OUGD502 - Life's a Pitch - Set up costs

Delegated roles:

I am in charge of


The business laws.
Fees.
Rules and Regs. 

Findings

The costs of setting up a registered trademark are relatively low when you total a first year income of a business that could make you a lot of money in the long term. It is only when you start to register a business that provides many different goods or services that it becomes expensive, this is due to the fact that you have to register in several different classes.

Our company colours are black and white, therefore this wouldn't really apply to our branding anyway.

"Application to register a trade mark, covering one class of goods or service. Fee for each additional class above one classNB: With a RightStart application you pay only 50% of the fee when you apply. You pay the balance if you decide to proceed with the application after receiving our examination report"

£170 Including a £30 discount when applying online

The class we would require is Class 42 

"Scientific and technological services and research and design relating thereto; industrial analysis and research services; design and development of computer hardware and software; computer programming; installation, maintenance and repair of computer software; computer consultancy services; design, drawing and commissioned writing for the compilation of web sites; creating, maintaining and hosting the web sites of others; design services."






At this stage in the companies existence there are a few things that will, in my opinion, need discussing before we go any further. 

We will need to find a way of tracking and logging who owes money to the company and indeed, where the money is going when it does come into the company. We will also need a delegated role for keeping track of spending on materials and service. 

There is also a need for Linked in, twitter, Facebook accounts etc. We have previously been warned off Behance as it can be a source of design thievery however it may be appropriate to be featured on design blogs.


0845 numbers

http://business.bt.com/phone-services/pre-paid-and-low-cost-numbers/ 

Advertising space

I decided to email a couple of well known magazines to gain an idea of how much money could be used from our first year budget in order to gain some clients. My experience in paper based advertising in magazines is that it doesn't work half as well as it should for the money that you pay. I am expecting adverts in magazines such as this to be very expensive, but we shall see. 

Creative Review and Computer Arts both got back to me within 24 hours. 

There is now the decision to make wether or not to advertise in the first year of business, this will take much of our first year expenditure and in my opinion should only be done after year 3 when there is profits in the company. This will also be at the time when we will have a bit of experience.