Community Theater Business Plan, Marketing Plan, How To Guide, and Funding Directory
The Community Theater Business Plan and Business Development toolkit features 18 different documents that you can use for capital raising or general business planning purposes. Our product line also features comprehensive information regarding to how to start a Community Theater business. All business planning packages come with easy-to-use instructions so that you can reduce the time needed to create a professional business plan and presentation.
Your Business Planning Package will be available for download after your purchase.
Product Specifications (please see images below):
- Bank/Investor Ready!
- Complete Industry Research
- 3 Year Excel Financial Model
- Business Plan (26 to 30 pages)
- Loan Amortization and ROI Tools
- Three SWOT Analysis Templates
- Easy to Use Instructions
- All Documents Delivered in Word, Excel, and PDF Format
- Meets SBA Requirements
Community theater is popular in both suburban markets as well as major metropolitan area markets. These businesses can operate in one of two ways. First, many commuter community theater businesses will seek to maintain an ongoing specific location in which they can show productions to the general public on an ongoing basis. This usually necessitates the acquisition of a small facility as well as a liquor license in order for drinks as well as other food products to be sold during intermissions. These businesses tend to do okay during most economic climates provided that they charge a reasonable pricing for tickets.
The typical startup cost associated with the new community theater business typically range anywhere from $100,000 to $1 million depending on the type of real estate that may be acquired to house the community theater business. The gross margins generated from ticket sales are very high and usually carry gross margins of 90% to 95% depending on whether or not credit cards are going to be accepted as a form of payment. The concessions and beverage sales usually generate gross margins of around 80%.
A community theater SWOT analysis is typically produced as well in order to showcase the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats faced by these businesses on an ongoing basis. As a relates the strengths, these companies are always able to generate moderate streams of revenue through the ongoing sale of tickets to the general public. In areas where there’s a substantial amount of interest in art, community, and theater – these businesses tend to do well and are able to remain profitable and cash flow positive in most economic climates.
For weaknesses, these businesses do have some susceptibility to an economic recession. During prolonged recessionary periods, the demand for ticket sales may wane given the fact that people have less money to spend on discretionary purchases like theater tickets. Additionally, the ongoing expenses of these businesses are somewhat high given that a cast of actors and performers needs to be hired.
For opportunities, these businesses typically expand when they can license the rights to proprietary performances have been created by the theater director. Outside of this method of growth, there’s really no other way in which these businesses are able to generate additional revenues outside of raising ticket prices. However, some community theaters establish additional locations in order to host additional events on an ongoing basis. It should be noted that some community theater businesses will lease out the space during nonworking hours for corporate events, birthdays, weddings, and related activities.
For threats, there is nothing is going to impact the way that a community theater business conducted operations moving forward. These businesses have been not in operation for millennia, and it will continue to do so on an ongoing basis.
A community theater business plan should also be developed and this document should feature a three-year profit and loss statement, cash analysis, balance sheet, breakeven analysis, and business ratios page. As it relates the industry research portion of the business plan, there are approximately 1,200 community theaters in operation and each year the they generate about $2 billion revenue. The industry employs 25,000 people. It should be noted that in most business plan specific for a community theater, a demographic analysis is also included so that individuals can understand the population size, population density, median household income, median family income, and the percentage of people that frequent theater on an ongoing basis. This demographic analysis can be used in conjunction with the marketing plan. As a relates the competition, most markets do have a modest amount of competition as relates to independently produce theater productions. However, these businesses are rarely in major direct competition with one another and as part of the business plan analysis can be kept somewhat on a light basis.
A community theater marketing plan is also developed in order to ensure near 100% occupancy for each performance. Foremost, these businesses aggressively use local and regional sales operations in order to make people aware of the community theater production and how to buy tickets. A website is absolutely necessary for these businesses given the fact that people are going to need to know when the production is going to occur, to buy tickets online, hours of operation, and to learn more about the performance.
Almost all websites specific for a community theater production or a community theater location typically is a mobile friendly website as many people now search for these types of businesses on their mobile devices. A presence on social media platforms, including FaceBook, Twitter, Instagram, as well as others, is absolutely needed in order to ensure viral marketing message. The usage of FaceBook and Twitter can also assist with having the community theater be able to constantly inform their movie their goers with ongoing announcements regarding new productions.
Almost all community theaters will also work closely with local and regional newspapers in order to have theater reviewers and critics come to location in order to see the production. This is one of the best ways in order to generate interest especially if the reviews are very positive for the community theater production. These reviews are free of charge and can drive near 100% occupancy at all times especially if the theater critic is a rave view about the production. One of the ways that this can be accomplished simply by reaching out to local and regional newspapers with either free tickets or discounted tickets in order to ensure that people that can write about the experience will be in attendance.
Most people love theater, and by developing a community theater production that produces plays and musicals that are in strong demand – these businesses can be highly profitable. It should be noted that the access to capital for these businesses may be somewhat limited outside of the acquisition of a mortgage or line of credit secured by a piece of real estate. In fact, the way that most of these businesses receive their financing is through the usage of owner funds or from third-party investors that are willing to put up a small amount of capital in order to develop a community theater production. There is nothing is going to change about this industry moving forward, with the exception that many theater performances can be streamed online to a much greater audience. This is one of the ways that the community theater business model is expected to expand moving forward.