Startups and Small Enterprises

• A client with a passion for fashion wanted to start a chain of upscale boutiques across the country, but wasn’t having luck raising money with her current business plan. On close review, we saw two problems: first, the financial projections were structured so that every time cash flow was healthy, profit was being used to open up a new boutique. Essentially, the company was going to get bigger but not better from the perspective of investors who wanted to see free cash flow. Second, the client didn’t have a track record in retail that potential investors could latch onto. We advised the client to concentrate on a single store, funded by an SBA loan, and reworked her financial model and business plan to reflect that strategy. The loan was approved, and one year later, the store’s sales data was within 10% of our initial forecast. She now has the store, experience and proven success that she needs in order to expand through investor capital.

• A client approached us with a strategy for a niche-focused website in the pet accessories arena that met initial criteria for turning a healthy profit from narrow-casted advertising revenue. We created a thorough financial model that reflected his strategy. After extensive research and running scores of scenarios through the financial projections, something in the strategy wasn’t turning out the way everyone expected. After in-depth analysis, we formulated a new strategy – instead of advertising, we changed the source of income to a revenue share strategy with strategic partners, and suddenly the numbers worked. The client has since built relationships with dozens of strategic partners and is poised to beta-launch this year.

Global Organizations

• One client’s key to success rested in the purchase of intellectual property with a multimillion dollar price tag, and the money was going to have to be raised from investors before a single product hit the market. After analyzing every angle, we helped them build a financial model and business plan that divided the capital requirements into two rounds: the first, and smaller round, allowed for a partial license on the IP. This gave the company the means to get product to the marketplace and prove its business concept. This provided investors with positive historical data to review before committing to the second round, which allowed the purchase of the IP outright.

• A branch of the South Korean government needed a solid strategy for increasing sales of domestic beer, wine and spirits through international channels. We started by identifying the high-growth alcoholic beverage markets around the globe. The result was a focus on the China market, whose growing middle class has become accustomed to foreign products, which are perceived and marketed as premium in quality. We conducted three months of research – including extensive data mining and interviews with market leaders – to pinpoint market penetration methods that have proven successful, and documented it in an official whitepaper

Social Media Marketing

• A high-profile individual had formed an exploratory committee for a possible White House bid in the 2008 election. The committee understood that the decision to run or not would be based in great part on popular opinion, and it realized that new media is the new voice of the people. Over the course of several months, as news was being disseminated across the Internet, our team audited, documented and quantified public opinion across the web – from social bookmarking and Web 2.0 communities to video sites and blogs. Ultimately, the decision was not to run – an informed decision made with confidence and without regret.

• A media company promoting a new subscription-based mobile application was trying to define the profile of its early adopters, particularly with regard to online interests. Our team took advantage of a third-party press release that was picked up by major media to get conversations started online – through blogs, bookmarking sites and Twitter – and we used analytics to discover which concepts and product features were key in driving subscriptions. The results allowed the client to develop and implement a laser-focused marketing strategy with conversion-to-subscriber rates that exceeded expectations.