Okay, fifth graders, I need your help in a BIG way! My husband, Mr. Walts, is retired. He is thinking about starting his own business. I don’t think this is a good idea because we don’t know about all the things we need to do before starting up a business. Mrs. Stone told me that you have been learning all this in order to get ready for Market Day. Can you give us some advice?

What are the things we have to decide on? I think we need to decide what kind of a business we want to have first. Is that right? Then, what about location? How do you know what is a good location? Also, don’t we have to decide on what we will be able to sell? How do we figure out the supply and demand? What about customer service? Is that important? Oh, my gosh! I didn’t even think about the pricing! How do you decide how much to charge? Is quality an important thing to consider? He’s not very artistic either; do we need to worry about presentation of the product?

Good grief! I’m worried! He has a lot of work to do before he starts. Please respond to let me know what we need to do before we start.