It’s now a matter of ideally finding a supplier that can help make the cookies for me.  However it doesn’t seem like an easy place to start.  I rang up and spoke briefly to the nice people at Dough Dough (Muffin makers), as they get someone else to make their muffins as well.  They said it took a while to find the right supplier for them, one that had a decent product, good price and didn’t want to deliver the product by the forklift because they want you to have that many of them!   I remember calling up a few places a good year or two ago and one of the places wanted for me to have a minimum order of over 1000 cookies!   Considering I haven’t sold anywhere near close to that at all it would be a bit of a order getting that many and then trying to sell them all at once before they expired!

They did make a couple of good suggestions about trying Food from Britain people, which led me to the British Cake and Confectionary Alliance, which have now become the Food and Drink Federation.  Though I called too late for them, will try again tomorrow.  Also they suggested the Speciality and Fine Food Fair, which have a look on the net is on in a couple of days!  How’s that for good timing.  Normally I find out about these things two days after the event!  So will be going along to the Fair to check out suppliers and hear some good advice from many of the exhibitors and shows there.

Finally got around to finishing the (draft) version of my Business Plan.

I modelled it on the basic’s of the business plan used by Coffee Republic.  They put out a great book about starting a business called “Anyone can do It”.  I recommend you get it and have a read if your thinking starting a business.

I’m pretty slow at doing this, and should have finished it many months ago.   Though finally got it all sorted, sending it out to some friends for advice.

Hey there,

and Welcome to the Mighty Moa story, here I’m hoping to posts the ups and downs (though I hope there won’t be many of those) of getting a business off and started in the UK.

If you look at the earlier posts you can see some background back story..  and also realised that along the way I changed the Business name.   Market research does help sometimes!

Well enjoy and your welcome to give me any feedback that might help!

Hmm, I feel a bit like i’m in a chapter from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy..

Obviously the product that i’m doing will require a label.. and to make sure I don’t fall foul of the law I want the label to have the correct required information..

However, call the Trading Standards Government number, and they tell you to call your local council.  Yes apparently the local council deal with things like this, and no it’s not the council where you make your product, or even where you sell your product, but its the council where you live.

You call the council and they say you need to look at the actual law regulations.. they can only give general information about what you should put on… However if you get the information wrong then they will be the ones that sue you for getting it wrong!  But of course they won’t tell you how to get it right!?

They do recommend another private company that can tell me what I should put on the label, and they will confirm that it’s right, however they will charge me 100 pounds for that privledge.. hmm..  Something smells fishy here, and it’s not just the fish in my freezer.

Well after hunting around a few different registration providers, it looked like 123-reg were the cheapest (and hopefully the best).

Then I had to check if my domain name existed.. Hmm, of course it didn’t.  Most of the main addresses were all taken (which was half expected as it is a short name).  Quite funny seeing what some of the other links went to.. a couple of them were to actual real sites, one of them was even for a tribute band.   :)

 Eventually though found that the .org.uk was available so went for that one (I’ll let you know the name once I’ve got the trademark approved)

Step 2 – Register a domain name

Update: August 2008 – Well in the end the domain name that I originally chose was ok, but I decided to change the name of the product.   It was going to be The Big O.  But after looking into trademark details there was already another company with a trademark which was in the same “class” of goods that I wanted to be.   They are an Olive company, and even had an appearance on the Dragon’s Den.   So a bit too much of a similar name clash there, and potential for problem.    Also after doing more market research I found that one of my backup names was more popular.

Well I thought a good way to write about the business and keep me motivated so I can see some progress is to write about it..

 Step 1 done then – Setup a blog