“Is now a good time to open a retail business?” I get questions like this a lot. If you have the money, the intelligence and desire to make it work -yes. Much like deciding to have a child or get married, it is your conviction that makes the difference.
If you want to open a retail business because you, “think it will be fun,” “want something to do,” or feel a need for “a change,” don’t do it. It would be like going into a bar at closing time, finding the worst possible person for you and then marrying them. If you think a divorce could be messy, wait until you see what happens to get out of a five or ten-year lease!
Part of your retail success will come in choosing a location; you don’t want to be 100 yards from success. Rent could be cheaper around the corner, on the backside of the development or in an older center but there’s a reason rent is cheaper – less traffic and visibility. You’ll have to advertise more to get people to just find you so there rarely is any savings.
When I was helping select locations for a franchise, new franchisees would pitch me why a development was so good, “… and it’s surrounded by million dollar homes.” After awhile, I began to question just how many “million dollar homes” an area could afford.
Now we know – few. In fact many of those homes are still vacant or being rented. Here’s a tip for you looking at locations with leasing agents who might be selling you on a bill of goods about an area: check the trash.
With so many abandoned homes in major markets like California, Florida and the like, you want to know how many customers you could actually count on in your two-mile trade area.
Here’s how: Find out the trash collection days and times for your intended area. Go and observe how many have put their trash out prior and you’ll have a good indication of how dynamic your neighborhood really is.
Is now a good time to open a retail business? It can be if you use tricks like these to make sure you aren’t sold a bill of goods.
I was in a store doing a display several years ago with a manager. We were creating a simple four-tier display using blue and yellow as the primary colors. (A great example of how to display correctly is at left from ZOZOs in the Minneapolis airport concourse.)
My friend Melodie recently sent me a very interesting link prepared by interns at NASA. It is a pdf of a PowerPoint presentation they presented to NASA about what NASA needs to do to get Gen-Y interested in the space program.
This past weekend in Long Beach a group of merchants got together with a fun promotion involving Barbie. They hosted an event that was unique, each business did something to tie-into the gimmick: Barbie. (You can see all the ways each business contributed on the back of the postcard below.)
When I was selling western wear in college at a store in the Santa Monica Place mall, I had a guy who came in to the store and immediately told me he needed a red shirt for a party. “Why red?” I asked. “My girlfriend told me to.” I showed him how red really wasn’t a good color for his skin, shared the mistake I’d made getting one once and found a good blue shirt he would wear more than once to a party. He also got a pair of boots and jeans – about $300 worth.
You want to compete in a global marketplace? Standout from a world that is overbuilt with power centers? Take money out of the business instead of put it in every month? Reach higher. Hire salespeople. Encourage them to reach higher with every sale.
The Chrysler bankruptcy passed with thousands of dealers closing their doors forever as of Tuesday night. An interesting sidebar to the story was how some Chysler dealers sued to avoid being terminated. Chrysler had said in court documents, “Dealerships located in the markets at issue lack the operational, market, facility and [brand] characteristics necessary to best contribute to the ongoing dealer network under current or future ownership.”
