Tom's T-Shirts

One of the main goals of this course is to demonstrate how Internet, web features, and services support e-commerce and e-commerce presence. Using the provided proposal guidelines, review the following case study and develop a written proposal presenting solutions that would be appropriate to present to the company’s business owner.

Tom’s T-shirts is brick and mortar retail shop that specializes in the sale and design of T-shirts. Tom’s T-shirts primarily buys its T-shirt inventory from wholesalers, but they also do some custom printing. One of Tom’s T-shirt services is to custom design and print T-shirts for corporations, non-profit organizations, and youth sports. Tom’s T-Shirts has had great success, and was named Small Business of the Year two out of the last five years in its local community. Knowing that there is a market for custom t-shirts, the owner Tom Smith has decided that he would like to expand his T-shirt shop business nationwide. Tom has decided that, rather than opening other physical retail stores, he wants to explore an e-commerce operation. You have known Tom for many years, and he has asked you to put together a business proposal to bring his e-commerce operation to life. Tom loves innovation and has deep pockets, so you will not be constrained with a budget….sky’s the limit.

Project Proposal Guidelines: Make sure that the following features are present in your paper:

- Explain to the owner the unique features of e-commerce that will allow Tom’s T-shirts to expand to a nationwide market.

- Identify the market, the value proposition, and type of e-commerce channels that Tom’s T-shirts will utilize to get its e-commerce operation up and running.

- Outline the steps that the owner will need to take to develop an E-commerce presence. Define and explain what Internet, Web features, and services you will suggest incorporating into this e-commerce proposal.

- Describe to the owner the different types of social networks and on-line communities and their business models (how they make their money).

- Propose a traditional online marketing strategy and compare it to social-mobile-local marketing platforms.

- Describe basic concepts related to online security, privacy, and intellectual property as it relates to Tom’s T-Shirt's website and e-commerce operation.