Forestry business plans to branch out into property.

Three partners in a young forestry business approached Business Doctors Maidstone about how to build their business. They already had some routes to market but they wanted to know how to develop the work streams, so they could achieve their long-term aspirations.

A facilitated strategic review was done and from it emerged that there were distinctly different routes to market for the products and services they provided. Some markets were B2C, some were B2B. It also emerged that opportunities existed to build a separate business which could support their own activities and those of other forestry service providers.

In the longer term, being able to demonstrate profitable trading over a period would enable a loan to be secured to invest in property associated with forestry services.

A high level five-year plan was drawn up showing the growth of the various work streams. As each work stream had its own unique features for promoting and delivery, the activities could be treated separately. A decision was made to create four businesses, some of which would stay below the VAT level and some would become VAT registered in time.

Armed with the plan the three partners approached a new accountant who was receptive to helping them on their journey. Ultimately, they would make a loan application from a business yet to be formed. That business would be a property business. The property business would submit a loan application based upon pre-lets with the other businesses. The success of the loan application would be dependent upon the quality of the pre-lets and therefore the other businesses would have to be set up & properly managed from the outset.

With a long term plan the partners set about starting to build the businesses and functional activities they made themselves responsible for.