Small Business Research Online - Amazon S3 · Web view– Read trade publications and articles related to your industry. Try and understand trends, best practices and other keys to

Small Business Research GuidesArlington Public Library

Online Link > https://library.arlingtonva.us/explore/small-business/

We can use various databases to help develop the Business Plan and Financial Plan for Java Joe’s Coffee Shop in Arlington, Virginia. This document provides some examples of how we can use this free resource.NOTE: If you reside in Montgomery County, Maryland, several of the same databases are also available online through Montgomery County: https://montgomerycountymd.libguides.com/smallbusiness

Before using these online guides, you will need an Arlington Library Card. You must enter your library card number and your four-digit pin number to access the databases.

We will work through eight examples for Java Joe’s Coffee Shop:

Example 1 – Use the Legal Forms Database to help us form an LLC (Page 2)Example 2 – Understand your industry by reading specialized articles (Pages 3 – 5)Example 3 – Understand your industry by reading the 10-K for a public company (Pages 5 – 8)Example 4 – Generate a list of Potential Competing Coffee Shops in Arlington (Pages 8 – 11)Example 5 – Generate a list of Potential Customers in Arlington (Pages 11 – 14)Example 6 – Use the Small Business Research Database to analyze a key competitor (Pages 15 – 17)Example 7 – Identify key suppliers related to coffee (Pages 18 – 19)Example 8 – Review a business plan template for a coffee shop (Pages 19 – 21)

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Version 4 dated January 19, 2019

https://montgomerycountymd.libguides.com/smallbusiness

https://library.arlingtonva.us/explore/small-business/

Before using the databases, you should determine the most appropriate NAICS code for your business. Every business has a NAICS code that specifies the type of business. For purposes of Java Joe’s we determined and validated our NAICS Code as 722513 at www.siccode.com:

Example 1 – Legal Documents to Form the BusinessJava Joe’s Research - Obtain Articles of Organization and modify for registering the business in Virginia: Legal Forms Link > http://library.arlingtonva.libguides.com/aboutlegalforms

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http://library.arlingtonva.libguides.com/aboutlegalforms

https://www.naics.com/search/

Example 2 – Understand Your Industry (Articles)Java Joe’s Research – Read trade publications and articles related to your industry. Try and understand trends, best practices and other keys to your future success. From the main menu, select Research an Industry. Scroll down and click on Business Insights Essentials:

Click on the Advanced Search link below the Search button:

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We will use the keyword coffee and limit our search to the year 2018:

Click the Search button to generate a listing of articles. Scroll down the list and read articles of interest. For example, we come across an article published by Tea and Coffee Journal titled: On a Relentless Pursuit of Coffee Perfection:

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Click on the article and see how you might leverage some of this knowledge in how you brand and market your business. The article talks about how “shade grown” coffee is better quality and helps protect the bird population. These practices might help us in how we market our coffee:

Example 3 – Understand Your Industry (10-K Report for a Public Company)Java Joe’s Research – See if you can target a publicly traded company in the United States that is considered a market leader in your industry. By reviewing their annual 10-K report, you can gain insights into key risk and success factors. In the case of Java Joe’s, an obvious choice would be to look at Starbucks.

From the Research a Company selection, click on the link: U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC):

Within the EDGAR Filing search box, enter the name of the public company you want to review:5


From the list of filings, you want to look at the annual 10-K Annual Report:

For the selected public company, click on and load the 10-K Annual Report:

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The first page of the 10-K Annual Report will come up as follows. Scroll down the report and click on the Risk Factors link:

Review the Risk Factors section of the 10-K to understand your industry and keys to success:

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In the above example, we learn that branding of your name can be very important to the success of a coffee shop. Having solid relationships and partners is also a critical success factor for a coffee shop.

Example 4 – Generate a list of Competing Coffee Shops in Arlington, VirginiaJava Joe’s Research – Select Small Business Research and then select ReferenceUSA from the list:

NOTE: To access the ReferenceUSA databases, enter your library card and four digit pin number:

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From the listing of databases, select the U.S. Businesses database for our search. Once we have the specific database, we need to filter through the records. Click on Additional Filters since we need to reduce the database records down to our NAICS Code and Arlington, Virginia. Check off these attributes on the left side panel and complete the filters on the right side. Once done, click on the blue button – UPDATE COUNT to apply the filters. The total database records should drop significantly:

Now click on the green button – VIEW RESULTS after you have applied the filters (UPDATE COUNT)

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Click on the blue Download button to export to an Excel Spreadsheet. You can also click on Charts to generate a breakdown pie chart.

Now that we have a listing of our competition, let’s generate a list of potential customers. In order to do this kind of research, we need to develop a profile of the person most likely to visit a coffee shop.

Java Joe’s Research – Customer Profile10


Visit www.sbdcnet.org and find a market report for your specific business type. Review the report and summarize key attributes of the ideal customer:

Our targeted customer is: Young, Single, well-educated with an income of $ 100,000+.Example 5 – Generate a list of Potential Customers in Arlington, VirginiaNow, let’s go back to the ReferenceUSA databases and this time we will select the U. S. Consumers / Lifestyles database and apply filters that align to our customer profile.

Once again, it helps to click on Additional Filters:

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http://www.sbdcnet.org/

Now setup the filters for our targeted customer: 1) Arlington, Virginia; 2) Incomes $ 90,000 to $ 149,999;3) Young (Ages 25 to 34). Click on the UPDATE COUNT button to apply the filters.

Click on the green VIEW RESULTS button after the filters have been applied. We have 635 records of targeted customers to help us with our marketing campaign:

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We can also click on the Charts button to generate a breakdown by zip code:

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Click on the Download button and export to Excel – select Custom to select the specific fields you want in the spreadsheet:

Based on our analysis, we notice there are not many coffee shops listed for zip code 22204. Let’s analyze a key competitor to ascertain if the business has solid sales growth – this helps us confirm demand in this potentially under-served zip code location within Arlington, Virginia.

KEY POINT: If you are not certain about how to target your potential customer, then select records according to the life styles of your potential customer. Once again, this is one of the many options from the Advanced Search tab. It allows you to target a specific group of people. For example, suppose you want to generate a list of donors for a non-profit that support the arts. You would select Cultural Arts and Charity Donor after checking the LifeStyles on the left side panel:

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Example 6 – Identify and Evaluate a Key CompetitorJava Joe Research – Search for a coffee shop (NAICS Code 722513) that is very similar to your type of business within the zip code 22204 (Arlington, Virginia) where you think there are few authentic coffee shops.

Just to recap, there are four key steps for doing our research:

1. Click on Small Business Research from the main menu2. Select the ReferenceUSA Database you want to use3. Enter Library Card and four digit pin number to access the database4. Click on Advanced Search and enter the NAICS Code under Business Type and enter the Zip Code under

Geography

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From the list generated, we see only one private, local coffee shop - Rappahannock Coffee & Roasting. Click on this key competitor to extrapolate key data for our business and financial plan.

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Scroll down the report. We can get a quick read on the size of this business in terms of number of employees and total annual sales:

Continue to scroll down to obtain a breakdown of their expenses and sales trend since opening:

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We can see that this business has good long-term growth over an extended period of time which helps us confirm that there is solid demand in this target market.

Based on our research, we have isolated a zip code that seems very viable for launching the business and we have a good baseline of customers that we can approach when we launch the business per our previous research.

Example 7 – Identify Key SuppliersJava Joe Research – Search for major suppliers that can support a coffee shop. From the main menu, select Research a Company and select ThomasNet:

Put in the keyword coffee and see what kind of suppliers come up. We will select Coffees (48 suppliers):

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Scroll through the list and identify some key suppliers that we might want to use:

Example 8 – Business Plan TemplateJava Joe Research – Review a template for a coffee shopFrom the main menu, select Find Business Plans Scroll down the page and select the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh - Business Plans and Business Profiles Index:

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Scroll down the industry types and find the one that fits the best for your business. We will select Food, Beverages and Restaurants:

From the industry type listing, we will select Additional café and coffee shop business plans:

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Select the specific template you want to review. We will select the Coffee Shop called Java Culture:

We can now review an 8-page template for Java Culture Coffee Shop:

This concludes our online research using databases available through the local public library. If you need additional assistance, please contact the following:

Arlington County: Montgomery County:Arlington Public Library Rockville Public Library1015 N. Quincy Street 21 Maryland AvenueArlington, VA 22201 Rockville, MD 20850Business Librarian: Senior Research Librarian:Alexandra Schulz ([email protected]) Ann Cohn

Learn how to use the ReferenceUSA databases > http://resource.referenceusa.com/learning-center/

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http://resource.referenceusa.com/learning-center/

mailto:[email protected]