City Canvas is a youth-based art program teaching students how to create custom apparel and printing techniques, graphic design, and elements of entrepreneurship. This supplemental art program can be administered during the day or after school.

City Canvas can also be positioned as a supplemental art program in Chicago Public Schools to help with the shortage of art teachers.

This will involve several different steps for the students, including:

• Learning about our business strategy from various employees to become familiar with our goals, mission, and products.
• Creating forecasts using Excel (or another financial software) for sales in the first year of operation as well as an income projection (conservative and aggressive).
• Working with our team to develop an expense budget.
• Conducting a break-even analysis timeline using financial projections.
• Reporting on projected assets and liabilities.
• Including visual comparisons such as graphs and charts to show the differences between the conservative and aggressive income projection.

Deliverables Needed:

Please include all supporting documentation to support your findings.

A FOIA request was sent to Chicago Public Schools and I am waiting for the document production. A copy of the request can be sent upon request.

Please find information for schools and youth organizations located in the Chicagoland area and surrounding suburbs.

Here is a link to a similar organization:

https://www.youth-guidance.org/extended-day-enrichment/

Market Analysis

Competitive research to show what other companies are doing and their strengths. Grades 6-12, what are the trends for this type of program? What do successful competitors do? Why does it work? How can we do it better?

Investigate 12 programs- (3) art-oriented programming, (3) apparel design programs, (3) graphic design programs, and (3) entrepreneurship programs

Marketing and Sales Strategy

How can we attract schools and youth development agencies? How will a sale actually happen? Please thoroughly describe a complete marketing and sales strategy.

Financial Projections

What is a prospective financial outlook for the next five years? Include forecasted income statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements, and capital expenditure budgets. For the first year, be even more specific and use quarterly — or even monthly — projections.

Define our strategy and list the most significant costs we’ll face pursuing it.

Additional Questions

·      How much are they charging?

·      What is their curriculum?

·      What are they offering?

·      How many days?

·      How long is their program?

·      How many hours?

·      Are supplemental art programs allowed in Chicago Public Schools?

By the end of the project, students should complete the following list of activities (this is basically a retelling of the steps above):

• Completed a sales forecast and an income projection for the first year of operations.
• Conducted a break-even analysis using the sales forecast and expense budget.
• Analyzed projected assets and liabilities our company will have in the first year of operations.
• Included extra visuals in the report to help us understand the differences between the conservative and aggressive income projections.

Final deliverables:

• A final report including a sales forecast, income projection, expense budget, break-even point, assets, liabilities, as well as any calculations and assumptions used.
• A 30-minute presentation explaining all research and findings from the report.