A Complete Fabric Store Business Plan in 10 Steps

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Any new business venture needs a plan.

As the quilt and fabric store industry grows, there’s great potential for financial success. However, you aren’t likely to be successful by diving in headfirst. Building a popular and profitable business takes research, strategy, and hard work.

It might seem easier to make a plan in your head, but an effective fabric store business plan should be written down. Putting your business plan on paper forces you to articulate your strategy in a way that others — like investors, financial backers, and your target customers — can understand, and keeps you accountable to the goals you’ve set.

In this blog, we’ll show you how to create a comprehensive fabric store business plan, including the most important topics to cover.

Step 1: Create a Company Description

Start by writing a company description. In this section, you’ll provide details about your vision for your store. Discuss your inspiration for getting into the business — in the case of a fabric store, discuss why you’re passionate about fabric, sewing, and quilting, and how you decided to open your own store.

Write a short introduction for yourself, including your qualifications and experience. List anyone else involved in the business. Discuss how your skills and those of others will be valuable to the business and lead it to success.

Don’t forget to include specifics about which products and services you’ll provide and how you’ll serve customers. A reader of this section should have a good idea of who’s involved in your business, what your business will do, and why it will be successful.

Step 2: Conduct Market Research

No business exists in a vacuum. To understand your business’ potential for success, you need to have a knowledge of the wider market. Research local competitors, general demand for fabric and quilt products, and trends in the market.

There are a variety of ways to conduct this research, but you’ll do most of it online. You can easily search for similar businesses in your region, and look at surveys and industry reports to understand general trends in the fabric and quilting industry.

You can even visit similar local businesses to gain ideas and inspiration for your fabric store and to observe customer demographics.

In the market research section of your business plan, describe local demand, local competition, how you plan to compete, and general market trends you feel are important.

Step 3: Identify Your Target Market

It’s important to know who your target market is to know what products they’ll be interested in and how to advertise to them. Determine the demographics of your customers, their interests, budgets, and other relevant information.

To create a more sophisticated strategy, you can separate your target market into segments and advertise to each of these segments in a unique way. Customers can be segmented by age, gender, profession, or by how they use the purchases they make.

Here are some examples of customer segments, based on why they buy fabric:

Hobbyists and crafters
Professional tailors and seamstresses
Fashion design students
Interior designers
Etsy sellers and small business owners
Quilting clubs

Including information about your target market and customer segments in your fabric store business plan will help you make decisions about what products and services you offer, how you’ll advertise them, and maybe even where your fabric store is located.

Step 4: Catalog Your Products and Services

While there isn’t room in your fabric store business plan to list every single product on your shelves, it’s important to detail what kinds of products and services your business will offer.

These product listings should follow a strategy based on your market research. Stock the products most likely to be purchased by the customers who will visit your fabric store often, whether it’s fabrics, tools, notions, sewing machines, or other products.

It may also be helpful to specify how you’ll obtain your inventory in your business plan. Will you purchase your inventory online? Will you purchase any in person? How will shipping work for your business? Having a plan for purchasing and replenishing your stock will make you more prepared as you put together your business plan.

Step 5: Organize Your Employees

Understanding your employee needs is essential to making financial projections for your business. Having a clear employee structure is also important so your employees are clear on their roles and responsibilities and can work together.

In your business plan, list every employee you think you need at your fabric store. List the qualifications required for each of these roles, how much you’ll pay employees, and details about employee hierarchy.

Step 6: Develop a Marketing Strategy

You need to get the word out about your business for it to be successful. There are a variety of channels you can choose from to advertise your fabric store. Determine which channels are most effective to reach your target audience, and then create high-quality content that will catch customers’ eyes.

Include the channels you’ll use to market your business in your written plan. These might include social media accounts, paid ads, collaborations with influencers and other businesses, loyalty and referral programs, and promotional discounts.

Your marketing strategy is likely to change over time, based on which channels bring you success and which ones come up short. Despite this, recording a tentative plan will help you show potential investors you’re serious about marketing your fabric store.

Step 7: Set Up an Operations Plan

This section will contain a detailed description of how your fabric store will run on a day-to-day basis. It might include information about inventory management practices, store layout, customer service policies, and how you’ll process sales transactions.

It could also include employee policies like time off, sick days, and disciplinary processes. Your operations plan should give you a roadmap for how you’ll handle a variety of situations at your fabric store.

Step 8: Design a Financial Plan

Your financial strategy is a key part of your fabric store’s business plan, especially for potential investors, lenders, landlords, and others who have a stake in your business’ success.

Conduct careful research and try to plan for every expense your business has or will have. This includes store space, equipment, inventory, employees, marketing, and more. Based on local demand, try to predict what kinds of sales you think you’ll see.

It’s difficult to predict how much revenue your fabric store will make, but estimate this as accurately as possible and make sure you can afford the expenses you’ll incur to start your business.

Remember: It may take time to reach profitability. Determine how long your business can survive before reaching this point to see if it’s a feasible proposition.

Step 9: Compile an Appendix

The appendix of a business plan is a place to include any materials that are relevant to your overall business but don’t fit into the other sections.

Perhaps there were important documents that were too long to include in other sections of the plan. While long or technical documents can distract from other sections of your business plan, the appendix serves as a catch-all for such information.

Here are some examples of materials you can include in an appendix:

Resumes
Product information and images
Licenses and permits
Legal documents
Marketing materials
Financial records
Market research information

The appendix of your business plan should fill in gaps that may have been left in the rest of your business plan. You can even reference materials from the appendix throughout your plan to ensure readers that those documents are included.

Step 10: Write an Executive Description

The executive summary is the most important part of your business plan because it’s the first thing — and maybe the only thing — someone will read. This includes potential investors and others who you need to convince that your business will be successful.

To keep readers’ attention, keep your executive summary to one page or even a couple of paragraphs. It should be placed at the beginning of a business plan, but should be written last so you can summarize the other sections of the plan.

Your executive summary should tell people what your business does, what your goals are, and how you’ll achieve those goals. It should also explain what makes your business unique.

As a fabric store, determine what sets you apart from the competition. Do you have exclusive, one-of-a-kind products? Are you creating a place for members of the community to gather? Be sure to include this in your executive summary.

Building a Complete Fabric Store Business Plan

Your fabric store business plan should give any reader a comprehensive understanding of your business — your products or services, goals, strategies, financial situation, and what your business is all about.

A written business plan is useful for securing funding and making beneficial deals, but it also guides you as a business owner.

Writing your business’ plans and goals down keeps you accountable, and having set policies helps you navigate challenging situations when working with employees, customers, business partners, and anyone else you interact with.

A business plan is the foundation of your business. Once you write it and you’re ready to turn your dream into a reality, you’ll need the right tools to open and run your fabric store.

To manage the day-to-day operations of a fabric store, you need a point of sale (POS) system. A POS system automates a variety of tasks business owners used to do by hand, lightening the load of running a retail store.

Like Sew is an all-in-one POS solution specifically designed for fabric stores. This cloud-based system offers general features like payment processing, inventory management, and website development, along with fabric store-specific features like fractional yards and access to the best suppliers in the business.

Schedule a demo today to see what Like Sew can do for your business!