to person loans when both parties are not "corporate" types. They'll draw up the docs per our agreed terms, manage the payment and reporting, will even report our track record to the Business Credit Beaureau which will help any future loan requests. Total charge for this is $199 to initiate, then $9 per payment (which we could set to go out quarterly instead of monthly). Said it would take 3 business days to do start-to-finish. Not sold on them, but good to know there is a resource available at a reasonable price should we need something done in a hurry.

Church contacts

How do we target churches?

What sort of communication strategy can we employ?

Why would a church let us put a display in their bookstore?

Order taking

Website
- are we ready to take credit cards? what sort of account does that hit for us? what is the timing of having access to the cash?

Phone
- who will take orders? how do we ensure no call is missed?

Snail mail orders??

Is there an account already opened for company-only transactions? What services come along with it?

Timing

All the dependencies are swimming around in my head and making me dizzy!

This will be a good place to talk about timing of needed orders/shipments/decisions/etcetera. All will be short-term (for now) with the goal of taking orders for the holiday season.

Known issues:
Launch date--when will sample displays be in front of customers??
Based on that, when do supplies need ordered?
- bottles first?
- sample cards
- display units
- perfume
- packaging/shipping materials
Preparation to accept orders and money
Website up and running
Money needed?
- Business plan updated by when?

Startup budget

I'm working on some financial statements to see how much will be needed at startup. Not sure we can just toss a general number out and then hope it is the right amount.

I have the initial costs you sent, and will update with any needed inputs here.

Known open items:
Cost for display units
Cost to ship them
How many samples need ordered?