Chapter 08

The 12-week launch

Twelve weeks, one person, about £420 of spend plus whatever a solicitor costs. The plan is arranged so that the thing most likely to kill the business is confronted in week one, not month six.

Weeks 1 to 3: make it postable

• Week 1 · half a daySet the print product and post one pack to yourself The pack became A4 landscape on 9 September 2026 and the dispatch gateway names no product.S2 A landscape pack sent to a portrait product comes back rotated or cropped and the first anyone would know is a letterbox. Pick the product, price it, send one to your own address, and open it. Done when: a printed landscape pack is in your hand, and the per-item price for a four-page pack is written down.
• Week 1 · one hourRead the image model provider's terms Unchecked, and it is the cheapest item on this list that could invalidate a supplier relationship. Every major provider requires a warranty that you hold the rights to your inputs, and nobody has read ours. Done when: the relevant clause is quoted in a note next to chapter 10's risk 8.
• Week 1 · two hoursPut a privacy notice live at a URL No cold email goes out before this exists, and the postal position in chapter 10 assumes it.S40 Done when: the URL resolves and the email footer points at it.
• Week 2 · two hoursBuild the demo pack template A specimen mark on the artefact, the covering note as an insert, and a back page that addresses the installer rather than the homeowner.S2 Done when: a demo pack cannot be mistaken for one that went to a house.
• Week 2 · half a dayStrip watermarks before rendering A pipeline step, not a hope. It removes chapter 10's risk 5 and it is the one point Getty actually won.S35 Done when: a listing photograph with an agent watermark produces a render with no watermark, asserted in a test.
• Week 2 · half a dayEnlarge the disclosure on the pack The AI-visualisation line moves onto the page carrying the renders, at a size a person reads, and gains a line saying where the address came from and how to ask us to stop.S41 Done when: somebody who has not seen the pack before can read it from arm's length.
• Week 3 · half a dayBuild the prospect brand kit Paste an installer's website URL; the system pulls the logo, the colour, the phone number and the trade, and creates a company in a prospect state that can generate packs but cannot log in. The highest-return half day in the plan. Without it, fifty demos is a fortnight of manual work. Done when: a demo pack for a target takes under five minutes end to end.
• Week 3 · two hoursInstrument the demo A row per demo before it is sent: target, listing, trade, date, share-page opens, reply type, days to reply. Chapter 09 specifies it. Done when: the table exists and the first ten rows are pre-filled with chosen targets.

Weeks 4 to 6: fifty demos

• Week 4 · two daysChoose fifty listings One per target from chapter 05, within four miles of the showroom address, sold or under offer, dated room, floorplan present, right trade, right price bracket.S6 Skip the three rows carrying a due-diligence flag and ring those instead. Done when: fifty listing URLs sit against fifty named firms with a named recipient each.
• Week 4 · one daySend the first ten and stop Ten, not fifty. Then wait a week. The first ten will surface a problem with the print, the brand kit or the covering note that is far cheaper to fix at ten than at fifty. Done when: ten are in the post and the arithmetic for the batch is recorded: ten packs, about £16.
• Week 5 · ongoingRing the first ten on day five The showroom number, in working hours, opening with the question about the post from chapter 06. Record every outcome including "angry", which is a real category and the most important safety signal in the channel. Done when: ten outcomes are recorded and any print or copy defect is fixed.
• Week 5 · one daySend the remaining forty About £64. Same discipline, same instrumentation. Done when: fifty demos are out and the spend to date is under £110.
• Week 6 · ongoingWork the sequence Call on day five, one email on day nine if the call did not connect, stop on day eighteen.S15 No third touch. Done when: every one of the fifty has an outcome recorded, including "no reply".

Weeks 7 to 9: convert, and open the agency conversation

• Week 7 · ongoingRun the discovery calls Twenty minutes, six questions, ending with "pick me a house".S17 The close is building a pack for a listing they chose, on the call. Done when: every interested firm has had one, and the disqualified ones are on a six-month list.
• Week 7 · ongoingSet up the first house accounts Up to ten design partners on the comped flag, each with a written end date and a stated thing we get back.S3 Done when: every comped account has both, recorded.
• Week 8 · two daysWrite the agency approach and send it One regional agency group or one CRM vendor, for a written agreement covering photographs, descriptions and floorplans for the purpose of generating remodelling visualisations, limited to their own listings, with a warranty of authority to license and an indemnity.S43 Done when: it is sent, and a solicitor has looked at the draft terms. This is not something to draft alone.
• Week 8 · one hourMake the Hometrack phone call Ask whether "Property Listings Data" includes photographs and marketing descriptions. It is unanswerable from public sources, it is the most commercially decisive unknown in the business, and it is one call.S43 Done when: there is an answer, or a written record that they would not give one.
• Week 8 · one hourAsk both portals the direct question in writing Does any product you sell license the reuse and modification of listing photography? Expect no. Get it in writing either way.S43 Done when: both are sent and the replies are filed with chapter 10.
• Week 9 · half a dayApproach BIFIS and the KBSA A comped pilot for a group's membership on the house-account terms.S14 One of the firms in chapter 05 holds a BIFIS award for 2026, which is a warm route in. Done when: both are approached and one has replied.
• Week 9 · half a dayPitch the trade press kbbreview and kbbfocus. "Somebody is posting new homeowners an AI render of their own kitchen" is a story before it is a product, and it is free.S13 Done when: both have a note and a photograph of a real pack.

Weeks 10 to 12: one supplier trial and a decision

• Week 10 · two daysApproach one appliance or sanitaryware brand One, not five. The strongest case on the evidence is a supplier that already spends nearly all of its gross margin on demand generation for dealers.S48 The ask is a three-month regional trial for twenty dealers, not a contract. Done when: the one-page offer from chapter 07 is in front of a named marketing manager.
• Week 11 · half a daySeparate postage from the subscription A postcard costs more to post than a letter, and any flat-fee volume band would leave five pence in the pound.S7 Build the split before anybody asks for a bigger band. Done when: the billing page shows a stated per-item send price alongside the pack allowance.
• Week 11 · one dayShip the postcard as a real product Only if week 1 established the bureau product and price, and only if the disclosure fits legibly at A5. Both are conditions, not preferences.S41 Done when: a postcard has been posted, received and read.
• Week 12 · one dayCount everything and decide Chapter 09 lists the numbers. The decision is binary and it is written down before the data arrives, in the next section. Done when: the decision is recorded with the numbers next to it.

The decision at week 12, written down in advance

Deciding the threshold after seeing the data is how a founder talks himself into another quarter. Here it is, in advance.

The budget

What is deliberately not in this quarter

• A listing finder. Automating the search across many showroom postcodes is the exact activity the portals prohibit by name.S38 Do the manual version first, deliberately, and do not build the crawler before the agency agreement exists.
• The Patch band. It cannot ship until postage is separated from the subscription.S7
• Exclusivity by postcode. A later upsell, priced separately, once value is proven.
• Any approach to a large trade supplier. Chapter 07 explains why the data problem has to be solved first.S45
• Parametric or Blender rendering. It is the right answer to the geometry defect and it is a quarter of engineering that produces no revenue.S6 The measured plan page already gives the honest artefact alongside the seductive one.
• The United States. Documented, real, and option value rather than a plan.S45