You have just graduated from the MBA program from University Canada West (UCW) and are so excited about the upcoming graduation ceremony. Unfortunately, due to the current situation in the world, thankful to COVID-19, your aged parents and your siblings will not be able to come from overseas.

After several years of hard work and study at UCW, you feel very proud of yourself and more than ever ready to implement your business knowledge and your own ideas into practice. You are very confident that the knowledge your professors transferred to you, will be very useful and you cannot wait to put it in action.

You have always dreamed, even as a young kid, to have your own business, a business that will produce jellybean candies. You have been talking to your friends about your business idea and many of them did not understand why you have such a strong desire to become a manufacturer of jelly beans. The answer to their question brings you to your childhood where your parents told you that candies are not good for you and never bought you any. You had a very happy childhood full of books, toys, friends, however, not candies.

You feel now is the right time to think about your dream and to put it into action, and to open your own jellybean factory. Your destiny that you were dreaming about for so many years, could become a reality. However, you are aware that opening a business in Canada is easy but staying in business and being successful could be very challenging. You remember from your accounting and other business courses that sale is a very crucial factor and without sales and customers your business will not be able to survive for long. You decided to give it a try and start your jellybean business this year.

Required:

Think of your proposed business and answer the following questions under the two-scenario planning, COVID-19 and post COVID-19 following the six-step process. Before you start working on the project, read an article SCENARIO PLANNING Applying A Six-Step Process To Your Organization by David A.J. Axson. The link is provided in your course syllabus under the Other Required Articles & Resources.

1. What will be your business strategy? Product differentiation or low-cost provider?
2. How much money do you have for investing in your business and how much money you need? How do you plan on raising cash needed for your business?
3. What will be your selling price per one jellybean bag of 200 grams? What factors you need to take into considerations when pricing the product?
4. What variable costs will incur once you start operations?
5. What will be your fixed costs? Think of them on an annual basis.
6. To simplify your analysis, think about producing only one product, a mixed jellybean bag of 200 grams. Based on your selling price per bag, unit variable cost, and total fixed costs, perform a break-even analysis to compute how many bags you need to sell to cover all costs from your revenue and generate zero income. What do you think, is it feasible to break-even in the first year in operations? Briefly explain.
7. You are now curious to know how many jellybean bags you need to sell to earn an income of $50,000 Canadian Dollars. What do you think, is it feasible in first, second, or third year? Briefly explain your findings.

Note: During your quantitative and qualitative analysis, be reasonable and objective. Do not consider only costs but other factors as well.