Business Plan: WhichRug

Brief: To develop a business idea and produce a written plan, which includes a set of objectives, a finanical forecast, a time plan and outlines the businesses USP and target market.

Project Overview:

For this project, I was required to come up with an idea for a new business and develop a plan for it. My idea is a mobile application (WhichRug) targeted at horse owners, which functions to help them decide which rug to put on their horse each day/night. This is a personal area of interest of mine as I am a horse owner and have worked as a groom for over 30 horses at a local riding school since 2018. A problem which I commonly face is having to decide which weight of rug to use, depending on the weather conditions and the horses personal requirements, therefore my business aims to resolve this. WhichRug allows users to input information regarding their horses personal requirements, which then helps the app calculate which rug would be most suitable to use. The revenue streams for WhichRug include a small monthly subsciption and sponsorship fees from rug brands. Users will have access to a shop page, which will display products sold by the sponsoring businesses. The USP of WhichRug is the high levels of customisability offered, allowing the user to tailor the app to fit their horses needs.

Brainstorming Stage:

I found the initial brainstorming stage for this project fairly easy. I knew that I wanted to design an app, as I enjoyed my app design project in year 2 and wanted to further my Adobe XD skills. I chose to base my app around rugging, as this is a common problem which I encounter, and I therefore wanted to develop a solution to it. I found that by choosing to design an app around a personal interest, I was more motivated to work on it and produce a high standard of work. I had a basic idea of what I wanted the user flow to be like, however it took me a while to come up with the final UI design. Due to my background in the equine industry, I already had accumulated alot of knowledge on horse care and rugging, however I conducted some more seondary research, to gain a more detailed understanding on how horses keep themselves warm and how different factors may affect this. An overview of my research can be found in my written business plan (see bottom of page).

Here are some initial UI ideas:

Branding:

I chose the name WhichRug as it is short and snappy, and gets the point across as to what the app is. I wanted the branding to be quite fun and simple, therefore for the logo, I went for a cartoony style, with the illustrated horse and bold, bubbly text. I experimented with adding a question mark onto the horses back, to further represent the concept of the app, however later decided to not include this, as I wanted the logo to be really simple. I rearranged the text and image to create a vertical and a horizontal logo variations. I am happy with the logo outcome as I think it is eyecatching and encaptulates the WhichRug brand well.

Final Logo Design:

Colour Scheme:

I decided to use colours which represent the weather theme of the app. For example, the yellow represents warmth, whilst the shades of blue reflect the sky in the day/night. I experimented with different shades, to find colours which compliment eachother well. The main colours used are the navy blue, the yellow and the white, as the lighter shades contrast nicely with the dark. WhichRug has two different user interfaces: a dark mode and a light mode. These reflect which time of day the app is being used. In the daytime the lighter blues will appear on the app, as opposed to the navy which appears at nightime.

Typography:

I selected two fonts for the WhichRug brand. I chose to use Baloo for titles and headings. This is also the font used in the logo. I chose this font because it was bold but friendly looking. I chose to use arial for the body text as I wanted it to be really minimalist. Since WhichRug is a mobile app, the font needs to be easy to read, as the text is likely to be quite small, which influenced this decision. I think these typefaces compliment eachother well.

User Interface:

Dark Mode:

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Light Mode:

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I really like the UI for this app. I think it looks engageing and simple to understand. I have had to consider the way that the user will interact with the product at each stage, to ensure that the design is functional. I have intergrated the weather forecast into the UI, to make it easier for the user to judge their rugging decisions. The use of individual horse profiles, adds customisability to the application, allowing recommendations to be tailored to their speicfic needs. The ability to add a photo of your horse, adds a personal touch for the user. Toggles and sliders help the user to easily adapt their preferences, speeding up the userflow and increasing user satisfaction. I have aimed to keep the design quite simple, however have integrated the cloud design in the background to make it more visually appealing, without diverting too kmuch attention from the apps content. The next stage would be to test the UI design with a focus group, to help gather a greater insight as to weather the target market find it enageing and functional.

Website:

To compliment the mobile app, WhichRug will have a website. The purpose of the website is to promote the app, and to give some extra information. This could include the background story of it, aswell as some usability FAQ's. I have designed a mockup of what the homepage would look like.

Financial Plan:

When constructing the financial forecast, I found it difficult to predict how many people would download the app. I therefore based this figure off of WhichRugs competitor (Horseware Ireland: 'Turnout Guide'). Turnout Guide received 10,000 downloads on just one distribution platform (Google Play). I tripled this figure as WhichRug will be distributed across three platforms (Apple, Adroid and Google). Turnout guide is outdated and less customisable, therefore WhichRug has potential to receive more downloads than this, given the UK market size of 374,000 households. To calculate the costs, I did alot of online research and also reached out to a local app development agency who provided me with some information. All of the sources revealed that the price is variable and depends on how complex the app is, however I was able to construct a predicted cost of £34,328 for the first year. Since I planned to complete all design tasks myself, I was able to keep the costs down.

I initially planned to have sponsorships as the only revenue stream and keep the app free to use, however I later decided to introduce a small subscription fee. I found that this would be a viable decision if I was able to provide users with some form of value for their money, therefore WhichRug will provide users with discounts for sponsoring rug brands.

Assuming that WhichRug is able to secure a sponsorship deal and 30,000 downloads, a profit of £142,63.60 is predicted.

Business Timeline:

The aim is to launch WhichRug in the UK within a year of the initial development process starting. During this time, it will be important to contact multiple rug companies, to deliver a sponsorship proposal, as securing a deal prior to the app’s launch would help WhichRug gain traction in its early stages. Prior to the app’s launch, a social media campaign will be released, to create buzz. Initial research has already been conducted to gather opinions on the concept behind WhichRug, however closer to its release, a focus group will be held where participants can test the app, allowing final changes to be made if necessary. Preferably, the app will be ready to launch at the start of Autumn 2023. This is the time of year where rugging decisions are most difficult, due to the fluctuating weather patterns, therefore WhichRug will seem more desirable.

Business Plan:

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