thinking about opening up a retail shop

[zippoz]

I have found a local municipality that will allow me to open up a shop without legal troubbles, and also found a very nice store front for rent. I allready own one business, so im familiar with the legal processes involved.

what i would like to know from you all, is how much do you think i would have to invest in glass to run a shop?

and does anyone else have some words of advise?

thank you
Zip

[schmoinkel]

Words of advise?... don't sell anything that they(feds) can link to drug use or criminal acitivity.

What I mean is..the rest of the shop(nick-nacks).....really it depends on where you are.

I owned a hemp shop and started selling glass to keep the doors open, which the local law was ok with...BUT...the feds evedentaly had a SERIOUS problem with...Anyway long story short the things we where selling in the rest of the store...I.E. posters, books, tshirts...ect. were all good referances for them to say we were promoting drug use...which in turn lead them to the conclution that what we were selling was drug paraphnalia......make sence?

I'm bitter about he whole thing....but I must say...no amount of research or whatever is going to stop the feds from doing what they want to do.

Scott

[ech]

$100,000

[zippoz]

$100K?
that sounds ridiculous, i think that it could be done for well under 10k...

[ech]

ok then do it...

[lucidvisions]

10k is soooo low I believe. Is it just the glass or displays, lighting, ect, ect you're lokking to figure out?

Josh

[Dom]

50K for a small retail space

[Greymatter Glass]

A poorly capitalized business venture _WILL_ fail.

To echo Lucidvision, are you asking how much to spend on glass, or how much to set up shop?

I'd start with around $50,000-$75k to start a small retail ( < 2000 sg ft) to get you through the first year. Don't count on month-to-month sales to pay all your bills and a salary at the very start.

I'd say a retail shop that size would have $30-50k in inventory if well stocked, but maybe not right at first. A few displays and a lot of open space to grow in to can start you off without too much investment in displays and stuff, if the rent is a good price.

I'm almost willing to bet that it wont happen for $10,000 unless you find someone willing to front you a lot of glass on credit - I know I wouldn't.

[lucidvisions]

I personally would never jump into a business venture without at least a three year business plan. Going into what that business plan entails would take more time than I have to explain, but I think covering all your bases before jumping right in can save you a lot of $ and headaches. I would get a loan to make sure you can pay yourself as well as fund the business. Also if you enjoy doing the creative side of things, ie blowing glass, you can probably kiss that good-bye, as most of your time will be wrapped up doing the retail end to do it right. All the posts may sound like we're not giving you much support but if you can justify it on paper and to a bank I say go for it.

Josh

[Firekist]

10k in glass is a lot less than you think. i carry more than that with me when i go into a store... and you should try adding up pendants sometime. .. way more there than you think.

a local store with 4-5 glass cases stocks 50k in glass.. i've talked with them about it. that doesn't count glass on consignment, or the tubes behind the counter.

100k is maybe more glass than you need, but 50k probably is.

ditto what doug said about undercapitalized.

z--seth

[Meerkat]

I did start up a retail shop and ran it for about 3 years before I moved away. We were a combo between a gallery and a retail store. Our goal (myself and the owner) was to have a high end head shop. Thus we didn't carry any of the typical small items like $20 spoons, rolling papers, scales, posters, etc.

We specialized in expensive heady pieces and some non-pipe glass art. We did carry some prodo, but it was really nice. Our lowest priced items and biggest sellers were single and double bubblers from Slinger, Hippon and Rat Dog, going for around $200 CAN. We did carry a Roor line and sold a few, but never that many. I remember we had some really nice marbles and a cool underwater scene with dolphins pipe that I think was made by Scott Depe and a motorcycle with flames pipe by Jason Lee, both going for around $2000.

We also carried vaporizers like Vriptech and Volcano and had the first vapor bar in Vancouver, which was popular and a lot of fun and defiantly brought in the customers.

There was lots of cool psychedelic art such as by Luke Brown and Alex Gray as well as kinds of other art such as these animals and masks creted by native people, I think in South America, called Wichole (no idea how to spell it), and it was many brightly coloured beads pressed into wax on a hand carved wooden form. They were really cool, I bought one of a giant frog.

We also had lots of crystals for sale around the store which was a really good sales item and were purchased both by hippies and people just wanting something cool looking to put in their home and they really gave the store a nice look. I would recommend them as an item to anyone with a store.

Anyway where I am going with this is not to brag, but to give an idea of the type of store we created. We really were going going for an upscale look and put a lot of money into fixing up and decorating the place. It used to be just an empty shell of building.

We completly painted it, had a custom bar put in, had custom window bars made where the bars were in the shape of plants and there were marbles by slinger glued into the bars, we put down a floor of thick japanese cherry wood (it was so beautiful), and had custom display cases built and put in track lighting.

Plus there were all the misc other things like a sound system for the store, cash register, cash register software (quick books plus), fire extinguishers and smoke alarms, and dozens of other things I can't think of right now.

While I don't remember the exact figure, I know we spent around $50,000 Canadian on start up costs and creating everything to have the place ready to open. You could easily do it a lot cheaper than we did. We spent $10,000 on the hardwood floor alone. The custom window bars with marbles were expensive, I think another $5 - 7k right there. The custom vapor bar was another $5k.

I think you could easily do a a small retail business for around $15 - $25k. And if you wanted to go really ghetto or say it was a really small space or you didn't purchase anything and did all the labour and work yourself or you had access to really cheap or free things like display cases, etc... Then I think you could probably do it for $10 to $15k.

But remember then you need to still purchase stock !

[Meerkat]

Oh, to add to what Greymatter said about month to month sales supporting your first couple years and having a salary. That is very true.

The financial reason our gallery/retail store succeeded while I was there was because I put togeather and managed the entire thing for no additional salary. I took on the job of creating and managing the gallery in addition to my job duties of running the Bubble Bag company.

And for the first 6 months or so we had no employees. I helped customers, cleaned up, did everything.... till it proved to be too much work for me and I got ripped off twice because one customer would distract me while another stole. Which brings up another costs - a security system.

The business did not pay it's own bills for the at least the first two years, and that is typical of any business. Don't expect a profit for at least two years, so you need savings or some other income to fall back on. Our store was lucky in that it was all supported by the income from Bubble Bags, so while we did want it to be a profit making venture, it wasn't a do or die requirement from the start.

Both myself and the owner wanted it as a way to showcase our love for heady glass and other things we were into. And as a nice side effect it was advertising for Bubble Bags (since we sold those too and did demos in the gallery). Although with the cost of the gallery, it definetly was not free advertising.

So now re-thinking my original post. I still think you could start up a small, non fancy retail business for $15k and you would still need to purchase stock, which I would think you could not get away with less than $10k of stock at the bare minimum.

Then you have employee costs and you *will* be managing the business unless you want to fork out another $30 to $40k for a manager's salary. So lets say you do the managing (all the books, all the buying, dealing wtih customer and client problems, etc). You still need one employee (you could have multiple people, but only one personal working at a time). On average they are probably going to cost you $30k a year (depending on what you choose to pay and what minimum wage is). And you need to do this all above the board, no hiring friends who work for herb or whatever.

You also have to take taxes out of their pay and as manager you will be dealing with taxes for the whole business, which I can personally tell you is a bitch, and it will make your life so much easier to hire an accountant, it is another expense, but is so worth it !

And lastly as mentioned above, don't forget all the little piddly costs that add up fast.