business plan industrie pharmaceutique

Besoin d'un modèle de Business plan pour votre activité dans l'industrie pharmaceutique ?

Chez Supernova, nous vous proposons de créer votre business plan pas à pas grâce à une application simple, rapide et intuitive. Pour être remarquable, osez vous démarquer !

Il existe beaucoup de solutions, mais elles ne sont pas toujours adaptées...

• Modèles à télécharger
• Outils financiers

Les modèles sont souvent des cadres qu’on essaye d’imposer à tout le monde, alors que chaque projet d’entreprise est unique. Du coup, on se retrouve à compléter des sections dont on a pas toujours besoin et à faire des calculs qui ne nous correspondent pas. Aussi, on passe beaucoup de temps dessus alors qu’on aurait d’autres choses à faire.

On ouvre un document Word et/ou Excel censé nous aider à calculer notre rentabilité, à créer nos états financiers, notre business plan… et on se retrouve avec une usine à gaz inexploitable. On ne sait pas à quoi correspond chaque chiffre, le document ne correspond pas à notre projet et on ne comprend pas comment le présenter.

Viennent alors les outils du monde de la finance, souvent très chargés en fonctionnalités et pas toujours adaptés à la création de business plan. Logiciels souvent incompris et onéreux du fait de leurs multiples activités, ils proposent des fonctions de facturation tout comme de comptabilité, et sont pour nous totalement surdimensionnés.

C’est pour cela que nous avons crée SUPERNOVA

Un outil simple pour créer son business plan.

Questionnaire personnalisé

Simulateur de rentabilité, scoring de votre projet, modèles et données intelligentes, exports financiers et business plan.

Prêt à décoller ? C'est simple, rapide, intuitif

Vous souhaitez créer une entreprise dans l’industrie pharmaceutique .

Après une formation en pharmacie industrielle et quelques années au sein d’un laboratoire ou d’une entreprise dans le domaine de la santé, vous envisagez de créer votre propre société. Vous savez donc qu’un business plan solide et cohérent est indispensable pour réussir dans le secteur de l’industrie pharmaceutique.

Ce document a pour vocation de servir de fil conducteur dans le développement de votre entreprise. Cet outil doit tout prévoir : création de votre société, acquisition d’un laboratoire, définition des produits et des services, financement de la recherche et de l’innovation, développement de nouvelles solutions, gestion comptable et juridique…

Votre business plan s’avère fondamental pour convaincre les investisseurs de vous suivre dans votre projet. Alors plutôt que de choisir un modèle vierge et non pertinent pour votre marché, préférez le service en ligne de Supernova : un business plan 100 % personnalisé pour les pharmacies et les entreprises pharmaceutiques.

Que doit contenir un bon business plan d’entreprise dans l’industrie pharmaceutique ?

Pour vous aider à concevoir un modèle de projections financières solide pour votre projet d’entreprise, nous vous détaillons ici nos bonnes pratiques pour élaborer un plan de développement qui vous sera vraiment utile.

Parce que vous avez besoin de convaincre vos partenaires (BPI France, pharmacies, entreprises de la pharma-tech…), le banquier, les investisseurs et d’avoir une vision claire de vos objectifs, prenez le temps de lire attentivement la méthode inédite Supernova : les prévisions financières avant la création du business plan.

Parce que votre pitch, l’explication de votre étude de marché, toute cette partie qui concerne votre idée d’entreprise dans l’industrie pharmaceutique est ce qui vient après l’aspect concret. À savoir :

• Qu’est-ce que je vends   ?   Production de médicaments ? Innovation dans le secteur de la santé ? Solutions pharmaceutiques alternatives ?
• A qui   ?   Des pharmacies ? Des laboratoires ? Des entreprises de la pharma-tech ? Des organismes publics ?
• Combien   ?   Quel tarif appliquer sur les produits et les services ? Quels coûts de production et marges prévoir sur lessolutions ?
• En quelles quantités   ?   Combien d’employés recruter ? Quelle surface pour les bureaux et le laboratoire ? Combien de contrats de vente signer ?
• Combien ça me coûte   ?   Acquisition des locaux, normes de sécurité et d’hygiène, entretien du site, gestion comptable et juridique, marketing, innovation et développement…

En d’autres termes : testez par les chiffres votre idée d’entreprise dans le secteur pharmaceutique, avant de vouloir la mettre en forme et de la présenter dans votre business plan.

Contrairement à d’autres méthodes, chez Supernova, nous recommandons de commencer par les prévisions financières qui vous permettent d’avoir une vision claire et palpable de votre projet dans le domaine de la santé. Cette analyse préliminaire vous renseigne immédiatement sur la viabilité de votre entreprise. Vous y parlerez plan de financement, bilan, compte de résultat. C’est cela qui vous apportera toute la matière nécessaire pour pouvoir détailler ensuite votre business plan sur la partie rédactionnelle.

Pour créer la partie délicate de l’analyse prévisionnelle et financière, nous vous recommandons une approche lucide. Distinguez nettement tout ce qui est incertain (votre chiffre d’affaires et tout ce qui le compose) de ce qui est certain (vos dépenses, investissements, salaires, coûts unitaires, etc.)

Cela vous permettra de vérifier en un coup d’œil le CA minimum que vous allez devoir effectuer et celui qui vous permettra de commencer à bien vivre de votre activité.

À Supernova, on aime les projets des grands acteurs de l’industrie pharmaceutique (GSK, Pfizer, Servier…) et des startups innovantes dans le secteur en France. Mais on est raisonnable : on vous conseille d’être le plus pessimiste possible, prudent et pragmatique avant la rédaction de votre business plan. Nous croyons en vous et en votre business model, mais mieux vaut sous-évaluer de 10 % vos prix et surévaluer vos coûts de 20 % pour n’avoir que de bonnes surprises.

Certains équipements pour votre projet ne sont pas immédiatement nécessaires ou vous allez pouvoir vous les offrir dans une version plus abordable. Ne prévoyez donc pas les meilleurs équipements, juste ceux dont vous avez besoin !

Plus en détail, votre business model pour votre projet va demander :

De lister les produits ou services que vous vendez (médicaments, produits innovants…), avec le prix unitaire (en coûts directs) tout en parlant hors taxes (toujours !).

De lister vos dépenses liées au lancement et frais récurrents (c’est ce qu’on appelle les dépenses fixes) comme le loyer, les frais bancaires, etc. Listez vos investissements, vos salaires, les apports faits par les investisseurs (vous, par exemple !), sans oublier les emprunts.

Prenez votre temps et assurez-vous de ne rien oublier avant la rédaction de votre business plan ! Vous allez utiliser tout cela pour calculer un seuil de rentabilité sur lequel vous baserez toute votre activité. D’où l’intérêt d’être pessimiste dans ses coûts/frais et ses gains/ventes. Lorsque l’on est en pleine création d’entreprise, il ne faut pas se laisser (trop) griser par l’excitation de l’idée.

Seuls les chiffres sont fiables et vous permettront de bâtir une vraie stratégie d’entreprise pour monter votre projet !

Maintenant que vos projections financières sont bien calibrées et dans votre tête, vous allez facilement pouvoir détailler votre business plan. Vous savez déjà combien vous devez générer de chiffre d’affaires pour couvrir vos dépenses et vous verser un salaire.

Vous avez besoin de présenter votre projet d’entreprise pour convaincre les futurs investisseurs et partenaires.

Que cela soit pour créer un business plan pour votre nouveau projet ou pour le rachat d’une société déjà sur le marché, votre modèle va être le suivant :

6 parties détaillant le projet, synthétisant puis entrant dans le détail de l’étude de marché, des opérations et stratégies au cours de la 1re année, les équipes et toute la partie concrète des chiffres.

Votre plan financier s’insérera au cours des six parties que nous vous détaillons ici :

• Page de garde avec   : Nom de la société pour votre projet. Pitch de présentation du projet d’entreprise.
• La synthèse qui résume le besoin auquel vous allez répondre avec votre idée, la solution que vous allez apporter, la cible et les chiffres clés (CA, croissance moyenne, taux de profit, etc.)
• Le marché qui détaillera toute l’étude du marché (vos clients potentiels, vos concurrents) et surtout qui explique pourquoi vous et pas un autre.
• Les opérations , à savoir tout ce que vous avez déjà mis en œuvre et comptez faire. Toute votre stratégie d’entreprise, marketing ou administratif et toutes les prévisions financières de la 1re année.
• Vous présenterez ensuite l’équipe avec le ou les fondateurs, leur rôle et bien entendu les éventuels collaborateurs avec compétences et missions.
• Enfin les finances où vous dresserez le compte de résultat prévisionnel, les indicateurs prévisionnels (croissance, vos besoins en fonds de roulement, etc.), le bilan prévisionnel pour déterminer si votre affaire est durable et enfin le plan de trésorerie avec son plan de financement et les mouvements bancaires.

Comme vous le voyez, c’est beaucoup plus simple de remplir son business plan si on en sait plus que « je vais monter un nouveau projet dans le domaine de l’innovation en pharmacie » ! Avec les chiffres bien en tête, vous pourrez plus facilement remplir les éléments clés de votre business plan.

Attention cependant à la tentation du modèle de business plan, encore une fois : votre projet est unique et vous prenez le risque d’avoir des modèles qui oublient des éléments clés de votre secteur d’activité.

Supernova vous propose justement une solution de business plan intelligente qui pré-remplit les tableaux nécessaires à votre projet avec des données fiables qui ne concernent QUE votre activité.

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Alors ? Vous vous lancez ?

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Le business plan d'une pharmacie

Nos experts ont réalisé un un pack complet pour une pharmacie , modifiable.

Le secteur pharmaceutique français connaît un pic de croissance influencé par la crise du coronavirus. En France, on recense environ 21 000 pharmacies dans l'Hexagone, ce qui le place au second rang des pays de l'Europe en nombre d'officines.

Ouvrir une pharmacie représente une idée d'entreprise qui donne envie à de nombreux entrepreneurs.

Cependant, avant de démarrer un projet entrepreneurial, il est conseillé d'élaborer un business plan digne de ce nom.

Un tel document offre la possibilité d'établir la stratégie de développement de votre pharmacie en menant une réflexion approfondie, par exemple, quant aux investissements de départ, à l'offre des concurrents, aux lignes du compte de résultat, aux tendances du secteur ou encore aux futurs bénéfices de votre officine.

De même, le business plan de votre pharmacie constitue un outil sérieux dans le contexte d'un financement auprès d'une banque.

Que comprend le business plan d'une pharmacie ? Quelles sont les étapes à respecter ? Comment calculer le chiffre d'affaires de votre pharmacie ? Quels sont les ratios financiers à présenter dans un business plan ? Peut-on estimer le seuil de rentabilité d'une pharmacie ?

Ces questions sont fréquentes. Nous y répondons maintenant.

Enfin, nous tenons à vous faire savoir que nos analystes étudient et observent de près ce marché. Des informations sont rassemblées et étudiées, puis synthétisées. Pour bénéficier des avantages de ces recherches, téléchargez le pack complet pour ouvrir une pharmacie (business plan, étude de marché, prévisionnel financier et executive summary).

L'écriture du business plan d’une pharmacie

Faut-il établir un business plan pour ouvrir une pharmacie .

La rédaction d'un business plan pour votre pharmacie offre la possibilité de : - synthétiser les chiffres et données concernant le marché de la pharmacie - étudier les habitudes de consommation en rapport avec le secteur pharmaceutique - identifier les facteurs de réussite d'une pharmacie - cerner vos futurs clients, tout comme leurs préférences - décider d'une proposition de valeur convaincante pour votre projet - synthétiser les pharmacies concurrentes, tout comme leurs forces et faiblesses - mettre en lumière des avantages concurrentiels qui permettront à votre pharmacie de se distinguer - expliciter, via le Business Model Canvas, le modèle économique de votre projet - mettre sur pied une stratégie de développement (en identifiant chaque étape) - identifier les événements qui peuvent poser problème à votre pharmacie - faire comprendre à une banque que ce projet d'entreprise bénéficie d'un vrai potentiel de rentabilité

Nos analystes ont veillé à mettre sur pied un bon business plan pour une pharmacie , qui répond à tous ces objectifs.

Quelles sont les parties à inclure dans le business plan d'une pharmacie ?

Un business plan regroupe un lot significatif d'éléments, de variables et d'études.

Cependant, il est impératif de bien tous les structurer afin d'obtenir un business plan propre et carré.

C'est ce que nous avons fait dans notre business plan pour une pharmacie , qui se structure en 5 parties qui se suivent.

La partie qui ouvre le business plan correspond à l' “Opportunité de Marché” . Dans cette partie, nos experts vont présenter des chiffres qui caractérisent le marché de la pharmacie. Ces éléments sont généralement les plus récents.

Cette partie vous donne l'opportunité de synthétiser les récentes innovations qu'on observe sur le secteur pharmaceutique (par exemple : la digitalisation des pharmacies, le marketing digital, la télémédecine, le miroir connecté, ou encore le pilulier connecté).

Enfin, on identifie les variables qui permettent à une pharmacie d'engranger des bénéfices.

Après cela, il y a une partie qui fait référence à la “Présentation de l'Entreprise” . Elle a pour rôle d'introduire votre pharmacie (Où se trouve la pharmacie ? Proposerez-vous également des produits de parapharmacie ? pour la petite enfance (laits maternisés entre autres) ? Réalise-t-elle des tests et diagnostics rapides sur place (vaccination, prise de tension artérielle, tests sérologiques, glycémie, etc.) ? Etc.).

Cette partie présente aussi la proposition de valeur de votre pharmacie. Elle se conclut par la présentation du porteur de projet (la personne en charge de ce projet d'entreprise).

Puis, vient la partie qu'on appelle “Étude de Marché” et qui va donner l'opportunité de présenter les différents profils de clients pour votre officine.

On y présente également les pharmacies concurrentes via une étude compétitive. Cette partie contient notamment une SWOT, qui est l'outil pour étudier les forces et faiblesses de votre projet, tout en faisant état des opportunités et menaces potentielles.

Après cela, nous passons à la partie “Stratégie” , qui va nous permettre de détailler un plan marketing avec toutes les actions qui permettront à votre pharmacie d'être en capacité de générer des bénéfices.

On y décrit, parmi d'autres éléments, une stratégie commerciale et marketing qui donnera lieu à un état de rentabilité.

Enfin, le business plan se termine par une partie qui traite des “Finances” , dans laquelle on va présenter un plan financier complet de votre pharmacie.

Comment faire l'Executive Summary d'une pharmacie ?

Afin de réussir l'Executive Summary (aussi appelé "résumé exécutif") de votre pharmacie, il faut respecter certains critères.

Avant toute chose, votre Executive Summary devra être plutôt court. Ne rédigez pas plus de 1 500 mots. Dans les faits, il est l'introduction du business plan de votre pharmacie.

En plus de cela, il se doit d'être pédagogique, c'est-à-dire permettre de comprendre que votre pharmacie est bel et bien un projet sérieux.

Méfiez-vous des fautes de grammaire et mentionnez les atouts de votre projet d'entreprise (par exemple : présente une devanture soignée et bien entretenue, affiche de bons avis sur les sites de référencement, collabore avec des professionnels de la santé ou encore propose un service de "Click-and-Collect").

Votre Executive Summary doit suivre une structure précise. Vous pouvez reprendre celle de notre business plan pour une pharmacie , décrite plus haut.

Comment rédiger l'étude de marché pour une pharmacie ?

Une bonne étude de marché pour votre pharmacie est un document permettant de comprendre les facteurs entourant votre projet d'entreprise, comme le comportement du marché, les dernières innovations et tendances ainsi que les données de l'étude concurrentielle.

Chaque projet commercial devrait débuter par une rigoureuse étude de marché.

Comment la construire ? Nous conseillons de lister une certaine quantité d'éléments.

Voici les éléments qu'on inclut dans la partie intitulée "Étude de Marché" du business plan adapté à une pharmacie : - des chiffres des mois derniers concernant le marché de la pharmacie - les récentes tendances qu'on observe sur le secteur pharmaceutique - les segments de clientèle de votre officine - l'analyse concurrentielle - les avantages concurrentiels - l'analyse SWOT d'une pharmacie

Les éléments fondamentaux d'un business plan pour une pharmacie

Comment définir le modèle économique d'une pharmacie .

Le business model, ou modèle économique, d’une pharmacie est la vente de médicaments ainsi que des produits non médicamenteux comme certains produits cosmétiques ou des soins pour bébé.

Les pharmacies sont tenues par des professionnels inscrits à l’ordre des pharmaciens. Ces derniers sont les seuls en mesure de traiter les ordonnances délivrées par les médecins. Ils n’hésitent pas également à donner aux clients ou patients des conseils en rapport avec la santé (nourriture, hygiène de vie, traitements, etc.).

Certaines pharmacies développent un service en ligne où le visiteur peut commander divers médicaments sans ordonnance ainsi que différents produits parapharmaceutiques. Une pharmacie peut également mettre en place un service de click-and-collect pour limiter les files d’attente.

Généralement, à l'intérieur d'un business plan, on détaille le modèle économique de son projet d'entreprise en utilisant un Business Model Canvas.

Ce canevas donne l'occasion de rapidement comprendre les points majeurs de votre pharmacie, notamment la politique de distribution, le modèle de pricing, les différents partenaires, etc.

Notre business plan conçu pour une pharmacie contient bien un Business Model Canvas (rédigé et modifiable) complété pour cette activité.

Comment présenter les segments de marché d'une pharmacie ?

Segmenter son marché c'est la démarche qui consiste à séparer une base de potentiels clients en groupes homogènes.

Dans votre situation, il conviendra de segmenter les individus susceptibles d'acheter des produits pharmaceutiques dans votre pharmacie.

Pourquoi segmenter ? Cet exercice permet de structurer la présentation de votre clientèle dans votre business plan. Une fois votre entreprise créée, une telle initiative vous aidera à mener des actions marketing avec plus de force (en divisant l'offre et les messages de votre pharmacie selon les différents segments, par exemple).

Des exemples de segments de marché pour votre pharmacie sont les personnes atteintes de maladies chroniques, celles à la recherche de produits de beauté pharmaceutiques ou encore les individus qui préfèrent l'achat en ligne (si je crée une pharmacie en ligne).

Dans le business plan conçu pour une pharmacie , vous pourrez trouver une étude en détails des segments de marché complétée pour ce type d'activité.

Comment l'étude concurrentielle d'une pharmacie ?

Vous ne serez pas tout seul sur le secteur pharmaceutique. Il y a aussi les établissements concurrents sur le marché pour ne citer que les pharmacies de la région, les parapharmacies, sans oublier les centres hospitaliers qui disposent de leur propre pharmacie.

Votre plan d'affaires devra exposer une analyse de ces concurrents. Il faut détailler leurs caractéristiques observables, ainsi que leurs points forts et leurs lacunes.

Détaillez spécifiquement leurs points faibles (par exemple : des ruptures de stock fréquentes, des horaires d'ouverture restreints, des pharmaciens peu attentifs, un emplacement peu visible ou encore l'absence d'un service de Click-and-Collect).

Pourquoi se concentrer sur ces points ? Car ces éléments génèrent très probablement un manque de satisfaction parmi les clients de ces pharmacies. Tirez profit de ce sentiment en construisant des avantages concurrentiels pour votre officine.

Un avantage compétitif représente tout ce qui aide votre pharmacie à dépasser les concurrents du marché.

Ci-après, quelques exemples d'avantages concurrentiels qu'on peut développer pour une pharmacie : - se situe à proximité de structures médicales ou de professionnels de la santé - emploie un personnel accueillant et attentif - présente les produits de manière organisée et agréable - reste ouverte 24h/24 et 7j/7 - gère correctement son stock (pour éviter les ruptures de stock) - dispose d'une pharmacie en ligne, avec un service de livraison - etc.

Téléchargez notre business plan pour une pharmacie afin d'obtenir une analyse de la concurrence rédigée ainsi que la présentation des avantages concurrentiels complétée pour ce secteur.

Comment écrire la SWOT d'une pharmacie ?

L'analyse SWOT constitue un outil stratégique qui est essentiel pour synthétiser les forces mais aussi les faiblesses d'un projet d'entreprise, par exemple votre pharmacie.

Par ailleurs, elle va nous être utile pour bien comprendre les opportunités, tout comme les menaces environnantes.

Une analyse SWOT correctement réalisée pour votre pharmacie doit être synthétique et pertinente. Elle représente un exercice périlleux pour les novices qui construisent parfois des analyses SWOT déstructurées, qui manquent de pertinence et sont difficilement lisibles.

Ce n'est pas souhaitable, car, à l'instar du Business Model Canvas, elle a la vertu d'être un outil de synthèse démontrant un nombre important d'informations essentielles concernant votre officine rapidement.

Afin d'avoir une matrice SWOT complète, rédigée et modifiable, téléchargez notre business plan pour une pharmacie .

Comment rédiger la stratégie marketing de sa pharmacie ?

À l'intérieur du business plan de votre pharmacie, il faut exposer un plan durable afin de garantir la croissance à long terme de votre projet d'entreprise.

La stratégie marketing synthétise la totalité des actions effectuées pour que de plus en plus de clients soient susceptibles d'acheter des produits pharmaceutiques dans votre pharmacie.

Par exemple, il y a la vente en ligne de vos produits. Cela nécessite d'abord la mise en place d'un site vitrine professionnel pour votre pharmacie. Ce dernier aidera vos clients à vous trouver sur le web et à les rediriger vers le catalogue en ligne de votre pharmacie ou encore à se rendre directement dans votre établissement. Pour la vente en ligne, il faut donner le choix aux clients de choisir entre le click-and-collect ou la livraison.

Pour avoir de la visibilité en ligne, il est recommandé de tenir un blog. Dans ce dernier, vous pouvez exploiter divers thèmes, allant de la santé aux utilisations de certains produits Il faut aussi investir en vue d'optimiser la qualité de votre référencement (le SEO) et, en particulier, sur certains mots-clés pour que votre pharmacie soit le premier dans les nombreux résultats de Google.

Afin de vous assurer de positionner son site en haut des résultats sur le moteur de recherche, vous pouvez également investir dans ce qu'on appelle le référencement payant, au moyen de Google Ads.

Votre pharmacie devra aussi maintenir un certain dynamisme sur tous les réseaux sociaux, notamment Facebook. La régie publicitaire Facebook Ads intègre un système pour faire connaître votre pharmacie et son offre à des utilisateurs ciblés. C'est une stratégie efficace pour obtenir de nouveaux clients.

Pour une pharmacie, publier des contenus vidéo est également une stratégie recommandable. Dans des séquences vidéo, vous pouvez explorer les conseils comme comment bander un bras, comment préparer des infusions ou encore les premiers soins pour différentes situations d'urgence.

L'ensemble des actions de publicité concernant votre officine ne se fait pas seulement en ligne. Nous pouvons considérer également des éléments "physiques".

Vous pouvez par exemple faire produire des flyers pour votre pharmacie.

Enfin, il vous est possible de donner lieu à des partenariats divers avec des entreprises (notamment celles qui s'adressent à la même audience) qui seront utiles pour asseoir votre visibilité.

Il existe un nombre important de stratégies et de ressources marketing pour la croissance de votre pharmacie. Vous les découvrirez dans le business plan pour une pharmacie .

La partie financière du business plan pour une pharmacie

Un business plan digne de ce nom inclura une démonstration financière comprenant de nombreux tableaux et indicateurs.

Il faudra, par exemple, étudier le futur revenu généré par votre pharmacie.

Il est nécessaire que ces estimations soient proches de ce que vous allez générer. Le prévisionnel financier pour une pharmacie comprend un système guidé qui permet d'avoir des prévisions correctes. Dans ce prévisionnel, les prix des médicaments de sa pharmacie sont modifiables, ce qui permet d'essayer différentes hypothèses.

Par ailleurs, il faut mettre sur pied un budget prévisionnel pour votre pharmacie. Ce budget inclut l'ensemble des dépenses de départ et aussi leur montant.

L'étude des lignes de rentabilité constitue aussi une partie significative du business plan de votre officine. Cette étude nous aide à bien anticiper le revenu qu'il faudra avoir pour dépasser le seuil de rentabilité. L'étude de rentabilité permet d'avoir aussi quelques données utiles quant aux futurs bénéfices que vous pouvez, potentiellement, obtenir avec l'exploitation de votre pharmacie.

Il faudra également analyser les charges courantes de votre activité d'officine.

À titre d'exemple, il y a la rotation du stock de médicaments et de produits pharmaceutiques, le coût de l'entretien de l'officine, les salaires des pharmaciens et préparateurs en pharmacie ou encore le paiement des redevances de franchise.

Enfin, la qualité financière de votre projet peut aussi être étudiée grâce au tableau des soldes intermédiaires de gestion, à l'analyse du BFR ainsi que les graphiques utiles.

Ces points financiers sont consultables dans notre modèle financier pour une pharmacie .

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Pharmacy Business Plan

Things to Consider Before Writing a Pharmacy Store Business Plan

Check your legal requirements.

A pharmacy business requires a fair amount of licenses and permits. It is good to have a checklist of all the required licenses and to see if you have to get any of them.

Research what permits your state requires as well as the ones mandatory for everyone. It helps you stay on the good side of the law.

Pick a good location

A pharmacy setup requires a fixed minimum area. Also, a pharmacy that is easily accessible is more likely to succeed than one which is unreachable during emergencies. Hence, picking a good location is important .

Also, you can pick between starting a physical store or going online. Both business structures would have their pros and cons. You should pick the one that is the best for you.

Have a proper storage facility

Different medicines and formulas have different storage requirements. You’ll keep most of them in cool and dry places though. Bad storage can cost a pharmacy business dearly, even if you do everything else right.

Hence, it is important to have a good and ideal storage facility before you get started.

Check if your staff has the proper technical knowledge

You need technical knowledge and attention to detail to fare well as a pharmacist and so does your staff. As dealing with medicines is quite a critical job and can have consequences if not done right, it is important to find staff who know what they are doing and are well-trained and up to the job.

After you figure out some of the technical requirements, it is essential to figure out the business side of running a pharmacy. Planning, in the beginning, can save you from a lot of trouble later on.

Chalking Out Your Business Plan

A business plan helps you stay prepared for challenges, make better decisions, and formulate better business strategies. A pharmacy business takes a fair amount of legal procedures and competitive strategies, a pharmacy business plan can help you with that.

Reading some sample business plans will give you a good idea of what you’re aiming for. Also, it will show you the different sections that different entrepreneurs include and the language they use to write about themselves and their business plans.

We have created this sample pharmacy business plan for you to get a good idea about how perfect a pharmacy business plan should look and what details you will need to include in your stunning business plan.

Pharmacy Business Plan Outline

This is the standard business plan outline which will cover all important sections that you should include in your business plan.

• Keys to Success
• Business Ownership
• Summary Chart
• Business Model Description
• Mail order customers
• Walk-in customers
• Target Market Analysis
• Target Market Segment Strategy
• Competitive Edge
• Marketing Strategy
• Sales Forecast
• Development Requirements
• Personnel Plan
• Important Assumptions
• Break-even Analysis
• Projected Profit and Loss
• Projected Cash Flow
• Balance Sheet

Let’s understand how you can write each section of the pharmacy business plan.

1. Executive Summary

The executive summary section forms the first page of your business plan. It summarises all that your business stands for.

The executive summary section consists of the following subsegments:

• Objectives : This segment consists of the reason you started your business in the first place. What is your idea behind it and what problem do you plan on solving with it?
• Mission : Your mission statement should reflect how your pharmacy business can help people, apart from providing them with medicines. It reflects how your idea can deal with a problem more optimally.
• Financial Summary : This section would consist of the funding requirements of your business, and how the said funds would be put to use. It serves the main purpose of the executive summary, which is to get your business funded.

As a pharmacy business, your executive summary would consist of the type and size of your pharmacy business, your team, your qualifications and licenses, and a summary of your financial plan.

2. Products and Services

This section consists of a description of all the products and services your pharmacy offers.

For example, apart from your general products, this section can also consist of services your pharmacy offers like home delivery of medicines, subscription packages, online orders, etc.

3. Market Analysis

Market analysis helps you understand what you are getting yourself into. It also helps you make sense of all the research you have done and how you can put it to use for your business.

It consists of the following subsegments:

• Market Segmentation : Through market segmentation, you separate your target audience from the rest of the market based on their age, gender, income, occupation, medical conditions, etc.
• Market Positioning : In this segment, you can add an analysis of where you stand in the current market. And what would be the best marketing strategy for you as per your position?
• Target Market Analysis : In this section, you’ll write down an analysis of your target market, and their tastes and preferences.

As a pharmacy business, you can list down the type of pharmacy you own, your target customer base, the kind of services they like, the location they’ll prefer, and how they buy their medical supplies.

4. Strategy And Implementation

After you carry out market analysis, the next step would be to create a marketing strategy based on the same. This section helps you promote your business to your target audience.

This section consists of the following subsegments:

• Competitive Edge : Include your competitive advantage in this section. Include how your product is better than your competitor’s and how you’ll use that to your advantage.
• Marketing Strategy : Your marketing strategy should speak to your target audience. Your campaign should show your customers how your business solves a pressing problem.
• Sales Strategy : A sales strategy should be formulated after surveying what works best for your specific industry.

As a pharmacy business, you can center your marketing around safe products, better service, and availability. According to various surveys, KAM, clinical sales force, and service rep model are three of the most successful strategies for pharmacies.

5. Web Plan

With everything going online, a website strategy is of utmost importance. With online pharmacies like mail, my prescriptions, and Amazon pharmacy coming up, having an online presence is crucial to being seen by your consumers.

Moreover, an eCommerce website can also serve as a good alternative if you don’t want to go through the hassle of owning a physical store.

Nonetheless, building your online presence can help you in getting noticed. It is also a good method of promoting your brand idea.

6. Financial Plan

This section would consist of everything about your company’s finances. From your financial history to your projected profits, your financial plan would cover it all.

A good financial plan helps your business survive and thrive.

This segment consists of the following subsegments:

• Financial Resources : This segment would consist of the investment you can put in your business, as well as other resources for meeting your funding requirements.
• Funding Requirements : This would consist of the funding requirements to set up your pharmacy and keep it going.
• Projected Cash Flow and Profits : This section would consist of your business’s expected cash flow and profits in the long term.

Download a sample pharmacy business plan

Need help writing your business plan from scratch? Here you go;  download our free pharmacy business plan pdf  to start.

It’s a modern business plan template specifically designed for your pharmacy business. Use the example business plan as a guide for writing your own.

The Quickest Way to turn a Business Idea into a Business Plan

Fill-in-the-blanks and automatic financials make it easy.

Pharmacy Business Plan Summary

In conclusion, though a pharmacy business might take a lot of work, you can make running your business a lot easier and smoother with a business plan.

A business plan helps you stay organized and updated as per market trends and changing environment of the industry.

After getting started with Upmetrics , you can copy this sample pharmacy business plan template into your business plan and modify the required information and download your pharmacy business plan pdf or doc file.

It’s the fastest and easiest way to start writing your business plan.

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Building effective business development in pharma.

By  Mark Lubkeman ,  André Kronimus , and  Filip Hansen

At a time of rapidly evolving scientific breakthroughs and, coincidentally, of the expiration of many blockbuster drug patents, the key to innovation and revenue growth is pharmaceutical business development. While some innovation and new revenue can come from internal pipelines and assets, business development teams are under intense pressure at most companies to supplement internal efforts with external licensing agreements and M&A. Unfortunately, those teams are frequently unable to deliver the transactions needed for innovation and growth.

Often a major reason for this shortfall is that executive team members are not fully aligned on the role of business development in achieving the company’s strategic priorities. They may agree in theory that business development should pursue partnerships, ecosystems, and collaborations, but that consensus falls apart when it comes to making decisions about specific deals.

We have identified six success factors that enable more rapid and effective decision making, which, in turn, will lead to substantially enhanced business development performance.

Subscribe to our Biopharma E-Alert.

Biopharma m&a and licensing remain strong.

Biopharma M&A deal value more than doubled between 2017 and 2019, from $138 billion to $336 billion, and valuations reached all-time highs. Most of those deals involved midsized biotech companies, for which the average premium paid was close to 70%, with an average EV/sales multiple of nearly 8x. All in all, close to 60% of new therapeutic drugs in the last five years have been externally sourced.

The COVID-19 pandemic slowed biopharma M&A activity in 2020, especially in the first half of the year. But since the core drivers of deals remain intact—scientific breakthroughs, expiring patents, and an increasing focus on key therapeutic areas or on modalities such as cell and gene therapy—deal activity will continue to rebound. A recent example is AstraZeneca’s acquisition in late December of Alexion for $39 billion.

Moreover, biopharma companies can finance transactions cheaply with today’s very low interest rates. They also have significant financial resources to pursue business development. BCG’s ValueScience team estimates that the top 20 biopharma companies have more than $700 billion in cash, short-term investments, and additional debt capacity. But as a result, many companies are pursuing the same assets, driving up valuations and the risk of overpaying.

Six Success Factors for Pharma Business Development While we focus here on M&A, the six success factors we have identified will enable business development teams to create value through both M&A and licensing. (See Exhibit 1.)

1. Prioritize what business development needs to accomplish for the company. Executive team members often have differing views about how to prioritize business units, technology areas, and technology platforms and what types of deals to pursue (early- versus late-stage R&D deals, for example, or transformative versus tuck-in acquisitions). To ensure alignment, it’s critical that team members agree on how and where they want to create value. Will they use business development to generate near-term revenues or to build the pipeline for future innovation? Will they seek to maximize the core, expand into adjacent markets, or explore new frontiers? (See Exhibit 2.)

As part of this prioritization process, the executive team needs to regularly review and agree on how much revenue growth the current internal portfolio or pipeline will deliver. Only then can it determine the revenue gaps that business development needs to address in which specific therapeutic areas or modalities—and with what urgency. It’s astonishing how often management teams are misaligned on this simple setting of objectives, which often results in business development teams wasting time assessing opportunities that are fundamentally unattractive to the executive team and will never get approved. To avoid such situations, the team should ask itself two key questions about every transaction early on: What revenue gap will the transaction fill? And who on the executive committee will champion the transaction from start to finish? By forcing these decisions early, the team can avoid a lot of wasted time.

2. Build relationships with prospective targets. Executive teams should commit to building relationships with potential partners or acquisition targets for two or three years. Proactive sourcing, screening, and relationship building are far better for deal execution than simply showing up at the target’s headquarters with a banker and an offer. An established relationship will give a prospective buyer an edge over other bidders, perhaps even preempting the bidding process altogether. Such relationships can also accelerate due diligence.

Active engagement with potential targets over several years also gives companies a better grasp of the range of potential deals available. It might, for example, make a pharmaceutical company more likely to take small equity stakes in a number of promising biotechs, perhaps supporting Phase 1 trials with its own clinical and regulatory expertise.

3. Agree on how to assess value. Depending on one’s assumptions when valuing a target, the same transaction may seem spectacularly attractive or exceptionally unattractive. So teams need to agree about how they will value all aspects of each deal and then apply that valuation with discipline. Too often, companies end up redoing their analysis and engaging in repetitive decision making because they haven’t agreed on valuation approaches or metrics from the start.

One common valuation pitfall is to focus only on core asset value, that is, the value of the cash flow generated by current and future products in the market. Valuation models need a wider lens, encompassing multiple dimensions of value, including the following:

• Synergies. What is the value of cost, revenue, and capability synergies across the value chain—for example, in R&D, manufacturing, and sales?
• Platform Value. What is the value of the future products a technology platform might make possible?
• Strategic Value. What is the value of preempting a competitor from acquiring an asset, gaining access to a large proprietary data set, or being recognized as a leader in an emerging field?

Because these advantages are less tangible than core assets, large swings in valuation are possible depending on the underlying assumptions. We have found that companies with a clearly defined and endorsed valuation approach are able to use a common “language” in their deliberations, leading to better, faster decision making. These advantages are amplified when the company is highly transparent about the underlying assumptions and entertains a range of scenarios and associated probabilities.

4. Define integration issues early. Executive and business development teams are frequently so focused on due diligence and valuation that they don’t consider the integration process until after a term sheet has been signed. Integration issues should be considered at the outset, when assessing the deal’s attractiveness and viability, and in parallel with due diligence. Teams should ask such questions as: Will the acquired company be a distinct entity or be integrated into the acquiring company? What governance will be applied to the acquired assets? How will cost synergies factor into the valuation?

Knowing the answers to these questions early on is critical to realizing the full potential of the transaction. Our research shows that successful integration can drive 8% to 10% more value compared with the average transaction. Planning for that success right from the start is essential.

5. Enable agile business development teaming and governance. Even when a company has a clear vision for the transaction, it still needs an agile process and governance to execute the deal quickly and effectively. But because the business development process is highly cross-functional (and often involves many junior-level people), it can be unclear who has the authority to make decisions and who will provide the necessary analytical resources. In addition, preexisting governance committees (such as executive committees) often meet too infrequently to keep up with the fast pace of business development decision making.

To address these challenges, we recommend three best practices:

• Designate resources. Within each function, several senior staff members with business development experience and authority should be on call. This will help build continuity and organizational learning.
• Establish clear processes and responsibilities. All members of a business development project team should be aligned on processes, deliverables, and timelines. That should include who is responsible for what and who has what decision rights. For example, who in R&D will calculate the probability of success of a specific asset under review?
• Create nimble governance. A few members of key governance committees should meet more frequently than the entire group (perhaps even on a weekly basis, depending on deal volume) and have the authority to mobilize the entire committee within 24 or 48 hours if there’s an urgent issue to be addressed.

6. Design an organizational structure suited to strategic priorities. Because companies have different revenue gaps and objectives and use business development in different ways, there is no single “right” organizational structure. One company might focus on early-stage and another on late-stage acquisitions. One company might be looking for deals to strengthen the core business, another to build up new therapeutic areas. A company’s business development organization must be suited to its strategic purpose, whatever that may be. There are three main approaches (with various permutations) to consider:

• Centralize business development in one group. A central function maximizes scale, alignment of activities, and resource prioritization. This setup works well for companies looking to make relatively few late-stage or transformative acquisitions.
• Separate R&D and commercial transactions. Assessing an early-stage R&D acquisition requires a different mix of expertise than assessing a late-stage, commercial acquisition. When a company intends to pursue both types of transactions, it’s best to keep at least some of these due diligence activities separate. But such companies can still centralize certain functions—valuation modeling, for example—in order to maximize scale.
• Separate by business lines or therapeutic areas. It can be sensible to separate business development activities by business lines or therapeutic areas at different levels of maturity. This arrangement works well if a company has a mature business area looking for transformative deals and a smaller business unit looking for technology platform acquisitions. Here again, certain aspects of the business development process, such as valuation modeling, can be centralized for scale and efficiency.

Current market conditions present unique opportunities to tap into external innovation and drive revenue growth, but the inherently complex and cross-functional nature of business development makes it difficult for many pharmaceutical companies to execute effectively. As a result, these companies are not winning the transactions necessary for future success. We believe that the six success factors described above can significantly improve business development capabilities and are worth serious consideration by management teams.

Managing Director & Senior Partner

ABOUT BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP

Boston Consulting Group partners with leaders in business and society to tackle their most important challenges and capture their greatest opportunities. BCG was the pioneer in business strategy when it was founded in 1963. Today, we work closely with clients to embrace a transformational approach aimed at benefiting all stakeholders—empowering organizations to grow, build sustainable competitive advantage, and drive positive societal impact.

Our diverse, global teams bring deep industry and functional expertise and a range of perspectives that question the status quo and spark change. BCG delivers solutions through leading-edge management consulting, technology and design, and corporate and digital ventures. We work in a uniquely collaborative model across the firm and throughout all levels of the client organization, fueled by the goal of helping our clients thrive and enabling them to make the world a better place.

© Boston Consulting Group 2024. All rights reserved.

For information or permission to reprint, please contact BCG at [email protected] . To find the latest BCG content and register to receive e-alerts on this topic or others, please visit bcg.com . Follow Boston Consulting Group on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) .

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Pharmaceutical Distribution Business Plan [Sample Template]

By: Author Tony Martins Ajaero

Home » Business ideas » Healthcare and Medical » Pharmacy

Are you about starting a pharmaceutical distribution business? If YES, here is a complete sample pharmaceutical distribution business plan template & feasibility report you can use for FREE .

Okay, so we have considered all the requirements for starting a pharmaceutical distribution business. We also took it further by analyzing and drafting a sample pharmaceutical distribution marketing plan template backed up by actionable guerrilla marketing ideas for pharmaceutical distribution businesses. So let’s proceed to the business planning section.

The pharmaceutical distribution companies can be referred to as companies that stand in the gap between drug manufacturing companies and retailing pharmacies as well as end users. This is an industry that is recession proof and so any enterprising entrepreneur can go into this business.

To however start this kind of business, one would require knowledge of drugs and how distribution in this industry works.

One thing that must be done before starting this kind of business is to hire a business consultant who understands the industry and has knowledge on this kind of business and who would look into the business concept and determine if the business would survive and make profit as it should.

Another thing that would be required when starting this business is a comprehensive business plan. Writing a business plan is vital especially if you intend to approach an investor or a financial institution for a loan.

Writing a comprehensive business plan might be a bit intimidating; however there are options available for any serious entrepreneur, which is either hiring a business plan writer to write a business plan or going online to source for free templates. Below is one of such templates, a sample pharmaceutical distribution business plan;

A Sample Pharmaceutical Distribution Business Plan Template

1. industry overview.

This is an industry that covers the wholesale of pharmaceuticals as well as medical goods. These drugs or medical goods are distributed to specialist retailers, hospitals, retail pharmacies, doctors, as well as specialist medical practitioners.

The pharmaceutical distribution industry generates revenue of over $30 billion and has a growth that has been tagged at 0.6% from 2012 to 2017. The industry is one that has more than 2,300 businesses employing nearly 67,000 people.

The industry is one that has undergone a great number of changes within the past five years with most of the players in the industry facing challenges; which is because most of those in the industry have moved away from the traditional wholesale model.

The changes that have occurred in the industry has been due to the fact that there are structural changes occurring as external players like the supermarket has entered into the provision of pharmaceutical services. Most of the changes in this industry came in during 2005, which was as a result of partial deregulation in the community pharmacies that came into effect in that year.

There has been progress in the industry over the last decade especially with the introduction of improved technologies and developed infrastructures. Globally in 2014, the industry was worth $1 trillion; which was an increase from 2013, where the industry was valued at $980.1 billion. The United States and Canada contributed 41% of sales in the industry.

In this industry, smaller pharmaceutical companies pose no direct threat to larger pharmaceutical distribution companies. This is because smaller companies eventually sell to larger pharmaceutical distribution companies years along the line.

The industry is stiff with competition as there is a strong competition amongst high-level workers and leading researchers.

2. Executive Summary

Dove Pharmaceutical Distribution Company is a standard drug distribution company based here in Louisville – Kentucky, USA that will serve our target market which constitutes smaller retail pharmacies as well as healthcare professionals. We are in business to offer generic and branded drugs to our customers here.

Our vision is to ensure that we are the preferred pharmaceutical distribution company in Louisville – Kentucky through our supply of quality drugs as well as offering the best prices for these drugs to our customers. Our aim is also to be the leading brand in the industry by the year 2022.

Our distribution channel is of the best standard practice and we have closed all loopholes that will not allow for a loose system of distribution. Our storage area is well ventilated and secured which means that our drugs are kept in a well ventilated area and free of dust and dirt.

We have deployed structures and plans in all our distribution processes in order to ensure that we remain abreast of all technological developments in the industry; this will ensure that we are able to give our customers our very best when it comes to serving them.

We are committed to bringing in competent and professional employees who have the knowledge and expertise necessary to bring our company to its desired level. We intend to ensure that our employees undergo training that will make them become more productive and also enhance their skill set.

Our employees will be well paid in comparison to other employees in similar start-ups such as ours in the industry. Asides from being well paid, our employees will undergo continuous assessment in order to ensure that those who perform well are well promoted or given incentives.

We intend to ensure that we offer our customers excellent service, the best in the industry. Our customer care executives have been well trained and are updated as regards the trends in the industry in order to better serve our customers.

Finally, our owner, Steve Bannon who is an entrepreneur has an MBA degree from Harvard and Victor Trump has been a sales representative for major drug manufacturers in and around Kentucky. Both men have over 30 years of experience and have the professional experience to ensure that the company gets to its desired level.

3. Our Products and Services

Our aim at Dove Pharmaceutical Distribution Company is to be able to supply both branded and generic drugs and other medical accessories to all our customers here in Louisville – Kentucky and in locations around the state as well.

We are also established to make profit and in order to ensure that we generate enough revenue to make profit; we intend to create multiple sources of income, by offering other services as well as creating a franchise for those who intend to use our drug distribution model when starting up rather than start from the scratch.

All our sources of income will be under all the legal and permissible laws of the united states of America. Therefore, some of the products and services which we intend to offer our customers are;

• Sale of branded and generic drugs in wholesale to chain pharmacies, local pharmacies and internet pharmacies
• Sale of medical related equipment
• Advisory services

4. Our Mission and Vision Statement

• Our vision is to be the preferred pharmaceutical distribution company in Louisville – Kentucky through our supply of quality drugs as well as offering the best prices for these drugs to our customers. We also hope to be a leading brand in the industry by the year 2022.
• In order to achieve our vision, we intend to ensure that we liaise with only trusted pharmaceutical companies as well as with doctors and other healthcare professionals in order to ensure that we source for as well as supply quality drugs to our customers.

Our Business Structure

Having a strong business structure is very important for any business that intends to be able to run smoothly with as less hitches as possible, because a sound business structure embodies the corporate values of the organization. This is why we are taking our business structure very seriously here at Dove Pharmaceutical Distribution Company and intend to build one that would take our business to where we intend it to be.

We intend to employ competent and professional employees into our pharmaceutical drug distribution company, especially those that understand the industry and have the right knowledge on how to ensure that we attain our desired goals and objectives as a business. We would continually ensure that our employees are well-trained so that this could enhance their skills and improve productivity for our business.

We would also ensure that these employees understand our corporate values as a business and are committed to our vision. Furthermore, we intend to ensure that the employees are well paid and given a welfare package that is the best across similar start-ups such as ours in the industry.

Therefore, the business structure which we intend building at Dove Pharmaceuticals Distribution Company is;

Chief Executive Officer

• Human Resources and Admin Manager

Purchasing Manager

Inventory Manager

Accountant/Cashier

Customer Service Executive

Marketing and Sales Executives

Truck Driver

Security Guard

5. Job Roles and Responsibilities

• Makes strategic decisions on behalf of the company
• Reviews strategies made for the company and ensure that ineffective policies are tweaked
• Negotiates with high level clients on behalf of the company

Human Resources Manager

• Ensures that the right employees are sourced for and hired on behalf of the company
• Conducts orientation training and induction for new staff
• In charge of staff welfare packages and assessment trainings
• Sources for reliable drug vendors and manufacturers on behalf of the company
• Prepares and reviews contract documents for these vendors and drug manufacturers
• Ensures that the correct drugs are sourced on behalf of the company
• In charge of ensuring that the correct stock is recorded on behalf of the company
• Monitors the drugs taken out of the company
• Ensures that depleted stock are replenished as soon as possible
• Prepares all financial information and statements on behalf of the company
• Ensures that correct tax document and information are submitted to the tax authorities
•  Drafts the budgets on behalf of the company
• In charge of answering inquiries and helping clients with orders on behalf of the company
• Ensures that complaints from clients are promptly resolved
• Keeps an accurate database of customers on behalf of the company
• Conducts marketing survey that will ensure that we gain new markets
• Conducts direct marketing on behalf of the company
• Ensures that the premises are kept clean at all times
• Carries out thorough cleaning of the drug storage area to keep it clean from dust
• Ensures that dwindling cleaning supplies are re-stocked as at when due
• Ensures that products are driven to accurate destinations in a timely manner
• Inspects the on-loading and off-loading of drugs to and from the delivery truck
• Carries out light maintenance repairs on the trucks
• Ensures that the premises are secured and safe especially after business hours
• Monitors the surveillance camera to check incoming and outgoing products and personnel
• Reviews security procedures and ensure that they are continually updated

6. SWOT Analysis

In order to ensure that we build a standard pharmaceutical distribution company here in Louisville – Kentucky, we hired a reputable business consultant to look at our business concept and know if we are able to survive in this business environment and how we would be able to fare against our competitors in the industry.

The business consultant took a look at our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that we were likely to face here in Louisville – Kentucky as well as in the whole of the United States of America as a whole.

Below is the result that was gotten from the critically conducted SWOT Analysis on behalf of Dove Pharmaceuticals Distribution Company;

Our strength lies in the fact that we would be offering quality branded and generic drugs to our customers in order to keep up with our brand image. We also are located in a strategic location here in Louisville – Kentucky and have a competitive advantage over our competitors.

Also, we have hired several competent and professional employees to ensure that we are able to attain our desired goals and objectives.

Also, asides from offering quality drugs to our customers, we also will offer several other services to our various customers. Finally, the owners of our company have the expertise and knowledge required to ensure that we attain our goals and objectives.

There are stringent regulations for this industry as players have to abide by a huge number of regulations put forth by the government. There are also enough competitive players in the industry that we will have to compete with which might weaken our position in our location.

• Opportunities

Most of the people who use more drugs are newborn babies and the baby boomers asides those who are sick and there are increasing number of baby boomers in existence which means that there will always be a demand for drugs. Also, the increase in medical insurance has seen the increase in those who can purchase drugs for use.

Every business experiences threats every now and then and so every entrepreneur that intends to start or run a business should be prepared to face threats that would arise during the course of business and ensure that there are proactive measures to combat any threats.

Therefore the threats that we are likely to face during the course of starting this business are; governmental policies which might stem from tightening monetary policies that would affect the pharmaceutical industry. Another threat might be from increase in raw materials and labor costs which would affect the costs of our drugs; however we have put measures in place to cushion the effect of the rising costs.

7. MARKET ANALYSIS

• Market Trends

The pharmaceutical distribution business is one where companies engage in the distribution of drugs at wholesale and retail level to customers either for end use or for further distribution to others in the drug distribution business. This market is one that is very important as it brings the drugs closer from the drug manufacturers to the consumers and or retailers.

Every pharmaceutical distribution company that intends to operate in a standard and efficient way must be willing to ensure that they have both branded and generic drugs ready for customers and ensure that the drugs are of a high quality for the consumers.

This is an industry that is very vital as everyone regardless of age requires drugs at every point in time, this means that there is always demand for the products in this industry and so it is an industry that can never be affected by economic downturn as people would always use drugs no matter what.

The trend in this industry is that people can come in to get drugs for themselves or have it sent to where they live as long as all documentations have been signed for and approved. Also, depending on the kind of drugs gotten, most end users usually pay for high end drugs through their insurance.

Lastly, technology has come to play a huge role in the pharmaceutical industry as research for drugs have become quicker amongst drug manufacturing companies ensuring that customers and healthcare professionals do not have to wait a very long time for drugs that would alleviate their ailments.

Asides, from research and development, technology has ensured that drugs are now distributed more efficiently and that there is more accountability for the distributors in order to stem the abuse of drugs.

Technology has also helped drug manufacturing companies advertise the benefits of their drugs for their potential and existing customers making it easy for pharmaceutical distribution companies to be able to have quick turnovers for certain drugs that have received massive advertisement and publicity.

8. Our Target Market

Even though almost everyone uses drugs which should make the target market unlimited, the target market for pharmaceuticals distribution companies is actually more limited especially as huge drug distribution companies rarely serve end user customers.

However, to help us understand and know who our target market are, we have conducted a market research that should enable us strategize accordingly depending on our location and other factors that would allow us penetrate the target market.

In other words, the market research we have conducted would enable us know who our target market are and what they would expect from us in terms of service, and how best we can serve them. Therefore, from results, we are in business to distribute our drugs to the following groups of people;

• Retail pharmaceutical companies
• Healthcare clinics
• Non-governmental organizations
• Internet pharmaceutical companies
• Specialist retailers

Our competitive advantage

Our reason for starting the pharmaceutical distribution business is so as to ensure that we build a business that we become the preferred pharmaceutical distribution company in Louisville – Kentucky through our supply of quality drugs as well as offering the best prices for these drugs to our customers. Our aim also is to be the leading brand in the industry by the year 2023.

We are going to be a pharmaceutical distribution company where our competitive advantage will be based on superior pricing, which will arise from us offering quality drugs at comparable low prices for our different clients. We would do this by ensuring that we operate a low overhead. This we believe will stand us out from our competitors.

Another competitive edge that we have against our competitors is the fact that we have hired experienced and competent employees who are professionals and understand the industry as well as our core values and therefore know how well to ensure that we attain our desired goals through their high level of commitment and productivity.

Another competitive advantage we have is that we employ the use of technology in ensuring that we serve our customers better.

This results in better and efficient way of dealing with orders and delivery of our drugs. Finally, we have the best management team that will ensure that the business attains its intended goals and desires through effective communication and implementation of the company’s values to our customers.

9. SALES AND MARKETING STRATEGY

• Sources of Income

Dove Pharmaceutical Distribution Company has been established with the aim of generating revenue and making profit in the pharmaceuticals industry here in the United States of America. Our intention at generating revenue is to ensure that we offer a variety of products and services to our different clients here in Louisville – Kentucky.

We intend to generate revenue for Dove Pharmaceutical Distribution Company through the sale of these products and services;

10. Sales Forecast

The industry is one that would always see a demand as people of all ages use drugs for various ailments and purposes.

Our positioning in Louisville – Kentucky is very vital to our growth and since we chose a strategic location, we are quite optimistic of meeting our target revenue and achieving a profit margin in the first year of business that will not only sustain the business but grow it as well.

In being able to carry out a sales projection for our business, we conducted a critical survey of the industry in order to analyze our chances in the industry. The critical analysis took several assumptions into consideration especially those that are peculiar to similar businesses such as ours in the drugs industry.

Below are the sales projections for Dove Pharmaceutical Distribution Company here in Louisville – Kentucky;

• First Fiscal Year-: $1,500,000
• Second Fiscal Year-: $3,000,000
• Third Fiscal Year-: $6,500,000

N.B : This sale projection is done based on several factors that are obtainable in the industry such as the fact that there won’t be an arrival of a major competitor in our same location, and also that there won’t be an interference of governmental policies in our industry.

Should there be any change either positive or negative in any of the factors, it would lead to an increase or decrease in the above projected figures.

• Marketing Strategy and Sales Strategy

Marketing is a very important aspect of any business either start-up or existing business as it helps generate the revenue that will sustain the business. In order to ensure that we draft the right marketing strategies for our business, we intend to conduct a thorough market survey that would allow us know who our target market is and penetrate the business as well.

For this reason, we have hired a marketing consultant to help us conduct the market survey by using detailed information that we would use to be able to attract the intended number of customers to our pharmaceutical distribution business here in Louisville – Kentucky, and around the whole United States of America.

Most of our marketing strategies would be based on advertisements that are targeted towards the right audience and ones that will appeal to the sense of values of our customers. Asides from generating revenue for our business, our marketing strategies would also generate and increase awareness for our pharmaceutical distribution business, here in Louisville – Kentucky.

We would also ensure that we empower our marketing and sales team in such a way that they would be able to draft marketing strategies that would align with the corporate values and principles of Dove Pharmaceutical Distribution Company.

In summary, below are the marketing and sales strategies that we will adopt at Dove Pharmaceutical Distribution Company in order to generate revenue for our company;

• Ensure that we align with several drug manufacturers, doctors and healthcare professionals and other stakeholders in the industry in order to introduce our pharmaceutical distribution industry
• Throw a grand party during our launch in order to generate interest and awareness for our pharmaceutical distribution company
• Engage in direct marketing and sales to our target market
• Ensure that we place adverts in local and national newspapers, as well as on radio and television stations
• Ensure that our pharmaceutical distribution business is listed in online and offline directories
• Use social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google Plus in order to raise awareness and market our pharmaceutical distribution business
• Pass out handbills and fliers in conspicuous places in order to market and raise awareness for our business

11. Publicity and Advertising Strategy

Every business that is established to generate revenue and make profit does so in addition to be able to favorably compete with its other competitors either in the same environment or in other strategic locations that would have an impact on its own business. Drafting publicity and advertising strategies is very important for any business that intends to survive in the business environment.

We intend to hire a reputable brand consultant here in Louisville – Kentucky, who understands the market and knows the industry so well so that he could help us draft strategies that would positively promote our pharmaceutical distribution company to existing and potential customers here in Kentucky and around the United States of America as well.

Therefore, some of the publicity and advertising strategies that we would adopt at Dove Pharmaceutical Distribution Company are;

• Ensure that we increase our awareness in the local community by sponsoring relevant community programs
• Install our billboards in strategic and conspicuous locations in and around Louisville – Kentucky
• Ensure that we place adverts in local and national newspapers and on radio and television stations
• Ensure that we distribute fliers and handbills in target locations
• Use our social media platforms – LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter – to positively promote our business
• Sponsor weekly or monthly press releases on the benefits of pharmaceutical distribution companies as well as other information that would benefit the target market

12. Our Pricing Strategy

In determining the right prices for selling our drugs, we intend to take so many factors into cognizance. The factors we intend to look at that will help us determine what prices to set for our drugs are; overhead costs , operating costs, as well as what prices our competitors are offering similar drugs for. We will ensure that the prices for our drugs remain competitive enough in order not to chase away customers.

Due to this, we intend to offer a discount on the prices of our drugs especially to customers especially those that pay for the drugs out of their pockets without using insurance for the first 3 months in operation. Due to our calculations, we are sure that we would be able to survive on low margins for the three months that we would be offering these discounts to our existing and potential customers here in Louisville – Kentucky.

• Payment Options

Ensuring that our customers have different options when it comes to paying for their drugs is very important to us and so we have come up with different payment options platform that will suit all our different types of customers. Therefore the different payment options we intend to offer our customers here at Dove Pharmaceuticals Distribution Company are;

• Payment via cash
• Payment via Point of Sale (POS) Machine
• Payment via online payment portal
• Payment via Insurance
• Payment via check
• Payment via credit card

The above payment options are ones that were carefully chosen for us by our bank and will work without hitches of any sorts to our various customers.

13. Startup Expenditure (Budget)

Every business needs to lay out a breakdown on how it intends to spend its initial capital and what it would spend it on. The pharmaceutical distribution company is one that requires a huge capital especially in buying the drugs needed for distribution on a large scale, buying a delivery truck, leasing a facility and paying employee salaries and utility bills.

Therefore the key areas where we intend to spend our start-up capital are;

• Total business registration fee in the United States of America – $750
• Other legal expenses (licenses and permits) and software (accounting, admin, drug, and other software pertinent to customers) – $5,250
• Leasing of a huge facility for at least two years and renovation of the facility – $300,000
• Cost of hiring a business consultant – $20,000
• Insurance coverage (workers’ compensation, general liability) – $5,000
• Operational cost for the first 3 months (employees’ salaries, payment of utility bills) – $200,000
• Marketing promotion expenses (For grand opening ceremony as well as general marketing expenses) – $10,000
• Other start-up expenses (stationery, computer, phones, cash machines, scales for shipping) – $10,000
• Cost of start-up inventory (drugs, packaging materials, assorted bottles and shipping boxes) – $500,000
• Storage hardware – (shelves, bins, signage) – $3,000
• Cost of purchasing two delivery trucks – $400,000
• Cost of launching a website – $1,000
• Cost of throwing an opening party – $5,000
• Miscellaneous – $20,000

From the above breakdown, we would need an estimate of $1,180,000 in order to successfully start up and operate our pharmaceutical distribution company here in Louisville – Kentucky. It should be noted that the above amount includes employee’s salaries, leasing of a facility as well as purchasing of inventory and delivery trucks. It should also be noted that most of the items purchased will be used for more than a year and can be termed as assets.

Generating Funding / Startup Capital for Dove Pharmaceutical Distribution Business

Dove Pharmaceutical Distribution Company is a business owned and operated by two partners, Steve Bannon, an entrepreneur, who has an MBA degree from Harvard and Victor Trump, who has been a sales representative for major drug manufacturers in and around Kentucky.

The two men intend to grow a business that is of high standards and have therefore decided to seek for start-up capital from the below sources. Therefore the areas where they intend to seek for capital are;

• From personal savings and sale of stock
• Apply for loan from bank
• Seek loan from private investor

N.B : From personal savings and sale of stocks, we were able to generate the sum of $230,000 . We sought for a loan of $650,000 repayable at 3% interest in 5 years from our bank that has been approved as all documents pertaining to the loan have been signed and we are told to expect the amount in our account anytime soon.

Finally, we have sought for a loan of $300,000 from a private investor who is asking for 3% equity in return. He has also offered to mentor us in certain areas.

14. Sustainability and Expansion Strategy

No business is established with the intention of failing or not growing to a particular level. Our business is no different and our intention to draft sustainability and expansion strategies is to ensure that we remain in business for a very long time. In this regard, we intend to hire competent employees; we supply quality brand and generic drugs, and also ensuring that we retain a high number of our existing and potential customers.

Hiring competent employees is very vital as the employees are the ones who take the business to its desired goal, this is why it is very important to hire those who are attuned to the company’s goals and also understand it and are committed to ensuring that they help bring the company to where it is supposed to be.

Our employees will be well trained so that the productivity will be increased for the company. We will also ensure that our employees are not only well paid with great welfare packages but we will also ensure that they work in an environment that is deemed conducive and safe.

Our aim is to ensure that we supply quality drugs that are either branded or generic to our various customers. We know and understand the importance of ensuring that our brand is associated with the distribution of drugs – either branded or generic – that are of high quality, and so we would liaise with drug manufacturers and healthcare professionals as well as other stakeholders to ensure that we are aware of what drugs to get and distribute for our various customers in the United States of America.

Finally, we know how important our customers are to us and so we intend to ensure that we retain a high level of our customers. We intend to offer our customers excellent service the kind that is unrivalled across the industry. Also, our repeat customers will receive a certain kind of discounts from us as well as those who refer others to us.

Also, our customer service executives are well trained to handle all the inquiries and orders from our various clients here in Kentucky and also all around the United States of America. We believe that the above sustainability measures when deployed will be of immense benefit to our business.

Check List / Milestone

• Business Name Availability Check: Completed
• Business Registration: Completed
• Opening of Corporate Bank Accounts: Completed
• Securing Point of Sales (POS) Machines: Completed
• Opening Mobile Money Accounts: Completed
• Opening Online Payment Platforms: Completed
• Application and Obtaining Tax Payer’s ID: In Progress
• Application for business license and permit: Completed
• Purchase of Insurance for the Business: Completed
• Conducting feasibility studies: Completed
• Generating capital from family members: Completed
• Applications for Loan from the bank: In Progress
• Writing of Business Plan: Completed
• Drafting of Employee’s Handbook: Completed
• Drafting of Contract Documents and other relevant Legal Documents: In Progress
• Design of The Company’s Logo: Completed
• Graphic Designs and Printing of Packaging Marketing / Promotional Materials: In Progress
• Recruitment of employees: In Progress
• Creating Official Website for the Company: In Progress
• Creating Awareness for the business both online and around the community: In Progress
• Health and Safety and Fire Safety Arrangement (License): Secured
• Opening party / launching party planning: In Progress
• Establishing business relationship with vendors – wholesale suppliers / merchants: In Progress
• Purchase of trucks: Completed

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Pharmacy Business Plan Template

Pharmacy industry analysis.

In your industry analysis, you need to provide an overview of the pharmacy business.

While this may seem unnecessary, it serves multiple purposes.

First, researching the pharmacy industry educates you. It helps you understand the market in which you are operating.

Secondly, market research can improve your strategy particularly if your research identifies market trends. For example, if there was a trend towards online / app-based service, it would be helpful to ensure your plan calls for an ample technology budget.

The third reason for market research is to prove to readers that you are an expert in your industry. By conducting the research and presenting it in your plan, you achieve just that.

The following questions should be answered in the industry analysis section of your pharmacy business plan:

• How big is the pharmacy business (in dollars)?
• Is the market declining or increasing?
• Who are the key competitors in the market?
• Who are the key suppliers in the market?
• What trends are affecting the industry?
• What is the industry’s growth forecast over the next 5 – 10 years?
• What is the relevant market size? That is, how big is the potential market for your pharmacy. You can extrapolate such a figure by assessing the size of the market in the entire country and then applying that figure to your local population.

PHARMACY BUSINESS PLAN OUTLINE

• Pharmacy Business Plan Home
• 1. Executive Summary
• 2. Company Overview
• 3. Industry Analysis
• 4. Customer Analysis
• 5. Competitive Analysis
• 6. Marketing Plan
• 7. Operations Plan
• 8. Management Team
• 9. Financial Plan
• 10. Appendix
• Pharmacy Business Plan Summary

Other Helpful Business Plan Articles & Templates

Four ways to make sure your pharma manufacturing strategy delivers value

A manufacturing network strategy that optimizes resources, embeds resilience, and confers a competitive edge is increasingly important in the life-sciences sector. However, for many, the approach to manufacturing has been focused on responding to trigger events, such as M&As, growth or capacity constraints, demand surges, an acute need to cut costs, new product launches, or regulatory changes.

This has resulted in a patchwork of subscale manufacturing sites and contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) relationships spread across the globe for many pharma manufacturers. COVID-19 disruptions brought focus to the risks in this patchwork approach and led many pharma companies to reassess their manufacturing networks and strategies, shifting from reactive tactics to a strategy rooted in manufacturing optimization.

However, companies that invest the time, effort, and resources in devising their manufacturing strategies can reap significant rewards. We have seen companies realize 10 to 20 percent baseline cost reductions by overhauling their manufacturing strategy. But there are many reasons beyond cost savings, including resilience, agility, and sustainability, to optimize manufacturing networks and strategies. We share four ways to optimize a manufacturing strategy and how to avoid the common pitfalls.

Five common pitfalls that can tank a manufacturing refresh

Our work with pharma companies has uncovered five common mistakes that can frustrate efforts to design and implement an optimized manufacturing strategy.

• Reacting to triggers versus proactively driving manufacturing strategy. If a manufacturing strategy is a rushed response to a trigger event rather than a strategic tool or ongoing maintenance activity, it often fails to deliver on its promises. Decisions made under pressure are rarely underpinned by robust and comprehensive analysis and are likely not sustainable over time.
• Being too narrowly focused. Often companies focus too narrowly on their manufacturing footprint and labor costs, losing sight of total costs and broader opportunities, such as make-or-buy decisions, which can bring major benefits. A variety of other important factors, such as logistics, talent availability, efficiencies, quality, regulatory, CDMO capabilities, proximity to R&D, and supplier base, may also be overlooked, limiting the effectiveness and scope of manufacturing decisions in both the short and long terms.
• Basing decisions on emotions rather than data. Given the nature, scale, and risk of significant manufacturing decisions, fear and doubt may motivate people to hinder change rather than validate and support it. It can sometimes be difficult for employees to shutter a specific site, even if it is suboptimal, because it has a unique history in the organization—for example, the original headquarters. Emotions and skepticism can best be overcome with a robust business case based on an in-depth analysis of requirements and facts.
• Pursuing short-term goals at the expense of long-term potential. The value of a manufacturing strategy lies in long-term bets. However, often many factors used to choose a new site are short term. The attractiveness of a given location may change substantially in the five to ten years until the site is fully operational, so basing decisions on near-term criteria can result in suboptimal network designs.

For example, one large pharma company developed a comprehensive seven-year strategic plan to save 15 percent of its cost of goods. However, after more than two years into the timeline, the company had fallen 18 months behind schedule. The plan lacked committed executive involvement and, as a result, struggled under consistent second-guessing that paralyzed forward progress.

Best practices for a successful manufacturing strategy

There are four best practices that we have seen pharma companies follow in developing a successful, sustainable manufacturing strategy (Exhibit 1).

1. Create business-driven aspirational goals

• Put business first. Network strategy design should relentlessly focus on business requirements. Manufacturing strategies that establish the business need and guiding principles can go back to them in times of misalignment, leadership pushback, or critical decisions. This can include setting guardrails around the time frame for payback, such as a breakeven within five years or limitations on when a brick-and-mortar expansion may be considered. For example, a large pharma company recently developed a plan to redesign its manufacturing network and consolidate its distribution footprint. The project team first defined its guiding principles, then created five alternative scenarios that addressed the pain points, and finally used workshops to decide on the respective costs, benefits, and risks. After selecting the best-integrated scenario, the company realized $100 million annualized savings.

Companies that allow every option to be considered, think holistically, and make step-change decisions are better positioned to achieve transformative change.

For example, a pharma organization recently relocated one of the largest facilities in its network and realized it could also optimize processes more comprehensively to create substantial value. Although this was a massive effort, it was more efficient, financially rewarding, and beneficial to supply chain performance than the several small moves the organization could have made instead. While large efforts like this only make sense in certain circumstances, they can yield greater benefits relative to the effort involved.

2. Make strategy design comprehensive

• Make operations strategy an input to network strategy. A holistic approach to manufacturing strategy factors in all the elements of operations strategy, such as make or buy, the product portfolio, technology outlook, and the value chain of the future—not just manufacturing sites. Therefore, the manufacturing strategy needs to include all the internal (for example, internal sites) and external (for example, CDMOs) aspects of the manufacturing network, and the manufacturing strategy design and detailed planning phases need to accommodate strategic partners (Exhibit 2).
• Segment the manufacturing network. As supply chains become more complex, the manufacturing strategy needs to be tailored to each value chain. For example, one company with a diverse portfolio differentiated its manufacturing strategy so that large capital equipment would be manufactured closer to customers while manufacturing locations for small goods were more flexible since they could be shipped long distances more easily.
• Think beyond total landed cost. The best manufacturing designs used to be dictated by total landed cost. But today, to deliver full value, organizations must consider many more factors, such as risk, resilience, and supply chain responsiveness, to determine risk-adjusted total delivered value. For example, regionalization has become a key concern since the pandemic has exposed the limitations of global supply chains. Also, sustainability, increasingly at the forefront of strategic supply chain decision making, will have both immediate and long-term cost implications.

3. Use analytics and solutions scenarios to support selection

• Take time to get the facts. It is critical to collect good data and align on the facts with relevant business leaders to ensure that the initiatives are credible. For example, one organization pushed to move quickly into analysis but then lost weeks aligning the organization on the conclusions to its analysis because leaders questioned the validity of the underlying data. This not only jeopardized timelines but also damaged the credibility of the decision process. A firmly grounded fact base provided the foundation needed to overcome emotional or biased resistance.
• Start broad, then quickly narrow down . It is best to start with a wide funnel of different solution scenarios, then rapidly narrow down to those predicted to have the highest potential. This allows many possibilities to be considered and increases the chances of converging on the best. Some best practices include the following:
• grouping ideas into scenarios so that they can be efficiently assessed against hypotheses, versus assessing each one individually
• updating the inputs as the strategy is syndicated and new information comes to light
• involving the right people along the way so they are aligned on the full array of opportunities and the analytic rigor that’s deployed throughout the effort
• referencing the business need and guiding principles to assess scenarios and using the defined guardrails to narrow options

Exhibit 3 shows how one organization analyzed more than 200 potential combinations of sending and receiving sites. A solid financial model allowed the uneconomical options to be quickly removed from the solution set, leaving about 100 sites. These were grouped into scenarios and syndicated with a broad set of leaders who provided additional input, such as better receiving sites or missing or inadequate documentation that would extend a project’s timeline and budget. Guiding principles were relied on to steer major trade-off decisions. This iterative process enabled the company to narrow down its options to the strategy it ultimately pursued.

One pharma company developed a five-year manufacturing strategy that would save 20 percent on cost of goods, but it required closing a historically significant site. Fact-based arguments won over emotion, and leadership supported the decision to move ahead with the strategy.

4. Systematically manage execution

• Create a dynamic road map, not an answer. Manufacturing strategy has a long-term, global scope and exists to manage a dynamic, ever-evolving situation. A dynamic road map that links to long-range planning and is flexible allows an organization to adapt to changes during the road map’s five- to ten-year life span. A company should also define triggers for when the strategy should be reassessed and refreshed, such as in the following instances:
• when major changes occur, such as in tax, regulatory, and products or programs, that may require significant moves or a new site, as well as a refreshed strategy
• periodically, even without major changes (for instance, companies may want to bookmark every three to five years to make sure the strategy is still optimal given more gradual alterations to the landscape)
• Institute a rigorous stage-gate process. While stage gates are common in processes like R&D, many organizations do not use them to manage manufacturing opportunities. A clearly defined and communicated stage-gate process ensures alignment at the level of detail required to progress to subsequent stages and limits the tendency to redo analysis and revert to a prior stage after a gate has been passed. The stage-gate process can be used to benchmark and measure annual tangible goals, provide a sense of progress, and combat a lack of urgency that can sometimes afflict a long-term network strategy.

Exhibit 4 shows how a stage-gate process can work. The strategy encompasses all the moves, while each move may progress through the stage gates individually.

• Support execution with a manufacturing transfer office. Manufacturing strategy and transfer is a capability rather than an event. Companies achieve greater value in manufacturing strategy if they support it with dedicated capabilities and governance. Some best practices include the following:
• Have a single leader own strategy from development through execution, thus ensuring incentives are aligned throughout the program.
• Organize reporting so that the leader reports high into the organization to keep the strategy a priority.
• Structure a decision-making process and authorities to support ongoing governance and ensure micro-decisions are in line with the big picture.
• Integrate moves into the profitability of sending and receiving sites. Measuring the profit-and-loss implications of transitions ensures that the sending and receiving site leaders focus on the transfer as if it were a part of their business. This will help ensure timelines are met and resources coordinated to support the handover activities necessary for success. While this requires facility leaders to implement significant change management practices, it also gives them appropriate accountability and control. One organization that took this approach experienced a step change in collaboration—the sending and receiving sites became much more engaged in finding solutions to challenges.

A formula for long-term success

For many companies, manufacturing strategy is a major opportunity for cost improvements as well as better strategic positioning and resiliency. But long-term success depends on foundational elements that include executive sponsorship, a commitment to building capabilities, decision-making authority at senior levels, the inclusion of manufacturing sites, and a dedicated team to manage the process. Companies that put these elements in place and pursue the best practices we have described above will be well prepared for an unpredictable future.

Hillary Dukart is an associate partner in McKinsey’s Denver office, Laurie Lanoue is a partner in the Montreal office, and Parag Patel is a partner in the Chicago office.

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How to Write The Industry Section of a Business Plan

Writing a Business Plan: Section 2

Susan Ward wrote about small businesses for The Balance for 18 years. She has run an IT consulting firm and designed and presented courses on how to promote small businesses.

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When writing a business plan, the Industry section is best organized as two parts: an overview of the industry and a summary of your business's position within the overall industry.

Before writing this section of the business plan, use these questions to focus your research:

• What is the size of your industry?
• What sectors does this industry include?
• Who are the major players in this industry?
• What are the markets and customers for this industry?
• What are the industry's estimated sales this year? Last year? The year before?
• What national and economic trends have affected this industry and how?
• What national and economic trends might affect it in the future and how?
• What is the long-term outlook for this industry?
• What products or services will your business be selling?
• What is your Unique Selling Proposition? (What is it about your business that makes it unique and sets it apart from competitors?)
• What are the barriers to entry in your industry?
• How will you overcome these barriers?
• Who are your competitors?
• What is the market share of your competitors?
• What is your business's competitive advantage (i.e., your market niche or estimated market share)?
• What is your target market?
• How are you protecting your product or process (i.e., patents, copyrights, trademarks, franchise rights that you either hold or plan to acquire)?

Once you have all this information, you'll write this section of the business plan in the form of several short paragraphs. (Remember, each of these paragraphs is a summary, not a detailed point-by-point explanation.) Use appropriate headings for each paragraph. 

Finding Information on Your Industry

But where do you find the information that you need for writing the Industry Overview section of your business plan?

United States Research

In the United States, you may want to start your research by reviewing information from the U.S. Census Bureau, Industry Statistics Portal. This site provides data for selected industries separated into categories using the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). The Bureau of Labor Statistics also offers a large selection of information grouped by NAICS industry.

There are also other sources of information—some free and some paid sources—including IBIS World, Select USA, and the U.S. the Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Canadian Research

When you're writing a business plan and looking for information on Canadian industries, Industry Canada is your logical first stop. Their Find Statistics by Industry  page lets you see key economic indicators for different sectors of the Canadian economy, access industry profiles, and analysis and research small businesses in Canada generally.

Another primary source for industry and economic information that you can easily access online when you're writing a business plan is Statistics Canada. From this homepage you can find a wealth of free statistical information; use this page, to search for Statistics Canada publications back to 1980.

There are also provincial statistics websites where you'll be able to find more economic, social, and demographic statistics relating to your industry and the business environment.

The Canada Business Service Centres located in each province also offer excellent collections of resources online, and telephone and email information services. You'll find a list of links to the Canada Business Service Centre in each province in my Provincial Programs and Services Resources.

The business sections of national newspapers and business magazines will also be helpful; these often carry features on the past and future business trends.

And don't forget your local sources of business information when you're researching your business plans, such as your Economic Development Centre, Chamber of Commerce, or Women's Enterprise Centre, or the business section of the local library.

Doing Business Plan Research

If your business is related to manufacturing when you're writing a business plan begin by determining the NAICS of your particular industry, and the sector and sub-sector if applicable. It will make it easier for you to find statistical information relating to your industry. If your business is a service, begin with Industry Canada's service industry profiles.

Refer to the list of questions earlier in this article on how to write a business plan as a research guide. Whenever you find a piece of information that you want:

• Check its date and determine whether or not the information is current enough to be valid;
• Write down the date and source of the information, as you'll need to cite your information sources in the business plan.

When you're writing a business plan, you want your research information to be as up-to-date as possible. After all, there's no point in starting a business if you don't want it to succeed.

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Global pharmaceutical industry - statistics & facts

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Language: English | French

The Pharmaceutical Industry and the Canadian Government: Folie à Deux

L'industrie pharmaceutique et le gouvernement canadien : folie à deux, joel lexchin.

Professor Emeritus, School of Health Policy and Management, York University; Emergency Physician, University Health Network; Associate Professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON

The interest of the pharmaceutical industry is in achieving a profit for its shareholders while the interest of the Canadian government should be in protecting public health. However, over the course of the past few decades the actions of the Canadian government have been tilted in favour of industry in two areas. The first is in the relationship between industry and Health Canada and is manifested in the regulation of clinical trials, the drug approval system, drug safety and promotion. The second is in economic policy as it applies to policies about patent protection, the price of medications and measures taken to incentivize research and development. The problems in the relationship are structural and will only be solved through systemic changes.

L'intérêt de l'industrie pharmaceutique est d'obtenir du profit pour ses actionnaires, tandis que l'intérêt pour le gouvernement canadien devrait être de protéger le public. Toutefois, au cours des dernières décennies, les actions du gouvernement canadien ont penché en faveur de l'industrie dans deux domaines. Le premier a trait à la relation entre l'industrie et Santé Canada et se manifeste dans la réglementation des essais cliniques, le système d'approbation, la sécurité et la promotion des médicaments. Le deuxième touche à la politique économique dans le secteur de la protection conférée par les brevets, aux prix des médicaments et aux mesures prises pour encourager la recherche et le développement. Les problèmes de la relation sont d'ordre structurel et ne se résoudront que par des changements systémiques.

Introduction

As a doctor working in an emergency department, I write prescriptions every time I work, and I believe that these prescriptions help my patients. I have great respect for the value of medications when they are affordable and used properly. However, at the same time, I believe that government and industry have come to share far too many of the same goals in two areas – the drug regulatory system and industrial policy as it relates to intellectual property rights (IPRs), research incentives, drug prices and views about innovation. These are issues that I will explore primarily in the Canadian context, although occasionally drawing on American data. While the details in this article are Canadian, the issues faced are common to pharmaceutical policy in most of the developed world.

Profits versus Public Health

A number of systemic problems have led to our current situation. I start from the position that we should not be under any illusion about why pharmaceutical companies exist. Like any other corporations, they have an obligation to make profits for shareholders and investors. They should, therefore, do whatever is legal to advance this objective. However, the companies' economic aims often seem to conflict with their declared goal of improving health. As Davis and Abraham point out ( Davis and Abraham 2013 ), society has a dual expectation from the pharmaceutical industry. On the one hand, companies should make profits for shareholders and investors, while on the other, the products that they produce should also provide a health benefit. From the viewpoint of the industry, that is exactly what it has been doing, and its economic success is a mirror of the success that it has had in creating products and innovations needed by patients. Governments also recognize the dual nature of the industry and “have not been so naive as to accept that the pharmaceutical industry's commercial motives will always deliver new drug products in the best interests of patients” ( Davis and Abraham 2013 ). As a result, government drug regulatory agencies exercise a check on drug companies' claims both before and after products are marketed. However, governments face conflicting objectives. On the one hand, they recognize the need to regulate the industry in the interests of public health, but on the other hand they also rely on the industry to help fuel their economies. The question that I want to pose is, whose interests are being served in the way that the state is regulating the industry?

Neo-liberalism and Deregulation

My answer is that, with a few exceptions, most western states have sought cooperation with the pharmaceutical industry. The alliance of interests between the state and the industry has not been static but has markedly increased over the past two decades as the neo-liberal agenda gained momentum in the mid-1980s, accelerating the deregulatory trend and further deepening the relationship between the two. Neo-liberalism is focused on the power of the marketplace and supports a diminished role for the state in protecting its citizens by letting industry set its own regulatory standards and police them. This acceleration in the deference to industry is best understood in the context of corporate bias. The state did not completely surrender its regulatory role, but attempts to exert more authority were undertaken in a half-hearted manner that avoided confrontation with industry and actually strengthened the position of industry. As one example, we only need to look at the regulation of post-marketing studies in Canada. Post-marketing studies are of particular importance with respect to drug safety, given that even relatively large efficacy trials have insufficient power to detect rare but serious adverse events. Despite these limitations, fulfillment of the requirement to undertake these studies and complete them in a timely manner is poorly enforced in both Canada and the US ( Fain et al. 2013 ; Law 2014 ) leading to a situation whereby the true benefits and harms of drugs remain unknown for years.

Often, government has gone beyond cooperation and actively promoted industry's interests through legislation and policies, even when industry's interests conflicted with those of the public, as is the case with the adoption of user fees whereby the pharmaceutical industry funds some or all of the operating costs of the regulatory authority. As the head of the drugs program branch of Health Canada put it in an internal 1997 bulletin that discussed user fees: “the client is the direct recipient of your services. In many cases this is the person or company who pays for the service.” The one-page document focused on service to industry and relegated the public to the secondary status of “stakeholder” or “beneficiary” ( Michols 1997 ). Regulatory authorities took on the obligation of meeting the needs of their clients, especially when it came to how quickly drugs went through the regulatory review process. Each day of delay in getting a drug onto the market could mean the loss of millions of dollars in sales. With speedier drug reviews now a priority, regulatory authorities devised new pathways to get drugs through the system at a faster rate ( Darrow et al. 2014 ) with lower standards of evidence ( Kesselheim et al. 2015 ) and a higher level of safety problems once drugs appear on the market ( Carpenter et al. 2008 ; Lexchin 2012b , 2014 ; Olson 2002 ).

In other areas such as promotion most governments have voluntarily turned over de facto regulatory power to industry ( Lexchin 2012a ; Lexchin and Mintzes 2014 ) with the result that when doctors get their prescribing information directly from pharmaceutical companies the outcome is highly likely to be more expensive prescribing, more frequent prescribing and poorer quality of prescribing ( Spurling et al. 2010 ).

Neo-liberalism fitted well with government's smart regulatory agenda, a move to decrease the regulatory burden on companies, and with the belief that providing the conditions for industry investment and research and development (R&D) would inevitably produce better drugs, better health, more economic activity, and more high-end jobs in the knowledge economy. This attitude was exemplified in a Canadian government document touting smart regulation as a way to put the emphasis on removing barriers and so move Health Canada to a place where it could “regulate in a way that enhances the climate for investment and trust in the markets [and] … accelerate reforms in key areas to promote health and sustainability, to contribute to innovation and economic growth, and to reduce the administrative burden on business” ( Government of Canada 2002 ).

The key, according to government thinking, was to make sure that companies could retain monopoly rights to the medications for long enough to generate the profits necessary to produce the next generation of “wonder” drugs. And, of course, respect for IPRs as private property was a necessary component of this equation.

Stronger Intellectual Property Rights

When it comes to economic and industrial policy, the best interests of the pharmaceutical companies do not necessarily coincide with what is best for the entire country and for public health writ large. Here again, we assume that government should balance these interests when it makes decisions about IPRs, how much drugs should cost and how best to encourage research that advances public health. Thus, in Canada, federal governments from the right (Conservative) and centre (Liberal) were willing to cooperate with industry demands for longer and more stringent patent rights and to put in place regulations to delay the entry of generic products ( Lexchin 2011 ).

On the economic front, better IPR protection certainly benefits industry, but it is hard to demonstrate that it has helped the overall Canadian economy or the health of Canadians. However, it has generated costs in the form of legal expenses, longer monopoly periods with higher prices, vast sums spent researching and developing “me too” drugs that constitute almost 90% of products approved ( Light et al. 2013 ), billions of dollars spent on drug promotion and restriction on the dissemination of research results to maintain a commercial advantage ( Baker and Chatani 2002 ). Up until the mid-1980s, Canada relied on a system of compulsory licensing to import to keep drug prices in check. The decision to ratchet up IPRs and abolish compulsory licensing is one of the reasons that Canada now has the fourth highest annual per capita spending on prescription drugs in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ( OECD 2015 ). Companies do not price products based on their R&D costs but rather on what they think that the market will bear, an interpretation endorsed by senior drug company executives ( McKinnell 2005 ). The more desperate the patients are for the drug, the higher the price. This is painfully evident in the prices in Canada of Kalydeco (ivacaftor) for cystic fibrosis and Soliris (eculizumab) for atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome at $300,000 and $700,000 per year per person, respectively.

Who Benefits from Industry Research and Development?

Policy decisions about R&D have been predicated on the assumption that more R&D is better and that stronger IPRs are necessary to achieve the desired R&D spending. Industry has often encouraged that attitude with both threats of withdrawing R&D investment and promises of increasing investment, all contingent on the amount of IPR protection that is offered. But even senior pharmaceutical executives discount the importance of the strength of IPRs in making decisions about where to locate R&D. Instead, they cite a location in which they could do good science by accessing world-leading scientists as the most important factor. The only time that IPRs figured into their thinking was when it came to countries such as India and China that were perceived as having inadequate systems for protecting IPRs ( Bramley-Harker et al. 2007 ).

Governments have also failed to recognize the difference between the industry definition of innovation as a new molecule and the patient-oriented definition as a drug that substantially improves health. New molecules can be spectacularly profitable as witnessed by Lipitor (atorvastatin) that made Pfizer $125 billion over 14.5 years ( 't Hoen 2016 ) but that does not necessarily mean that they are better than alternatives for patients. On the latter measure, industry R&D outputs leave a lot to be desired. Between 1997 and 2012, Health Canada approved 292 new active substances (molecules never marketed before in any form) where both their therapeutic value and mechanism of action could be evaluated. Ninety-eight were first-in-class, i.e., operated through a novel mechanism, but only 16 (16.3%) of these were significant therapeutic advances. For the remaining 194, the situation was even worse with just 9 (4.6%) rated as a significant therapeutic advance ( Lexchin 2016 ). Cancer drugs fare no better. The 71 drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration from 2002 to 2014 for solid tumours have resulted in median gains in progression-free and overall survival of only 2.5 and 2.1 months, respectively ( Fojo et al. 2014 )

How to Make Government Serve the Public Interest

The problems we are seeing are, obviously, not the result of individuals working within the drug companies or the government. In fact, many good people work in all sectors. The problems are structural and only systemic changes will help solve them. However, despite both parties – government and industry – being part of the problem, only one, government, is part of the solution. To quote Davis and Abraham, “the narrowly construed definition of regulatory efficiency as speed of regulatory review and marketing approval during the neo-liberal era has been misguided from the perspective of the interests of patients and public health, though it has served the commercial interests of industry” ( Davis and Abraham 2013 ). Regulatory authorities' primary purpose is the protection of public health, and as such, they should be entirely publicly funded so that there is no confusion about who their client is. In the US, this recommendation has come from a variety of high profile academics and others including three former editors of the New England Journal of Medicine and former senior employees of the Food and Drug Administration ( Angell et al. 2007 ). Fetishization of IPRs is good for the economic health of industry but not for the results of R&D or drug prices. Canada, in cooperation with other countries, should actively advocate for alternatives to the patent system for supporting pharmaceutical innovation and fund pilot projects to look at the feasibility of alternative models. These could include public funding of clinical trials ( Baker 2008 ; Lewis et al. 2007 ) and paying companies a monetary reward that reflects the social value of new medications in return for the companies surrendering their monopoly patent rights ( Grootendorst 2009 ). Governments need to put more weight on protecting public health and reducing wasteful spending on drugs with no therapeutic advantages over existing products, and less on protecting the interests of the pharmaceutical industry. Doing so will benefit both patients and the public purse.

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bfg book review summary

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The BFG by Roald Dahl – review

‘My favourite character is the BFG because he is really clever and caring and he’s always ready to help’

One night the BFG (Big Friendly Giant) comes to Sophie’s house during the witching hour. Sophie hides under her duvet because she thinks he is a bad giant. When you read on you will find out about their amazing adventures.

The main characters are the BFG, Sophie, the Queen and the Giants. My favourite character is the BFG because he is really clever and caring and he’s always ready to help.

I like the illustrations Quentin Blake did. He is really good at drawing.

I really liked this book. It was quite difficult to read but it was an excellent book.

My favourite bit is when the Queen’s footmen make the BFG a cup, knife, fork, spoon, table and chair.

I would recommend this book to a friend if they were over the age of seven because some bits are sad.

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Girl befriends goodhearted giant in funny fantasy.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

When the BFG and Sophie discuss whether bubbles sh

Appearances are not always what they seem: The BFG

Sofie is a creative and brave hero with a heart of

The bigger giants eat humans, including lots of ch

Sophie tells the BFG that kids drink Coke and Peps

The narrator says the BFG holds a bottle of frobsc

Parents need to know that Roald Dahl's The BFG is a delightful fantasy about a girl named Sophie who makes friends with a Big Friendly Giant. It's full of vivid characters and hilariously creative language. The BFG uses an abundance of invented words and inverted idioms ("Am I right or am I left?" "Hopscotchy…

Educational Value

When the BFG and Sophie discuss whether bubbles should rise up or sink down, it will make kids think about the science of bubbles. When the BFG talks about how humans in different regions taste, readers will learn names of different countries.

Positive Messages

Appearances are not always what they seem: The BFG seems very scary at first, but the more he and Sophie get to know one another, the better they understand each other's language.

Positive Role Models

Sofie is a creative and brave hero with a heart of gold. The BFG risks his own safety to save human lives.

Violence & Scariness

The bigger giants eat humans, including lots of children. Their names underscore their brutality: Bonecruncher, Fleshlumpeater, Bloodbottler, Childchewer, Meatdripper, Gizzaardgulper, Maidmasher, Manhugger, and Butcher Boy.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Sophie tells the BFG that kids drink Coke and Pepsi.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

The narrator says the BFG holds a bottle of frobscottle like it is a "bottle of rare wine." Three men drink too much beer and fall into a pit of giants.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Roald Dahl's The BFG is a delightful fantasy about a girl named Sophie who makes friends with a Big Friendly Giant. It's full of vivid characters and hilariously creative language. The BFG uses an abundance of invented words and inverted idioms ("Am I right or am I left?" "Hopscotchy," "Delumptious," "Whizzpopping") that could be challenging for young independent readers to decipher, but the book makes a great read-aloud. There are some scary and suspenseful moments for little Sophie, and readers learn that the bigger giants eat children, but there's no graphic violence. Alcohol is mentioned a couple of times, but none is consumed "onscreen." One small warning for parents of impressionable children, though: Sophie and the BFG debate the delights and offenses of burping vs. farting, and a couple of scenes when the BFG passes gas are among the funniest in the book. The book does include lots of humor, as well as a brave hero and heroine, and wonderful, unlikely friendships. The BFG was made into an animated film (1989) and a live action/CGI movie (2016) directed by Steven Spielberg .

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Community reviews.

• Parents say (10)
• Kids say (28)

Based on 10 parent reviews

Can be read two ways...

Really good, funny book, what's the story.

Roald Dahl's THE BFG begins late at night when a little orphan girl named Sophie is the only one awake. She goes to the window and sees a giant walking down the street, carrying a suitcase and peering into people's windows. When the giant sees her, he grabs her and takes her back to his cave in Giant Country. Sophie is afraid that she'll be eaten, but her new friend, the Big Friendly Giant, explains in his own sideways version of English that though the other giants in this land are twice his size and eat children all over the world, he eats nothing but disgusting snozzcumbers -- a mythical vegetable.

Sophie also learns all about the ways the BFG captures dreams in Dream Country and secretly blows dreams into people's sleeping heads. One day, Sophie finds out that the other giants are planning to gallop to England, where they'll eat up lots of children. That's when Sophie and the BFG hatch a plan to mobilize Her Majesty the Queen's soldiers to stop the kid-eating giants once and for all.

Is It Any Good?

This funny fantasy about a girl and a friendly giant has loads of appeal for young readers, from action to wordplay to gross-out humor. Each of the late Roald Dahl's books has a special quality that sets it apart, and in this case, it's silly, smart, hilarious playing with language. The BFG has never been to school, and "sometimes is saying things a little squiggly." Kids who got a laugh out of Willy Wonka's reference to "snozzberries" in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory will find even more to giggle about here. All of the babblement makes The BFG a delightful book to read out loud. The story also has plenty of suspense (for youngsters) even as it just keeps getting funnier, all the way to the rewarding finish.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the funny things the giant says in The BFG . Do any of them seem familiar? Do you like the way he talks?

What do Sophie and the BFG have in common that helps them become good friends?

Have you read other books by Roald Dahl ? What does The BFG have in common with the other Dahl books that you like?

Book Details

• Author : Roald Dahl
• Illustrator : Quentin Blake
• Genre : Fantasy
• Topics : Magic and Fantasy , Friendship
• Book type : Fiction
• Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date : May 21, 2006
• Publisher's recommended age(s) : 7 - 11
• Number of pages : 208
• Last updated : December 13, 2018

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The BFG Summary & Study Guide

The BFG Summary & Study Guide Description

Sophie, a young orphaned girl, is lying awake one night with a moonbeam shining in her eyes. She gets up from her bed in the dormitory of the orphanage where she lives to close her curtains and sees a giant coming down the street. She watches as the giant sticks something that looks like a trumpet through the bedroom window of some neighbor children and blows. When the giant turns he sees Sophie and snatches her from her room. The giant takes Sophie to Giant Country where he lives in a cave.

Once there, Sophie learns that the giant is called the Big Friendly Giant (the BFG) because he does not eat people, unlike the nine other giants living in Giant Country. The other giants are much larger and uglier than the BFG and they often bully him. These giants travel nightly to countries around the world to eat people. Sophie isn’t able to go back to the orphanage because the BFG is afraid she’ll tell others about the existence of giants and he’ll be forced to live in a zoo.

The BFG tells Sophie that he often travels to Dream Country to collect dreams, which he places in jars and blows into the windows of children. This is what she saw him doing with the trumpet in her village. He takes her to collect dreams and she finds out he can also catch nightmares. The two devise a plan to mix up a nightmare for the Queen of England to convince her of the existence of giants so that they can stop the giants from ever eating another human being.

Sophie and the BFG deliver the dream to the Queen who treats them very kindly. She orders the Army and the Air Force to follow the BFG to Giant Country to capture the giants. The BFG and Sophie lead the military there and they tie up the giants to bring them back to England where they will live out their lives in captivity.

Upon their return to England, the giants are placed in a huge pit where they will eat nothing but snozzcumbers, a terrible tasting vegetable, for the rest of their lives. The Queen has a huge house built for the BFG and a small cottage built for Sophie. Sophie teaches the BFG how to speak, read, and write better and he becomes an author.

Read more from the Study Guide

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by Roald Dahl illustrated by Quentin Blake ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1982

Dahl's elemental fix on kids' consciousness gets this off to a surefire shivery start, with orphan Sophie, awake st the witching hour, snatched from her bed by a giant hand and carried off to a land of giants clear off the last page of the atlas. But Sophie's kidnapper is really friendly (hence BFG for Big Friendly Giant) and does not eat humans as she had feared, but occupies himself gathering and dispensing dreams. He also expresses himself in a mixed-up, cutesy manner that is simply tiresome. Nearby, however, are nine still-bigger giants who do eat humans ("I is a nice and jumbly giant" but "human beans is like strawbunkles and cream to those giants," says the BFG)—and it's to protect the world from them that Sophie and the BFG hatch a scheme: He will mix a dream from his collection and send it to the Queen of England to apprise her of the threat; then, when she awakens, Sophie will be on her windowsill, and the BFG waiting in the garden, to convince her that the dream is true. And so it is that we find Sophie and the BFG breakfasting with Her Majesty . . . and the BFG violating all decorum, even to letting fly a glumptious whizzpopper (kids would call it a fart). Nevertheless the Queen is impressed and sends off her military men, who, under the BFG's direction, rope the sleeping giants and haul them back by helicopter to be imprisoned in a giant pit. This is all told in Dahl's higgledy-piggledy home-made manner, which is rarely disarming here despite the pandering. And it's hard to find the bumble-tongued BFG endearing.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1982

ISBN: 0374304696

Page Count: 219

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1982

CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

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More by Alice Harman

BOOK REVIEW

by Alice Harman ; illustrated by Quentin Blake

developed by Roald Dahl ; illustrated by Quentin Blake

WRECKING BALL

From the diary of a wimpy kid series , vol. 14.

by Jeff Kinney ; illustrated by Jeff Kinney ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 5, 2019

Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.

The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.

When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.

Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Amulet/Abrams

Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019

GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

More In The Series

by Jeff Kinney ; illustrated by Jeff Kinney

More by Jeff Kinney

More About This Book

SEEN & HEARD

FAMILIES BELONG

by Dan Saks ; illustrated by Brooke Smart ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2020

A joyful celebration.

Families in a variety of configurations play, dance, and celebrate together.

The rhymed verse, based on a song from the Noodle Loaf children’s podcast, declares that “Families belong / Together like a puzzle / Different-sized people / One big snuggle.” The accompanying image shows an interracial couple of caregivers (one with brown skin and one pale) cuddling with a pajama-clad toddler with light brown skin and surrounded by two cats and a dog. Subsequent pages show a wide array of families with members of many different racial presentations engaging in bike and bus rides, indoor dance parties, and more. In some, readers see only one caregiver: a father or a grandparent, perhaps. One same-sex couple with two children in tow are expecting another child. Smart’s illustrations are playful and expressive, curating the most joyful moments of family life. The verse, punctuated by the word together , frequently set in oversized font, is gently inclusive at its best but may trip up readers with its irregular rhythms. The song that inspired the book can be found on the Noodle Loaf website.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-593-22276-8

Page Count: 24

Publisher: Rise x Penguin Workshop

Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020

CHILDREN'S FAMILY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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by Dan Saks ; illustrated by Brooke Smart

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Home / Book reviews / The BFG

By Roald Dahl, and and, Quentin Blake

1472 reviews

Every night, when the world is sleeping, big gruesome giants guzzle up whoppsy-whiffling human beans. And there’s only one giant who can stop them – the BFG . He’s the kindest giant there is and, with his friend Sophie in his top pocket, he sets out to rid the world of the Bloodbottler, the Fleshlumpeater and all their rotsome friends forever…

I enjoyed this book. I found some of the made up words quite tricky so Mummy read some of the chapters and I read some chapters. I liked it when Mummy read to Oscar and I in bed. I liked to imagine the BFG making a dream for me. Although at first I thought the BFG was scary he turned out to be nice.

I like how they make up words in the book because they use real words but replace some letters to make it sound different. I give 4/5 stars and would recommend to over age 6.

One of my favourite books! The Giant was friendly and funny. My favourite character was Sophie, because she was a friend with the Giant.

I love this book because it's so funny. I definitely recommend everyone yo read this! Love Roald Dahl books!

My favourite part is at the end when the BFG and Sophie get lots of animals as thank you presents and the BFG gets an elephant. I also like it when the palace butler has to make a big table and large breakfast for the BFG.

It's fun I read it at a sleep over with my friend just me and her d it

This was an interesting book and had many wonderful characters

I like this book! I would reccomend.

I like the story about their friendship.

I loved the idea of dreams in jars. The Queen being in it was funny.

Found this really funny. A bit scary at times! Sometimes hard to read what BFG said.

This book is really exciting and a bit scary. BFG (Big Friendly Giant) is very kind and looks after Sophie but the other giants are not I think everyone should read this even if they've seen the film. I love the way BFG talks.

This book is one the bet , well written book I've ever seen as well as Lottie brooks . Honestly , I've read this book a few times already but i was on holiday in India and read it to my sister with my mum it made me realise how good Roald Dahl books are !

Amazing I loved it. Because they stopped the giants from eating the children

It was pretty strange. I liked the big big whizpoppers. And I liked the snozcumber part.

I like the BFG book when the little girl first sees the big giant . And when she gets taken to the sleepy world . I would love to experience if it was true .

I would recommend this book. I love the BFG's funny language and when he goes to visit the Queen.

A girl named Sophie who got pulled away from home to a orphanage by the bfg the big friendly giant. He tells who he is but terrifys his neighbours and even other giants who eat children

The BFG was my favourite The book was fiction

My favourite character was the Queen because when she heard the horrible news she was quick and efficient. I would recommend it to anyone because it is a quick read and is very fun to read.

this is a scary book because a tall man would come and take you out of your bed at night. It is a fiction book. I was interested in this book.

The most imaginative book. Great for sharing and using phonics to sound out unusual words. Great fun!!

I liked the book because they had nice illustrations. I would highly recommend this book to other children who haven't read it because it's a really good book.

I really enjoyed the ending!

very good mystical book

I loved this book it was really good, my favourite part was when the BFG drank the Frobscottle and it made him whizzpop! It made me laugh.

About a girl who was taken to a world of giants

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by Roald Dahl

The bfg study guide.

The BFG was written in 1982 by Roald Dahl . Dahl was a well-known author at this point, having already published popular books such as Fantastic Mr. Fox , Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , and Danny, the Champion of the World . These books established his legacy as a delightful children’s author. The idea for The BFG , the tale of a giant who captured dreams and gave the good ones to children, occurred to Dahl several years beforehand. He wrote the idea in his Idea Book, where he kept small ideas that he imagined. The basic idea was first used in Danny, the Champion of the World , as a bedtime story that Danny’s father told to Danny. Dahl also told the story to his own children as a bedtime story.

Essentially, the plot centers around a young girl named Sophie living in an orphanage with a mean headmistress. Lying awake one night, she sees the BFG coming down the road giving children dreams. He takes her away to the land of the giants, and there she must manage, with the BFG's help, to not get eaten by the other giants who are not as nice as the BFG (by a long shot, for they eat children and are rude and nasty). She manages to outwit and stop them from going to eat the Queen of England with the assistance of the BFG. They get captured and everyone lives happily. The BFG even adopts Sophie.

The BFG , as well as the other giants in the story, speak in a sort of pidgin English, called gobblefunk. It is fully understandable, but peppered with gibberish words such as “ twitch-tickling” and “squiff-squiddled.” This was done to help further differentiate the giants from the humans and just to be funny of course. This is an example of Roald Dahl's characteristic humorous style.

The BFG stands for "The Big Friendly Giant," which is ironic, as the BFG is the smallest giant by far compared to the other giants. He is, however, exceedingly friendly. The Queen of England plays no small part in this book. While she is only called “The Queen of England” in the book, the character is based on Queen Elizabeth II. The lead character of Sophie is named for Roald Dahl’s granddaughter, Sophie Dahl (biography.com).

The BFG was given the honor of receiving the Federation of Children's Book Groups Award in 1982. It is also Dahl’s favorite story that he has ever written. It has been translated into Spanish, German, Italian, French, Afrikaans, and Welsh. There has been one film adaptation and another is being planned. In 1989, ITV aired an animated version, starring Amanda Root as Sophie. A movie version of the BFG premiered in 2016 and starred Mark Rylance as the BFG (Debruge).

The BFG Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The BFG is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

The mood is mysterious and exciting.

How many dreams did the BFG mix together?

The BFG mixed about fifty dreams together.

Sophie sat watching him but said nothing. Inside the big jar, lying on the bottom of it, she could clearly see about fifty of those oval sea-green jellyish shapes , all pulsing gently in and out, some...

The BFG's name?

The BFG introduces himself as the Big Friendly Giant, but the other giants call him Runt.

Suddenly, a tremendous thumping noise came from outside the cave entrance and a voice like thunder shouted, ‘Runt! Is you there, Runt? I is hearing you...

Study Guide for The BFG

The BFG study guide contains a biography of Roald Dahl, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

About The BFG

• The BFG Summary
• Character List

Essays for The BFG

The BFG essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The BFG by Roald Dahl.

• The Cannibalization of Youth in Classic Fairy Tales from Grimm, Dahl, and Others

Wikipedia Entries for The BFG

• Introduction
• 2023 censorship controversy
• References in other Roald Dahl books

Notice: All forms on this website are temporarily down for maintenance. You will not be able to complete a form to request information or a resource. We apologize for any inconvenience and will reactivate the forms as soon as possible.

Book Review

• Adventure , Fantasy , Humor

Readability Age Range

• Puffin Books, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group
• Booktrust 100 Best Books for Children, 2014

Year Published

This book has been reviewed by Focus on the Family’s marriage and parenting magazine .

Plot Summary

Eight-year-old Sophie peers out the window of her orphanage one night and sees something terrifying. A huge, dark shadow is coming down the street. A gigantic hand reaches through the window and plucks her from her bed. She squirms as the giant man holding her hurries to his cave in Giant Land.

Sophie soon discovers the giant isn’t planning to eat her as she’d feared. He is a big, friendly giant (or BFG). Unlike the other nine much larger and more horrifying giants that live in Giant Land, the BFG is fairly civilized. While the others are big, smelly, hairy and wear loincloths, he dresses in regular clothes. While they scour the world each night in search of people to devour, he doesn’t eat humans. But like all the giants, he has a strange, mixed up way of speaking that sometimes baffles the little girl.

The BFG tells Sophie if she wants to be safe, she must never let the other giants know she exists. He feels sad for her as she tells him about losing her parents and the sorrows of orphanage life. She asks him what he was doing in her town, walking the streets at night with a long, thin trumpet and a suitcase. He explains that he can hear things very keenly with his big ears. He can even hear dreams floating in the air. He collects them and, with his trumpet, blows good dreams into children’s rooms at night.

A giant named Bloodbottler enters the BFG’s cave, and Sophie hides inside an unpleasant vegetable called a snozzcumber. Bloodbottler takes a bite of the snozzcumber and spits it out, spewing Sophie across the room. After the unsuspecting Bloodbottler leaves, the BFG cleans Sophie off. The two begin hatching a plan to get rid of the other giants.

One day after being tossed around by the other giants as they would a toy, the BFG takes Sophie with him to Dream Country. He shows her how he catches dreams with his net and bottles them, labeling them so he’ll know what each is about. He even catches one bad dream and gives it to a giant named Fleshlumpeater back home. The giant’s thrashing during his nightmare ignites a brawl between the nine giants but still does nothing to eliminate them.

Sophie suggests they tell the Queen of England how the giants are snatching and eating people. She and the BFG decide to create a dream for the queen. In it, the queen will see giants eating English children. The dream will tell her about the BFG and how he can help her capture the giants. Finally, the dream will reveal a little girl sitting on her windowsill, who will lead the queen to the BFG. Once she awakens, she will find Sophie on her windowsill and know the dream was true. The giant mixes many dreams together to get just the right story for the queen’s dream.

The plan goes off without a hitch, and the surprised queen allows Sophie to introduce her to the BFG. After the queen makes arrangements for Sophie and the BFG to have breakfast with her, she calls a few other countries to confirm that they, like England, have had groups of humans go missing in the past few days. She is convinced the BFG’s story is true.

The queen sends her military with nine helicopters to follow Sophie and the BFG to Giant Land. The sleeping giants are tied up and carried by helicopter back to England, where an enormous pit has been dug to contain them. The BFG brings his collection of dreams back to England with him, as well as a bag of the horrible snozzcumbers. He says he will help the royal gardener grow them so the giants can eat them forever.

World leaders send gifts of thanks to the BFG and Sophie. The queen has a special home built for the BFG and a cottage next door for Sophie. The BFG also gets a special room for storing his dreams, and people all over the world write him letters asking him to visit them. Tourists come at feeding time to hear the giants eat their snozzcumbers. The only tragedy occurs when three drunk men climb over the safety fence and fall in to the giant pit. Sophie teaches the BFG to read and write properly. As the book ends, readers discover the author is the BFG.

Christian Beliefs

The BFG tells one of the giants to say his prayers as the BFG pretends to remove a viper from the brute’s leg.

Other Belief Systems

Lying in the darkness, Sophie remembers how someone once told her about the witching hour. They said it was a moment in the middle of the night when all the dark things came out of hiding and had the world to themselves. The BFG tells Sophie that giants aren’t born. They simply appear, the same way as the moon and the stars. The BFG collects dreams to give to children. He takes Sophie into Dream Country and shows her how to catch and bottle them. Later, he and Sophia give the queen a dream of giants eating English children and how the BFG can help her capture the giants.

Authority Roles

Sophie’s parents died when she was a baby. Mrs. Clonkers, who runs the orphanage where she lives, punishes the children by locking them in a dark, rat-filled cellar without food or drink. The gentle BFG protects and cares for Sophie, who thinks of him as a father. Despite the strange circumstances, the queen handles the BFG’s visit with decorum. She wants to ensure justice is done, but she refuses to set a bad example by ordering the giants be murdered.

Profanity & Violence

The words gosh, darn and golly appear once or twice.

Sexual Content

The BFG kisses Sophie on the cheek.

Discussion Topics

Get free discussion questions for this book and others, at FocusOnTheFamily.com/discuss-books .

Additional Comments

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The Literary Edit

Review: The BFG – Roald Dahl

Unlike his novels Matilda and Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, both of which have been made into film adaptations starring Hollywood A-Listers including Jonny Depp and Danny De Vito, The BFG has been untouched since the 1989 animated version which, along with the book, has captured the hearts of both adults and children worldwide.

First published in 1982, it tells the story of Sophie, who is snatched one morning from her orphanage by the Big Friendly Giant. He takes her back to his home in Giant Country where she encounters lots of strange goings-on, including child-eating giants and snozzcumbers. The BFG reveals to Sophie that he is the only friendly giant in Giant Country and secretly collects dreams, which he then distributes to the bedrooms of children all over the world. An unlikely friendship develops between Sophie and the BFG in what is ultimately a tale of trust and of friendship.

Known for his ability to both scare and delight readers worldwide, Dahl is the only children’s author to appear four times in the BBC Big Read and having written such an abundance of charming tales it’s easy to see why. In a time when many children are brought up watching television rather than reading books, I’m going to end on my favourite Roald Dahl quote:

“So, please, oh please, we beg, we pray,

go throw your TV set away,

and in its place you can install,

a lovely bookcase on the wall.”

Captured by a giant! The BFG is no ordinary bone-crunching giant. He is far too nice and jumbly. It’s lucky for Sophie that he is. Had she been carried off in the middle of the night by the Bloodbottler, the Fleshlumpeater, the Bonecruncher, or any of the other giants-rather than the BFG-she would have soon become breakfast.

When Sophie hears that they are flush-bunking off in England to swollomp a few nice little chiddlers, she decides she must stop them once and for all. And the BFG is going to help her!

About Roald Dahl

The son of Norwegian parents, Roald Dahl was born in Wales in 1916 and educated at Repton. He was a fighter pilot for the RAF during World War Two, and it was while writing about his experiences during this time that he started his career as an author.

His fabulously popular children’s books are read by children all over the world. Some of his better-known works include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr Fox, Matilda, The Witches, and The BFG.

He died in November 1990.

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2 comments on “Review: The BFG – Roald Dahl”

one of my favorite books in elementary school. read it to my 4year old for bed this summer. he was on the edge of the bed when the giant comes down the street in the opening chapter.

I never actually read this one when I was younger though I did adore the film – my favourite Roald Dahl books when I was younger were Fantastic Mr Fox and The Magic Finger!

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The BFG by Roald Dahl Review

Illustrated by Quentin Blake

Roald Dahl was a GIANT of an author as well as a man, being 6ft 6” (1.98m) tall. He was a master storyteller who has been delighting children and adults alike with his writing for decades (his books have sold upwards of 250 million copies worldwide). His scrumdiddliumtious tales are still delighting readers today, long after his death in 1990.

In 1982 he published The BFG (The Big Friendly Giant) as a full children’s novel, with a short version of it originally being told as a bedtime story in the 1975 children’s book Danny, Champion of the World.

Sophie is an eight-year-old orphaned girl who lives in an children’s home with several other girls. One night when she cannot sleep, and despite the orders of the cruel disciplinarian orphanage owner Mrs Clonkers, she gets out of bed and looks out of the window over the deserted London streets. But the witching hour is no time for people to be awake, especially young children, and she sees something she shouldn’t! A 24ft giant with a wrinkly face, enormous ears and a dark cloak is wandering around carrying a suitcase and a trumpet, looking in windows and occasionally blowing in something he takes from his suitcase into the rooms of the sleeping occupants. Scared, Sophie jumps back into her bed and hides under the covers. But she has been noticed by the giant who promptly reaches into her window and plucks her off her bed, whisking her away to his cave in a desolate strange and distant land – a faraway land known as Giant Country.

Sophie is only a small girl, and the giant is, well, a 24ft giant of a man so she is terrified that he is going to eat her. She pleads for life, but the giant just laughs. The giant explains that whilst most giants eat human beans, The BFG prefers eating snozzcumbers and has no interest in eating her but the other nine man-eating giants outside of his cave most certainly will if they see her. The nine other giants are not so nice though and are twice the size of The BFG, who spends his days catching dreams, letting loose with the most tremendously loud whizzpoppers (farts to you and me), and eating the vilest food ever created in the form of snozzcumbers. As giants need very little sleep, he spends his nights blowing good dreams into the windows of sleeping children (at least he is not blowing whizzpoppers through the windows).

The other giants don’t even have as nice and friendly names as The BFG, they are:

• The Fleshlumpeater
• The Bloodbottler
• The Manhugger
• The Meatdripper
• The Childchewer
• The Butcher Boy
• The Maidmasher
• The Bonecruncher
• The Gizzardgulper

Sophie is told, in muddled speech (the giants speak in a language known as Gobblefunk), that she is now in Giant Country for the rest of her life as if she were to be taken back home she would tell everybody about the giants, and they would be hunted. If that wasn’t upsetting enough, she is also told that the nine 50ft man-eating giants just outside the door travel to different countries throughout the world every night devouring human beans (that would be human beings in English), especially children human beans.

Sophie is appalled at the news of the giants travelling around devouring chidlers (children) and hatches a plan with The BFG to visit London and the Queen and stop the other giants.

Overall, bash my eyebrows, The BFG is an excellent GIANT of a story that young readers will find delumptious. With Dahl’s expressive and inventive use of language, children will love the tale of Sophie, The BFG and the nine man-eating giants.

Whilst it is a dark tale of child kidnap, bullying (The BFG is bullied by the other giants because he is a lot smaller than them and doesn’t eat human beans), man-eating giants and friendship, the story is delightfully told using eight year old Sophie as the brave, sassy, intelligent and curious hero.

If I were to speak like The BFG in Gobblefunk then I is thunking that this is an excellent tale of friendship and doing what is right, one that even Dahl’s Chickens may enjoy – sorry, that pesky giant again, I obviously mean Charles Dickens.

A very clever story with interesting and well-developed characters written with Dahl’s trademark dark humour and expressive use of language that we all love. You will have to read it and let me know Am I Right or Am I left (if you can’t speak in Gobblefunk, that means right or wrong).

Rating: 5/5

RRP: £9.99 (Hardback) / £6.99 (Paperback) / £4.99 (Kindle)

Available to buy from Amazon here .

DISCLOSURE:  All thoughts and opinions are my own.  This review uses an affiliate link which I may receive a small commission from if you purchase through the link.

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The BFG Book Summary and Study Guide

Detailed plot synopsis reviews of the bfg, chapter analysis of the bfg, plot & themes, main character, writing style, books with storylines, themes & endings like the bfg.

The BFG by Roald Dahl

Before seeing the new film adaptation I decided it was time to revisit one of Roald Dahl's classics. The BFG, which is worryingly now exactly as old as I am, was probably my favourite of the Dahl books as a child, as well as paradoxically being the one that scared me most.

There is something intrinsically frightening about giants, especially the thought of giants snatching children (or indeed anyone), out of bed at night with a hand through the window, and this is exactly how The BFG begins, with the orphan Sophie, (named for Dahl's grand daughter), seeing a tall thin giant on the street of her village and promptly being kidnapped by him and taken off to his cave in Giant country.

Fortunately for Sophie, the giant who snatched her is The BFG, the big friendly giant who does not eat human beans, but blows good dreams into the windows of sleeping children instead. Less happily, there are also nine other gruesome man-eating giants who like nothing better than crunching up to or three wopsy wiffling human beans for supper each night, whether beans from Chilly (where the giants go for something cold to eat in hot weather), Wellington (where the human beans have the flavour of boots), or Sweden, for the Sweden sour taste.

As you will gather, one of the most major themes in the BFG is Dahl's wonderful use of language and humour, especially regarding the giants dining habits. All of the giants, but in particular The BFG himself speak in a decidedly unusual fashion, using a plethora of invented words, spoonerisms and puns, indeed as a child I regularly used terms like "Gloryumptious" or "Boot bogglers" as a matter of course.

It actually amazes me rereading the novel now just how much of the action involves simply an on running dialogue between Sophie and The BFG, ranging on subjects from the constitution of dreams, to the number of amazing noises The BFG can hear with his giant ears, to a rather stark discussion of the ethics of the other giants eating of humans when contrasted against the way we treat our own species. It is surprising just how much terror and wonder, and how much of a boundless, colourful world Dahl can create simply by having a 24 foot tall giant and a little girl talking to each other. While Dahl's skills as a wordsmith and indeed word mangler are evident in all of his works for children, the BFG is arguably where he indulged in this most. Everything from small exclamations such as "by gum frog!" to alterations in usual phrases like "Let’s wait for the gun and flames to begin!" make the BFG, both the titular character and the work he comes from a truly delightful and unique reading experience.

This brings me onto a second aspect of the book, its character. Wikipedia's article on Roald Dahl lists The BFG as an example of presenting good, vs. bad adults, and indeed the metaphor for giants as parents is one Dahl himself touched on in his children's guide to railway safety. To blandly categorize Sophie and the BFG's relationship however as just that of a father and daughter is doing an extreme disservice to both characters and indeed to Dahl.

Even from his initial appearance when, far from reassuring Sophie that he won't eat her The BFG begins a discussion on the eating preferences of the other giants, The BFG is a complex, three dimensional character, (and not just because as a giant he has rather more third dimension than most).

Proud, mercurial, at times insensitive and even cynical, yet at the same time kindly, playful and wise, The BFG is a truly realistic character despite his fantastic origin and his fairy tale practice of good dream blowing.

He is matched equally by Sophie who is (with the possible exception of Matilda), Dahl's most complex child protagonist, prim, bossy, brave and curious, Sophie is every bit as three dimensional, not to mention being (like several other of Dahl's characters), a child who has lived in less than pleasant circumstances which are briefly but sharply detailed in the book. Another surprising aspect of this relationship which is central to the plot is the fact (rather unusual in a book aimed for younger children), that while both the orphaned little girl and the runtish, kindly giant are lonely characters who need each other, the book is never saccharin or too effusively emotional, indeed rarely are we told what characters feel about each other directly, rather we are shown by their actions and interactions and how they feel about the world around them. Though his writing is aimed at a child audience, it is clear that Dahl took as much care with his characters as when writing for adults, indeed on one occasion I do recall Dahl describing children as "the most critical of readers" and noting that the best way of alienating children from a work is to over simplify.

Quite aside from character, Dahl's style deserves praise over all. One gift Dahl had as a writer was a beautiful linguistic economy, able to highlight atmospherically features of the environment or conjure grand sights like bottled dreams or fifty foot tall brutish giants with only a few well chosen sentences. Whether wistful, horrific or mysterious, Dahl's command of mood, ambience and action is deeply admirable and something many writers would envy. This is particularly true when Dahl gets to the villains of the piece.

The nine man eating giants, from their gruesome names such as Bloodbottler,  Bonecruncher and Fleshlumpeater to their typically Dahl grotesque descriptions, they are some of the nastiest villains Dahl created, both in the nightmarish sense of being giants that eat people, and in a far more down to earth, and realistically unpleasant fashion. One section, in which the much smaller BFG is bullied, kicked and taunted by the other giants while being powerless to stop them has a disturbing and familiar ring of realism to it, recognizable to anyone who's ever been on the receiving end from much more human bullies. The lurking presence of the other giants and the constant threat they present gives The BFG a wonderful hint of danger that insures some of the sections just featuring Sophie and The BFG himself discussing dreams or other matters don't feel too safe, especially after one particularly horrific and quite genuinely scary close shave with the Bloodbottler.

Eventually, Sophie and The BFG find a way to convince the Queen of England to help them deal with the wicked giants. While I am not myself a fan of the Royal family, I really do applaud Dahl's presentation of The Queen here. As with the American President in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, Dahl neither parodies The Queen nor praises her effusively. He does represent her as someone ever courteous and polite who can help with The Giant Problem, but also pokes a little fun at the stiff royal attitude. Some of the scenes taking place around The Queen and her very professional butler, like the wonderfully weird idea of the huge BFG eating breakfast in the palace at a table supported by 12 foot grandfather clocks, using an old royal sword for a knife are themes which might even appeal more to adults than children.

The only minor problem I had reading the BFG was with dialogue. While Dahl's characterisation and use of language in speech is truly exceptional, his integration of dialogue into the flow of the narrative can be somewhat clunky. Far too often, he qualifies his dialogue with "said Sophie" or "cried the Bfg" to the point where the narrative interruptions felt arrhythmic and slightly patronising. Had Dahl not been as experienced a writer as he undoubtedly was when he wrote the book, I'd have assumed this the mistake of an author on their first work, or an adult author on sure of what tone to take when relating narrative to children.

The other section which rings a slightly off note today is not actually the fault of the writing. The BFG introduces Sophie to frobscottle, a magical green drink full of bubbles that fizz downwards rather than upwards, and so when drunk produces explosive "wizpoppers". As well as a grasp of the grotesque, Dahl always possessed a distinctly naughty sense of humour, and it comes into play here in full force, especially with Sophie’s at first blushing, slightly offended reaction followed by her enjoying the wizpopping in spite of herself, and then (just to compound things), for the BFG to demonstrate wizpopping before the queen (who is not amused). Dahl's ability here to suggest rather than parade; the delicacy he uses for a theme which in other hands could degenerate into unsubtle toilet humour to create something that is exceptionally funny is of course masterful, however unfortunately with changing culture and the greater prevalence of more crude humour for children around today, it is likely this would be far less funny to children now, than it was in 1982. This was typified when, a few years ago I heard a child on the train refer to the BFG as "oh that book where the giant’s fart", sad that said child plainly got nothing else out of the book, and doubly sad that the child didn't appreciate Dahl's ability to write an incredibly funny section without mentioning the word "fart" once.

The ending in which the army follows the BFG to Giant country to catch the nine wicked giants while they are sleeping worked well, albeit I did feel the unexpected confrontation with the Fleshlumpeater was over rather too quickly, since the BFG is able to trick him fairly easily into being tied up. I can see why the 1989 animated film (which apparently Dahl did approve of), made this a much more tense moment with the Fleshlumpeater trying to literally kill the BFG before being distracted by Sophie and finally knocked out by the BFG with the strategic use of a nightmare, I wouldn't be surprised if the 2016 film does something similar. Then again having the man-eating giants dumped into a huge pit and forced to spend the rest of their lives eating foul tasting snozcumbers is a very fitting punishment, and the idea of a "it is forbidden to feed the giants" sign next to their prison makes me laugh every time. While I do slightly regret that The BFG learned to speak properly, at the same time having him revealed as the author of the work does mean that children can comfort themselves with the knowledge that the Fleshlumpeater and co are firmly and decidedly stuck in a hole and won't be eating anyone else.

I will freely admit to being a little biased where the BFG is concerned. Terror, wonder, love of language and hints at a wide and fantastic world, The BFG has it all. I can only echo the BFG's words about his own favourite book, Nicholas Nickleby by Darlse Chickens: "I is reading it hundreds of times and I is still reading it and teaching new words to myself and how to write them. It's the most scrumdiddlyumptious story".

10/10 I is recombending all chiddlers should read this nobble

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Review by Dark

11 positive reader review(s) for The BFG

Roald Dahl biography

KJ from Europe

Just amazing!

Sheikh Sahara from Bangladesh

Ronaldo’s book the BFG is a story about a friendly giant known as the BFG who Kalex and gives good dreams to children’s NN there is one more character named Sophie.Together the BFG and Sophia with help from the Queen of England help to rid the world of the eating child giant.

Queen Abbie from Australia

I don't like the book because the use of words is terrible. Thank you.

Mitchell from Queensland

I am always wondering if any giants is jolly but other then that The BFG is the best book made by Ronald Dahl and everyone in the world out there should take the time and read it through.

Ahmed from Pakistan

Jude from America

I love this book a lot. For learners to read and it explains lots of stuff.

Pransul from India

Very good book . Excellent brain of Roald Dahl .

Suryasagar from India

It is a wonderful children's book, full of fantasy which children like. It fires their imagination. I haven't seen the movie. It must be quite enjoyable.

Mitch from Australia

I love this book, it makes me want to read more and continually watch the movie, whomever says it is boring maybe doesn't read all the time and maybe are boring to talk to either!!!!!!!!!!!

Alicia from South Africa

An awesome book I give a 10 star rating because whoever said it was boring doesn't have an imagination like I do. This book is my type!!!

Mpho Khensane Gift from South Africa

The BFG is a very delighting book but when you also watch the movies of the BFG three different things some parts I liked some made me wanna stop reading or even watching movies I would give it a ten but ... I like it would recommend it heyyy enjoy maybe u might have a different view thanks roald Dahl keep writing on where ever u if u dead u legacy will live with me and and wrote more if I find a publisher.

Debanjana from India

The bfg is a Lovely story.... I loved it..😊

Ankush from India

THIS BOOK IS AWESOME FOR THE NOVEL READING LEARNERS

9.4 /10 from 14 reviews

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"The BFG" remembers what it's like to see with the eyes of a child. The ideal age for it is somewhere between five and nine—a time when kids ask basic, very practical questions about the stories adults tell them at bedtime, like "Are Sophie's glasses OK?"   

Sophie (newcomer Ruby Barnhill ) is the heroine of "The BFG," Steven Spielberg's film of Roald Dahl 's novel. It's about a London orphan who gets kidnapped by The Big Friendly Giant, or BFG ( Mark Rylance , in the first motion-capture performance to equal Andy Serkis' best) and whisked away to the land of the giants. The BFG is indeed friendly—befuddled and a bit sad, but nice. But there are other giants here. They're scary, stupid bullies, and so big that they tower over the BFG the way he towers over Sophie. They love to eat people, whom they call "human beans," or simply "beans." When Sophie hides from the bigger giants and they clomp around looking for her, the first thing the BFG does is find Sophie's glasses and hide them in his pocket. He does it so that the bigger giants won't see them and know for sure that he's hiding a child, but there's a more basic motivation: to prevent them from getting crushed. "Do you have my glasses?" she asks him late in the film, during another action scene. "Of course," he says.

The movie is filled with gestures that meaningful. Like the BFG, it cares about the little things, and it moves with a grace that belies its size. It's a film about about dreaming and storytelling, parenting and childhood, nostalgia and pragmatism, and the necessity of standing up for yourself even when you know you can't win. But most of all, it's a film about two unlikely friends.

There's a little bit of plot, mostly having to do with how the BFG will deal with the really big giants who scare him and call him "runt"; this stuff resolves itself so quickly that it's as if the story realized it was getting late and the kids needed to get to sleep. The movie is less interested in twists and turns than in watching the giant and Sophie interact. It's the kind of film that pauses to let characters tell each other stories and that recounts a dream by throwing shadows upon a wall. There are fart jokes, but unlike most movie fart jokes, they're not crudely desperate. They're joyously strange in that Roald Dahl way, and they don't just happen when a scene needs, well, gas; the movie builds toward them patiently, the better to keep kids on the edge of their chairs waiting for that first flap-flap sound.

I can imagine a some adults finding the movie dull; "Nothing happens," they'll say. "And it's too nice." But I can imagine other adults loving the film for helping them  remember what it's like to be young enough to hide from a movie monster because he's big and weird-looking and then laugh because he's kind of silly, or to want a conversation between the BFG and Sophie to go on a bit longer because the giant has a funny voice and a funnier walk (he lifts each leg as if it's heavier than it is—as if he's a real giant, not a runt).

The giant keeps dreams in jars. Some are good dreams. Others are scary. The giant doesn't want Sophie to experience the scary dreams, not because there are monsters in them (though sometimes there are) but because they say hurtful things to the dreamer. The giant can be lyrical and inspiring, especially when he talks about how he loves the land and tries to listen to it. "The funniest stories I hear are from the trees themselves," he tells Sophie. "All the secret whispers of the world." But most other times he garbles ordinary words into malapropisms: "Feature of habit." "De-lumptious." 

The movie is never too exact about its meanings; they're fluid, changing to reflect a given situation. That means the giant can be an adult who has brought a child into his world and is scared she might die because of something he did, or failed to do. But he can also be a child who lets himself be mothered by Sophie, a kid who was forced to grow up too fast. From a distance, the shambling, silver-haired BFG often suggests a doting but scatterbrained grandfather. The bigger giants in the land of the giants stalk around like irresponsible, petty, volatile parents who have no idea how to give or accept love because they never learned how. (The BFG tells Sophie that giants don't have parents.)  

Most scenes in "The BFG" take their time unfolding. Many consist of Sophie and the BFG talking as real friends might. Some are scored with John Williams' default "Isn't this a marvelous adventure?" music, which slightly dulls their sense of wonder, but others are so quiet that you can hear insects whirring and the wind moving through the grass. During action scenes, Spielberg doesn't hammer your eyeballs with fast cuts to keep you interested; he stages a lot of the conversations in long takes and keeps the camera far back, the better to allow you to appreciate the way the characters move through the frame, how they carry themselves, what they do with their hands. Close-ups are doled out sparingly, to amplify emotional moments or  deliver the punchlines to comic ones, as when the giant eats a meal prepared by humans and Spielberg cuts to a shot of the utensils they've provided: a sword, a pitchfork and a shovel. 

Every few seconds there's an image that delights for delight's sake, such as the way the giant, sneaking out of London at night with Sophie hidden in his satchel, uses his wits and the wings of his long coat to camouflage himself: assuming the silhouetted shape of a tree; leaning back into the dark hollows of a building while covering a streetlight bulb with his hand. Spielberg and his regular cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski , have an eye for bold graphic images: the giant's reflection seeming to stand upside-down on the bank of a lake he's just dived into; one of the bigger giants shielding himself against rain by hoisting up a human-sized umbrella; the BFG striding through a  "gate" that marks the border of the land of giants: a zigzag rock formation, crooked like a swimmer's elbow.

This is a kind-souled movie about kind souls. Sophie's glasses make it through just fine.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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The BFG (2016)

Rated PG for action/peril, some scary moments and brief rude humor.

117 minutes

Rebecca Hall as Mary

Bill Hader as Bloodbottler

Mark Rylance as The BFG

Ruby Barnhill as Sophie

Marilyn Norry as Matron

Jemaine Clement as Fleshlumpeater

Penelope Wilton as The Queen

• Steven Spielberg

Writer (novel)

Writer (story editor).

• Christopher Abbott
• Melissa Mathison

Cinematographer

• Janusz Kaminski
• Michael Kahn
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by Roald Dahl Buy Study Guide The BFG Summary As the book starts, a young girl named Sophie lies in bed in an orphanage. She can't sleep, and sees a strange sight in the street. A giant man is walking in the street, carrying a suitcase and what looks like a trumpet. He sees Sophie, who runs to her bed and tries to hide.

The BFG is a novel by Roald Dahl in which a young orphan named Sophie meets the Big Friendly Giant one night when she can't sleep. Sophie is unable to sleep one night, and she encounters the Big...

Sun 21 Feb 2016 10.00 EST One night the BFG (Big Friendly Giant) comes to Sophie's house during the witching hour. Sophie hides under her duvet because she thinks he is a bad giant. When you read...

Overview Introduction British author Roald Dahl first made his mark as a leading writer of children's literature in 1961, when he published James and the Giant Peach.

4.23 478,066 ratings12,373 reviews Captured by a giant! The BFG is no ordinary bone-crunching giant. He is far too nice and jumbly. It's lucky for Sophie that he is.

Parents need to know that Roald Dahl's The BFG is a delightful fantasy about a girl named Sophie who makes friends with a Big Friendly Giant. It's full of vivid characters and hilariously creative language. The BFG uses an abundance of invented words and inverted idioms ("Am I right or am I left?" "Hopscotchy… See all Parents say (10) Kids say (28)

Chapters Characters Symbols and Symbolism Settings Themes and Motifs Styles This detailed literature summary also contains Quotes and a Free Quiz on The BFG by Roald Dahl. Sophie, a young orphaned girl, is lying awake one night with a moonbeam shining in her eyes.

Reviews GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS (CHILDREN FICTION) WRECKING BALL From the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series , Vol. 14 by Jeff Kinney ; illustrated by Jeff Kinney ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 5, 2019 Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.

Lesson Transcript Author Neffertia Tyner View bio Instructor Abby Federico View bio Learn about a classic children's tale, The BFG, by reading a book summary. Read about The BFG author,...

1472 reviews Every night, when the world is sleeping, big gruesome giants guzzle up whoppsy-whiffling human beans. And there's only one giant who can stop them - the BFG.

The BFG Study Guide. The BFG was written in 1982 by Roald Dahl. Dahl was a well-known author at this point, having already published popular books such as Fantastic Mr. Fox, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Danny, the Champion of the World. These books established his legacy as a delightful children's author.

Publisher Puffin Books, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group Awards Booktrust 100 Best Books for Children, 2014 Year Published 1982 Book Review This book has been reviewed by Focus on the Family's marriage and parenting magazine. Plot Summary Eight-year-old Sophie peers out the window of her orphanage one night and sees something terrifying.

The BFG (short for The Big Friendly Giant) is a 1982 children's novel by British author Roald Dahl.It is an expansion of a short story from Dahl's 1975 novel Danny, the Champion of the World.The book is dedicated to Dahl's late daughter, Olivia, who died of measles encephalitis at the age of seven in 1962.. An animated adaptation was released in 1989 with David Jason providing the voice of the ...

Chapter 1 Summary: "The Witching Hour" Sophie is awake in her dormitory. The other children in her dormitory have been asleep for hours, but she can't sleep. She notices how totally quiet it is; she wonders if this is the time people refer to as "the witching hour" (10). She creeps to the window to look at the quiet street outside.

Captured by a giant! The BFG is no ordinary bone-crunching giant. He is far too nice and jumbly. It's lucky for Sophie that he is. Had she been carried off in the middle of the night by the Bloodbottler, the Fleshlumpeater, the Bonecruncher, or any of the other giants-rather than the BFG-she would have soon become breakfast.

The BFG by Roald Dahl Review Illustrated by Quentin Blake Roald Dahl was a GIANT of an author as well as a man, being 6ft 6" (1.98m) tall. He was a master storyteller who has been delighting children and adults alike with his writing for decades (his books have sold upwards of 250 million copies worldwide).

716 83K views 8 years ago This is a quick book summary of The BFG by Roald Dahl. This channel discusses and reviews books, novels, and short stories through drawing...poorly. ...more...

The BFG Book Summary and Study Guide. Roald Dahl Booklist Roald Dahl Message Board. Detailed plot synopsis reviews of The BFG; Sophie and the BFG (Big Friendly Giant) must save the world from mean giants! Lucky for her, Sophie meets the kindest, gentlest, most friendly giant around. The BFG takes Sophie to giant land where she quickly learns ...

The BFG reader reviews. Just amazing! Ronaldo's book the BFG is a story about a friendly giant known as the BFG who Kalex and gives good dreams to children's NN there is one more character named Sophie.Together the BFG and Sophia with help from the Queen of England help to rid the world of the eating child giant.

A Battle and A New Beginning The Queen, convinced by Sophie and intrigued by BFG who is hiding outside, orders her troops to follow the instructions given by the BFG to the giant land. The army, led by the BFG, is able to capture all the monstrous giants and locks them up in a deep pit. It leads to cheering and a grand celebration in England.

Matt Matthew is a creative kiddo who loves to read. His favorite books are Fablehaven, Ender's Game, and Harry Potter. He also loves to play minecraft, eat blueberries, and go mountain biking. March 4, 2014 Books book review, Chapter Books, children's book, reader, reading

Reviews The BFG Matt Zoller Seitz July 01, 2016 Tweet Now streaming on: Powered by JustWatch "The BFG" remembers what it's like to see with the eyes of a child. The ideal age for it is somewhere between five and nine—a time when kids ask basic, very practical questions about the stories adults tell them at bedtime, like "Are Sophie's glasses OK?"

Chapter 13: a trogglehumper for the fleshlumpeatEr. The giants were having fifty winks (a sleep) before they set off to go and gobble up some little human beans as The BFG and Sophie were coming back from Dream Country. 'Giants is only sleeping then and now' he said 'Not nearly as much as human beans . Human beans is crazy for sleeping.

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• 05 Apr 2024

How I Spent my 2+2 Deferral: Zoe Bhargava

The HBS 2+2 program is a deferred admission process for current students in their final year of study, either in college or a full-time master’s degree program. If you are admitted through 2+2, you work for two to four years in a field of your choice before enrolling in the regular HBS MBA Program. We sat down with Zoe Bhargava (MBA 2025) to hear more about how she spent her deferral years.

Why did you decide to apply to HBS via the 2+2 deferred admissions process?

As an undergraduate business major at the University of California, Berkeley, I was hesitant to pursue another business degree, especially as I had recently pivoted my career plan from finance to tech after two summers interning at technology companies. After interning at Twitter my sophomore summer, I spent the following two years involving myself in the entrepreneurial ecosystem at Berkeley. This is when I heard about the opportunity to apply to HBS through the deferred 2+2 program . It seemed like a risk-free opportunity, so I decided to take the GMAT and give it a try. After researching HBS and exploring its entrepreneurial opportunities, including those at the Rock Center , iLab , and in the entrepreneurship curriculum itself, I realized that pursuing an MBA still aligned with my future career aspirations of building and growing companies.

What job(s) did you work during your deferral?

After gaining admission in June 2019, I had planned on spending three to four years in my deferral period before matriculating at HBS. I was excited to be returning to Twitter to work full time, yet I also had an itch to try my hand at working at a startup. After two and a half years at Twitter working on our Strategic Finance team supporting our Sports, Media, Entertainment Partnerships organization, I had an opportunity to join a sports tech startup along with that startup’s product team. I started as a Product Analyst, leveraging my skills and experience from Twitter and grew into a Product Manager role. I spent the following one and a half years learning A TON in a wildly different setting with daily challenges I had never faced before. The start-up ceased operations in June 2023, but the lessons I learned will be invaluable to my future career as a potential founder. Before starting at HBS in Fall 2023, I was able to squeeze in one more opportunity over the summer as a Growth Strategy & Operations intern at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). In this role I got to see another side of tech and startups – the investor and VC world.

Did 2+2 change your path or alter your post-undergraduate plans?

The risk-free nature of the four-year deferral period allowed me to confidently show up on campus with experiences in big tech, startups, and venture capital. Had I not had my 2+2 admissions letter in hand, I may not have felt comfortable switching jobs especially given that my deferral period was amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. I saw many peers stay in roles longer than they would have intended given the fluctuating and often uncertain job market. Joining a Series A startup was a huge risk, but that was exactly the beauty of the 2+2 program – it allowed me and even encouraged me to take such a risk. These experiences will not only be beneficial for my future career, but also led me to be a stronger MBA candidate with more diverse experiences to draw upon during the case method.

What advice do you have for prospects considering the 2+2 program?

For all prospective 2+2 applicants, I’d like to stress that there is not one career plan or typical path for those wishing to pursue their MBA. The classmates in my section come from such a variety of backgrounds and experiences that there is clearly no one “right type” of candidate who should apply to the HBS 2+2 program. If you have any inkling to apply, I’d recommend you explore the HBS website to see just what an HBS MBA could bring to you in the future!

You Might Want to Read

• How I Spent My 2+2 Deferral: Carol Wright
• African American Student Union Spotlight on Joint Degrees
• Top 10 MBA Voices Blogs of 2023

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MoviePass and Mastercard have signed a multi-year deal on a discount subscription plan for seeing movies in theaters

• MoviePass has partnered with Mastercard to offer cardholders a 50% discount on the first two months of a Standard or Premium subscription.
• The deal is part of Mastercard's enhancement of its cardholder benefits in health & wellness, travel, and lifestyle.
• MoviePass ran a profit for the first time ever in 2023.

MoviePass has partnered with Mastercard in the app's efforts to get more people to the movies.

The movie-theater-subscription service that provides members with monthly credits to see any movie at any theater has locked a deal with the credit card giant to become the newest benefit for its cardholders.

Eligible Mastercard holders will receive a 50% discount off the first two months of a Standard or Premium MoviePass subscription when signing up with their card.

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The MoviePass Standard plan costs $20 a month (for 72 credits), and Premium costs $30 a month (for 113 credits). Plans cost $10 more in New York City and Southern California (and give 140 credits for Standard and 200 credits for Premium).

"Mastercard is a champion of the movie industry, and the ultimate partner in delivering rich, interactive experiences that allow movie fans to immerse themselves in the world of film," MoviePass CEO and cofounder Stacy Spikes told Business Insider in a statement. "Our goal with this initiative is to encourage greater movie fandom through activities that could include film promotions, the development of branded content, or in-person activations. At the same time, we are proud supporters of independent theaters and want to develop campaigns that will help them grow and thrive."

The multi-year deal with Mastercard is part of the card's enhancement of "health & wellness, travel, and lifestyle" for its cardholders. Along with MoviePass, there are also new card benefits for Booking.com, Lyft, and ResortPass.

"From savvy shoppers to ambitious entrepreneurs, Mastercard provides a full complement of valuable benefits to help cardholders simplify their daily routines, fuel their passions, and enhance their lifestyles," Seema Chibber, executive vice president of North America Product and Engineering at Mastercard, said in a statement . 

MoviePass became a pop-culture sensation in the summer of 2017 when it dropped its monthly price to $10 a month to see a movie a day. It led to millions of subscribers but a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars under the leadership of former HMNY CEO Ted Farnsworth and then-MoviePass-CEO Mitch Lowe (both of whom are awaiting trial on charges of securities fraud ).

Spikes, who was fired from his company in 2018, bought back MoviePass in 2021 after the startup went bankrupt in 2020 .

Since then, MoviePass has surpassed 1 million movies seen in theaters through the app, according to the company . MoviePass said its new credits model has resulted in subscribers saving 35% on the cost of going to the movies (versus paying the retail price at the theater) since the beta launch, and has increased midweek attendance at movie theaters by 50% among its subscribers.

The company ran a profit for the first time in its history in 2023, Spikes revealed to BI in February .

Business Insider's award-winning reporting on MoviePass is the basis of the upcoming HBO documentary "MoviePass, MovieCrash," which had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film Festival and will be airing in late May.

Watch: Marketing leaders from TikTok, Roku, Mastercard and more tell Insider how consumer behavior has changed across industries

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