Need support creating your business plan? Check out these business plan examples for inspiration and guidance.
Jan 23, 2024
Any aspiring entrepreneur researching how to start a business will likely be advised to write a business plan. But few resources provide business plan examples to really guide you through writing one of your own. Here are some real-world and illustrative business plan examples to help you craft your business plan.
Your executive summary is a page that gives a high-level overview of the rest of your business plan. While it appears at the beginning, it’s easiest to write this section last, as there are details further in the report you’ll need to include here.
In this free business plan template, the executive summary is four paragraphs and takes a little over half a page. It clearly and efficiently communicates what the business does and what it plans to do, including its business model and target customers.
You might repurpose your company description elsewhere, like on your About page, social media profile pages, or other properties that require a boilerplate description of your small business.
Soap brand ORRIS has a blurb on its About page that could easily be repurposed for the company description section of its business plan.
You can also go more in-depth with your company overview and include the following sections, like in this business plan example for Paw Print Post:
This section outlines how you registered your business—as an LLC, sole proprietorship, corporation, or other business type: “Paw Print Post will operate as a sole proprietorship run by the owner, Jane Matthews.”
“Paw Print Post sells unique, one-of-a-kind digitally printed cards that are customized with a pet’s unique paw prints.”
“Paw Print Post operates primarily in the pet industry and sells goods that could also be categorized as part of the greeting card industry.”
“Jane Matthews, the founder of Paw Print Post, has a long history in the pet industry and working with animals, and was recently trained as a graphic designer. She’s combining those two loves to capture a niche in the market: unique greeting cards customized with a pet’s paw prints, without needing to resort to the traditional (and messy) options of casting your pet’s prints in plaster or using pet-safe ink to have them stamp their ’signature.’”
“Jane will have Paw Print Post ready to launch at the Big Important Pet Expo in Toronto to get the word out among industry players and consumers alike. After two years in business, Jane aims to drive $150,000 in annual revenue from the sale of Paw Print Post’s signature greeting cards and to have expanded into two new product categories.”
“Jane Matthews is the sole full-time employee of Paw Print Post but hires contractors as needed to support her workflow and fill gaps in her skill set. Notably, Paw Print Post has a standing contract for five hours a week of virtual assistant support with Virtual Assistants Pro.”
Your mission statement may also make an appearance here. Passionfruit shares its mission statement on its company website, and it would also work well in its example business plan.
The market analysis consists of research about supply and demand, your target demographics, industry trends, and the competitive landscape. You might run a SWOT analysis and include that in your business plan.
Here’s an example SWOT analysis for an online tailored-shirt business:
You’ll also want to do a competitive analysis as part of the market research component of your business plan. This will tell you which businesses you’re up against and give you ideas on how to differentiate your brand. A broad competitive analysis might include:
This section of your business plan describes your offerings—which products and services do you sell to your customers? Here’s an example for Paw Print Post that explains its line of custom greeting cards, along with details on what makes its products unique.
It’s always a good idea to develop a marketing plan before you launch your business. Your marketing plan shows how you’ll get the word out about your business, and it’s an essential component of your business plan as well.
The Paw Print Post focuses on four Ps: price, product, promotion, and place. However, you can take a different approach with your marketing plan. Maybe you can pull from your existing marketing strategy, or maybe you break it down by the different marketing channels. Whatever approach you take, your marketing plan should describe how you intend to promote your business and offerings to potential customers.
The Paw Print Post example considered suppliers, production, facilities, equipment, shipping and fulfillment, and inventory. This includes any raw materials needed to produce the products.
The financial plan provides a breakdown of sales, revenue, profit, expenses, and other relevant financial metrics related to funding and profiting from your business.
Ecommerce brand Nature’s Candy’s financial plan breaks down predicted revenue, expenses, and net profit in graphs.
It then dives deeper into the financials to include:
You can use a financial plan spreadsheet to build your own financial statements, including income statement, balance sheet, and cash-flow statement.
Customer segmentation means dividing your target market into groups based on specific characteristics. These characteristics can be demographics, psychographics, behavior, or geography. Your business plan will provide detailed information on each segment, like its size and growth potential, so you can show why they are valuable to your business.
Airsign, an eco-friendly vacuum cleaner company, faced the challenge of building a sustainable business model in the competitive home appliance market. They identified three key customer personas to target:
The company utilized Shopify’s customer segmentation tools to gain insights and take action to target them. Airsign created targeted segments for specific marketing initiatives.
Put your customer data to work with Shopify’s customer segmentation
Shopify’s built-in segmentation tools help you discover insights about your customers, build segments as targeted as your marketing plans with filters based on your customers’ demographic and behavioral data, and drive sales with timely and personalized emails.
The appendix provides in-depth data, research, or documentation that supports the claims and projections made in the main business plan. It includes things like market research, finance, résumés, product specs, and legal documents.
Readers can access detailed info in the appendix, but the main plan stays focused and easy to read. Here’s an example from a fictional clothing brand called Bloom:
Appendix: Bloom Business Plan
A. Financial projections
This lean business plan is meant to be high level and easy to understand at a glance. You’ll want to include all of the same sections in one-page business plan, but make sure they’re truncated and summarized:
A startup business plan is for a new business. Typically, these plans are developed and shared to secure funding. As such, there’s a bigger focus on the financials, as well as on other sections that determine viability of your business idea—market research, for example:
Your internal business plan is meant to keep your team on the same page and aligned toward the same goal:
A strategic, or growth, business plan is a big-picture, long-term look at your business. As such, the forecasts tend to look further into the future, and growth and revenue goals may be higher. Essentially, you want to use all the sections you would in a normal business plan and build upon each:
Your feasibility business plan is sort of a pre-business plan—many refer to it as simply a feasibility study. This plan essentially lays the groundwork and validates that it’s worth the effort to make a full business plan for your idea. As such, it’s mostly centered around research:
Nonprofit business plans are used to attract donors, grants, and partnerships. They focus on what their mission is, how they measure success, and how they get funded. You’ll want to include the following sections in addition to a traditional business plan:
Building a good business plan serves as a roadmap you can use for your ecommerce business at launch and as you reach each of your business goals. Business plans create accountability for entrepreneurs and synergy among teams, regardless of your business model.
Kickstart your ecommerce business and set yourself up for success with an intentional business planning process—and with the sample business plans above to guide your own path.
To write a simple business plan, begin with an executive summary that outlines your business and your plans. Follow this with sections detailing your company description, market analysis, organization and management structure, product or service, marketing and sales strategy, and financial projections. Each section should be concise and clearly illustrate your strategies and goals.
The best business plan format presents your plan in a clear, organized manner, making it easier for potential investors to understand your business model and goals. Always begin with the executive summary and end with financial information or appendices for any additional data.
