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:

1. Explain to the owner the unique features of e-commerce that will allow Tom’s T-shirts to expand to a nationwide market.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Describe to the owner the different types of social networks and on-line communities and their business models (how they make their money).
5. Propose a traditional online marketing strategy and compare it to social-mobile-local marketing platforms.
6. 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.

The requirements below must be met for your paper to be accepted and graded:

• Write between 750-1000 words (approximately 3-4 pages) using Microsoft Word.
• Attempt APA style.  Use the APA Resources in your course for guidance.
• Use font size 12 and 1" margins.
• Include a cover page and reference page.
• At least 80% of your paper must be original content/writing.
• No more than 20% of your content/information may come from references.
• Use at least two references from outside the course material, preferably from EBSCOhost.  The textbook, lectures, and other materials in the course may be used, but are not counted toward the two reference requirement.

Reference material (data, dates, graphs, quotes, paraphrased words, values, etc.) must be identified in the paper and listed on a reference page.  Reference material must come from sources such as scholarly journals found in EBSCOhost, online newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal, government websites, etc.  Sources such as Wikis, Yahoo Answers, eHow, etc. are not acceptable.