SETTING UP A BUSINESS
July 27, 2019
I've been working today on getting all of our business back end set up. Here are the things I did or researched today:

1. Signed up for a registered agent. What is a registered agent? It is a company that will receive official documents from the government, scan and send them to me wherever I am. Turns out the government requires all businesses to have someone registered to receive official mail during all business hours. So using myself and my home address as the registered agent would not work, since I am not home during business hours. I wanted to register our DBA or Doing Business As today, so I wanted to get the registered agent address established first. Then I won't have to pay the update fee on it later.

2. Researched Virtual office address - since I thought a registered agent would do this for me, but they do not. You cannot use their address as an office address for the public, only with official business registration with the government. :(
I think a Post Office Box will probably serve me best for this. Mailchimp requires a mailing address be put on all mailings and I didn't really want my home address going out to all my customers. So before I send out those newsletters or product notifications, or even advertise my email list landing page, I will need to get a PO Box or a virtual office registered. There are places that you can pay to be the face of your office including phone and mailing address. I don't think I need that at this time. I think a PO Box is inevitable though.
I did find out when I was on the USPS site that they have flat rate mailing boxes for free, shipping labels I can print on at home for free and they also offer a pickup service. We will probably do fulfillment of our first shipment ourselves, so I was pretty excited to see these services on their site.

3. Registered Water Nymph blankets as a DBA. This costs $22. The link was difficult to find, so I will put it here.
Register your business or DBA in Utah.

4. I also did quite a bit of research on business start ups and found some good resources. It is nice to find so many resources available. I am learning a lot.
Utah.gov Assess Your business idea and link to Small Business Startup Kit
Small Business Administration (SBA) Learning Center
Women's Business Center of Salt Lake

5. I wrote to my insurance agent to ask if she offers insurance for home based businesses.

6. I researched and bought 25 barcodes from SpeedyBarcodes on the recommendation of the Ship Central Fulfillment Center in West Jordan we will probably use. The barcodes are ready to be assigned to our products. We needed to get these now to integrate them into our packaging art. We hope to be working on that this week.

7. Created a written business plan using the one page Lean Startup template. I also worked on a basic marketing plan. We had all of this stuff in mind, but it is good to actually get it written down. I used the templates from the SBA.

8. Worked on our action plan for the next couple of weeks with my partner and brother.

9. Played around a bit more with my Shopify shopping cart. I will have to get the paid version since the free trial is only two weeks and we are pretty sure to not have any product by then. The Shopify stuff seems overly complicated to me, we just need something simple. Ah well, I've got to do a deep dive into the Shopping cart and the Website soon.

10. Did some research on sales tax and other taxes. Turns out we will need to file our taxes quarterly until taxes go over $4167, then we have to file monthly. Not looking forward to that one. TaxJar.com When are Utah Sales Tax Returns due? Also, I should have known this, but I never really thought about it: different cities and counties have differing sales tax rates. It makes sense now I think about it, but I just thought all of Utah had the same rate. Cities and Counties can assign taxes separately if they choose. The sales tax rate for Salt Lake City is 7.75%.

11. Did some research on customs and import tariffs. Blankets- synthetic fibers- non-woven (HS Code: 6301.40.20 I learned what an HS code is today - the code customs uses to identify your type of goods) are taxed at 8.5% coming into the country if the shipment is worth more than $800. Very interesting. I hope the shipping company our manufacturer uses (when we finally find the right manufacturer) will know all the details on how to get through customs. But I probably shouldn't count on that.

I'm sure there is still a ton of stuff I'm missing out on. I know I still need to apply for a Business License with the County, even though I have registered our business as an LLC, that is not the same as a business license. I'll take care of that on Monday. I will also have to change my Registered Agent on my original Business registration, now that I have one. That also requires a form and a fee. So my advice is to get a registered agent before you register your business, so you don't have to pay the update fee.

Well, I've been working on the business stuff all along, this is just what I did today. This really is a second job. It is going to take a while to get all this back end established. We are also still working with manufacturers to get a prototype the way we want. So we are waiting for some new samples to be delivered in the next couple weeks. The samples we have so far have mostly not been what we asked for.

We think the next step, if these samples don't work out, is to find someone who knows textiles and can speak the right language (figuratively and literally) to the manufacturers we have been working with to get them to send us what they say they are sending us. It is frustrating because I know these components exist, we just need to find a manufacturer who can source them and put them together for us.

The saga continues . . . .