Acme Consulting

1.0 Executive Summary

Acme Consulting is a consulting company specializing in marketing of high-technology products in international markets. Its expertise is the marketing of personal computers and market research, all in international markets.

2.0 Situation Analysis

Acme Consulting offers high-level expertise in international high-tech business development, channel development, distribution strategies, and marketing of high-tech products. It focuses on providing two kinds of international triangles:

* Providing United States clients with development for European and Latin American markets.

* Providing European clients with development for the United States and Latin American markets.

This year we intend to take on consulting work in related markets, specifically the rest of Latin America and the better markets in the Far East. We will also look for additional leverage by taking brokerage positions and representation positions to create percentage holdings in product results.

2.1 Market Summary

Acme focuses on high-technology manufacturers of computer hardware and software, services, and networking, who want to sell into markets in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. These are mostly larger companies, and occasionally medium-sized companies.

Our most important customers are executives in larger corporations. They are marketing managers, general managers, sales managers, sometimes charged with international focus and sometimes charged with market or even specific channel focus. They do not want to waste their time or risk their money looking for bargain information or questionable expertise. As they go into markets looking at new opportunities, they are very sensitive to risking their company's name and reputation.

Target Market Forecast

Potential Customers Growth 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 CAGR

US High Tech 10% 5,000 5,500 6,050 6,655 7,321 10.00%

European High Tech 15% 1,000 1,150 1,323 1,521 1,749 15.00%

Latin America 35% 250 338 456 616 832 35.07%

Other 2% 10,000 10,200 10,404 10,612 10,824 2.00%

Total 6.27% 16,250 17,188 18,233 19,404 20,726 6.27%

2.1.1 Market Demographics

Large manufacturer corporations: Our most important market segment is the large manufacturer of high-technology products, such as Apple, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Siemens, or Olivetti. These companies will be calling on Acme for development functions that are better spun off than managed in-house, for market research, and for market forums.

Medium-sized growth companies: Particularly in software, multimedia, and some related high-growth fields, Acme will offer an attractive development alternative to the company that is management constrained and unable to address opportunities in new markets and new market segments.

Target Market Analysis

Market Segments Summary Decision Level Loyalty Status Buyer Readiness Product Attitude

US High Tech Mature Manager Medium Skeptical Positive

European High Tech Growth Director and up High Informed Indifferent

Latin America Growth CEO High Informed Indifferent

Other Develop Variable Variable Variable Indifferent

2.1.2 Market Needs

When a company, like those that are our clients, wants to open a new market, there is a temporary need for very high-powered expertise. They need to establish distribution, evaluate distributors' merits and problems, select and open new channels.

Our clients come to us for scalable, temporary expertise. They understand that our kind of expertise would be very difficult and expensive to get from full-time, permanent employees. Furthermore, their needs are temporary: the crunch is at the time of opening the new market and setting up the channel; later on it is not as important.

From the invididual point of view, as managers, our clients come to us at least in part because we reduce their sense of risk in the management and politics of new market introductions. If things go wrong, they have experts to blame. If things go right, they get the credit. There's the old saying that "nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM," meaning choosing a highly respected visible source for computers. We are that kind of low-risk option for opening new markets.

2.1.3 Market Trends

We stand to benefit from some specific market trends:

* There is a major trend towards internationalization. The Internet has brought a larger world into direct communication with the manufacturers. Europe has created a major new unified market, this time for real. Latin America is healthy and growing. Asia, despite recent setbacks, is still a very good market. Our potential client base, the manufacturers, wants to expand into new markets.

* Communications technology is a new industry explosion. Also because of the Internet, growth in communications technology items is explosive. Modems, network cards, communications software, routers, cables, connectors, all of these are growing at 35% per year and up. Margins aren't great in the more standard hardware categories, but growth is enormous.

* Contracting, consulting, and ad-hoc management teams are a trend. Even the larger businesses are turning more frequently to temporary expertise instead of permanent fixed cost employees. This is the latest new application of the buzzword "scalable." Acme Consulting is an especially attractive alternative to our clients, because of the economic advantages of variable vs. fixed costs, and the growing liabilities and overhead of taking on long-term employees.

2.1.4 Market