Business ideas in trade

Many small business entrepreneurs face a daunting choice - to open their own standalone store or rent a small outlet in a shopping center. Both options have their pros and cons. St. Petersburg businessman Dmitry Ogorodnik also faced such a choice - he already had a separate store, but he also decided on a test drive in the “island” format in a shopping center. We think many small business entrepreneurs will benefit from his experience.

34 years old, entrepreneur from St. Petersburg, general director of Karelshungit company, which manages stores and Shungite Planet. Education: Ryazan Institute of the Airborne Forces. Dmitry Ogorodnik is the author of a business blog in which he shares his own entrepreneurial experience. Until the end of 2021, the company had its own offline store; in December, a retail outlet was opened in the June shopping center.

Think over the design, make a good presentation

The advantages of shopping centers are that there is already traffic there. You will not need to spend years trying to get people to know about the location of your store and come to you. You get immediate access to a massive audience.

The first thing to understand: although you are signing a lease agreement, in fact you do not need the lease itself, but access to the maximum number of people who "live" in a particular shopping center.

Therefore, you need to start by giving yourself an installation - your goal is not just to get into a shopping center, but to find a good passable place in any shopping center.

The first thing to do is create a presentation. Almost all shopping centers will ask you to throw off the presentation of your project; without it, your proposal will not be considered at all. The presentation should contain the following components:

Design your store. You need to order it in advance, even before you start looking for a place.

Competitive advantages. Write down why you are a great shopping center option. Here you have to turn on your imagination and come up with arguments.

A portrait of your target audience.

Planned average check in your store.

General information about your company.

The most important point is about design. Accordingly, you will need to find an agency that develops the design of retail outlets and stores. There are not many such agencies (at least in St. Petersburg), but they do exist.

Total in the category: 32 types, investment sizes: from 165,000 to 9,000,000 rubles. Everything is quite simple - to open your own business in a shopping and entertainment center! After all, the congestion in one place of many shops, cafes, cinemas, leisure areas attracts a wide audience to shopping and entertainment centers, where you can fully spend the whole weekend with your family.

In almost any activity, an important indicator is the density of sales.

How to open a store in the mall: step by step plan

The more product and customer turnover, the faster payback and higher profitability. How to ensure a guaranteed flow of consumers? Everything is quite simple - open your own business in a shopping and entertainment center! After all, the congestion in one place of many shops, cafes, cinemas, leisure areas attracts a wide audience to shopping and entertainment centers, where you can fully spend the whole weekend with your family.

What exactly can be organized where everything seems to be there? Not to mention an ordinary store opening, you can consider such options as a vending cafe in the lobby or building passages, placing attractions in the children's play area, an express manicure salon and many other options.

Benefits of a Shopping Mall Business

In addition to the already mentioned crowding, which is undoubtedly the most important feature of placing your project in a shopping center, you can talk about such advantages as:

• centralization of the provision of utilities and security services that the landlord takes care of (i.e. the center itself);
• the ability to rent areas that are not limited in size from 1-2 m2;
• mitigating the risks of reducing profits depending on weather conditions and seasonality;
• positive impact on the business of impulse purchases from the visitors of the shopping and entertainment zone.

The presence of leisure areas in the mall, such as ice skating rinks, cinemas, art cafes, small stages, children's attractions, relaxation salons, detain visitors inside the centers and ensure their long-term contact with the shopping area. This interaction is beneficial for everyone: the buyer is interested in spending time where everything is; stores are satisfied with a constant flow of customers and simply curious who become customers later; well, and the entertainment infrastructure benefits from family visits.

If we talk about the shortcomings, then there are very few of them: rather high rental rates and the dependence of human traffic on the image and convenience of the shopping and entertainment center.

Plans

According to statistics, the most common business idea in Ukraine is to open your own store. There is nothing to be surprised, this is a demanded branch of business. Shops and shops, retail outlets surround us everywhere.

Looking for a highlight

In addition, opening your own store is a launching pad for big business. It is based on the idea of ​​buying goods at a wholesale price and selling them in order to gain profit. It is important to decide which product to take for sale and where it is more profitable to take it. Realizing that the competition is off scale, you need to find a single "flavor" so that buyers could not refuse the offer. These are not necessarily low prices; assortment and quality of goods, as well as customer service, are equally important.

We analyze the competition and determine the advantageous location

Before opening your own store in Odessa, you need to analyze the work of potential competitors. Such "reconnaissance by force" will help to find out the strengths and weaknesses of competing stores, to insure against possible mistakes. The opinion of people living nearby will be interesting. To ensure a logical sequence of steps when opening a store, you need to draw up a business plan.

The location of a store is one of the most important keys to its success. It is necessary to carefully approach the choice of location, having studied the purchasing needs and opportunities of the population. The store can be located in a shopping center (for example, you can develop a shopping island for this, as on the website), or in a rented space at the intersection of crowded streets. In this case, rent must be taken into account. In a shopping center, it will be much higher. But the influx of buyers is always ensured, there is parking, security. In no case should you forget about marketing if the store is located outside the shopping center. The buyer is always attracted by the variety of assortments, the corresponding prices and the culture of communication on the part of the sellers.

Cooperation with suppliers + advertising

When choosing suppliers, it is necessary to take into account, first of all, their reputation. It is always pleasant to work with a punctual supplier, to be confident in his competence and knowledge of the matter. It is possible and necessary to develop long-term cooperation with a supplier if he meets your needs. This will always affect the improvement of the terms of cooperation. The goods in the store, of course, must always be of high quality. It is very easy to scare a buyer away, which is not in the plans of the store owner.

Advertising is always needed for business development, including for the successful promotion of your own store. Therefore, the cost of it must be planned in advance. It is good if the advertisement is developed by a specialist.

When developing the idea of ​​opening a store, it is necessary to take into account: a comprehensive substantiation of the idea, search for a location, profitable purchase of goods, creation of advertising, justification of pricing policy, personnel training.

Of course, many difficulties are encountered when opening a store. But with a competent and professional approach to business, obstacles are always overcome.

Opening your own business in trade is a good idea for start-up investments in any region of the country, because many categories of goods are quite relevant, you can make good money on them. The trading business is a mine of ideas that can be easily implemented even by a beginner in entrepreneurship. Depending on the region and the demand for the product, you can open a competitive outlet or choose a new direction and become the first in the city to open a similar business. The main thing is to understand the peculiarities of popular directions in trade and highlight one that will generate income in the future even in times of crisis.

Bulletin board business

The first thing that aspiring entrepreneurs think about is how to make money on the Internet, because most types of activities have long gone online and are rapidly developing there.

You can start trading on the Internet on free message boards, online auctions.

You can implement the following on the Internet:

• Personal items (clothes, shoes, equipment) that for some reason have become unnecessary.
• You can start reselling goods (for example, from Chinese trading platforms). When reselling, pay attention to the most popular categories, see what competitors are offering.
• It is profitable to sell accessories and cosmetics, famous brands.
• At online auctions there is a demand for mobile accessories and various gifts.

Of course, it is more profitable to start a business on your own website or on the page where you will offer your goods, but online trading platforms look very good to start.

What products are in great demand

The list of goods for which demand never falls includes several categories. You can start building a business in trade based on them, or you can choose a narrower area and develop in it.

The following are in constant demand:

• Food (meat, fish, sweets, bread, vegetables, etc.).
• Alcohol and tobacco products.
• Personal hygiene products (shampoos, creams, detergents for the apartment).
• Clothes and footwear.
• Seasonal goods (ice cream, cold or hot drinks, charcoal, and so on can make a lot of money).

You can also pay attention to the manufacture of chewing gum, small candies, small bars, which are usually found at supermarket checkouts - such a product is in demand, but people do not perceive it as a purchase.

Which product is suitable for making money

Every day we are faced with a choice. Starting from the most common and everyday questions, such as "What clothes to wear", to the more global "Should I change my job." Making our choice, we are based on personal experience, the opinion of acquaintances, friends, or simply relying on the Russian "maybe". This approach is not the best, because often the choice is based not on an analysis of the real aspects of the issue or an attempt to understand not only the general situation, but also to predict the development of the situation in the future, but simply on superficial knowledge.

A person, despite all his unpredictability and unpredictability in some specific moments or situations, is generally accustomed to acting according to established patterns. As a result, thinking about the issue of opening a store, we use the established template choice, that is, we choose based on some purely personal observations. For example, after a trip to friends in another city, you saw a dot of underwear, a well-known trade mark, or, again, copying the successful idea of ​​an open one by your friends or neighbors. We have already received a template choice and in the future we begin to move along the established channel. By type:

• First - they succeeded, so it will work for me;
• Second - they work, so the business is profitable;
• Third - if it is profitable, then all expenses will pay off;
• Fourth, I can find the money to start, and with a 100% markup, I’ll beat it off in a couple of months.

Do you know such thoughts? If so, then you definitely thought about opening your own store, although practice shows that about 95% of people who want to start their own business thought about a store.

In fact, today this approach is in 9 out of 10 cases the road to nowhere. Just look around, the retail market today is a highly competitive environment in which most of the simple and successful template solutions are already taken. Moreover, they are busy not only with your friends or neighbors, they are promoting large companies with huge capital and developing networks throughout the country. For example, the same format of “near home” grocery stores, we are not talking about the format of supermarkets. With this approach, you might think that there is no place for small businesses in retail at all! No, there is and always will be, an example is the United States, where small businesses are engaged in their niche in retail and even large transnational corporations involved in the development of supermarket chains cannot "smoke" it from there. The situation is similar in Europe. Another question is that opening a successful business requires non-template decisions when choosing ideas for a store.

Three “recipes” for choosing a successful idea for your store

Recipe One Perhaps the most commonplace and least effective

• - which retail outlets are in the city and determine which ones are not.
• - select the most successful from the available stores. Whether a point of sale is successful or not is easy enough to determine, there are several basic indicators.

• The first is how often the assortment changes and how complete it is. And clothes are the presence of all sizes, and if not, can you order? Wholesale clothes are sold in sizes and if the trade is not very good, then the seller will not buy all.
• Second, in what condition the store itself is, we are talking about repairs, the condition of furniture and equipment. Do not forget that these premises have a high traffic of people and, as a result, require either good expensive furniture or frequent repairs. Both the first and the second can be allowed only if the trade brings tangible profit
• Third, the quality of service. No matter what they say, the staff in the trade plays a big role, they are in fact the face of the outlet, but, as in any profession, there are not so many good sellers, experienced owners know this well. Proceeding from this, they are trying to lure a good seller with wages and better working conditions. But a large salary and normal working conditions, again, can only be offered by a successful store.

But this choice is just the first step when choosing an idea for trading. At the second stage, you need to clearly answer the question - If there is a sufficient number of buyers for the selected product. Yes, you can open a boutique of elite perfumery in a small town, and I'm sure there will be buyers, but how many will there be? If such a boutique sells one or two bottles a week, then it will not bring you any profit, because there are still maintenance costs, taxes and so on. On the other hand, if there are a couple of excellent shops of women's suits (specialized) in the city and they are in demand, then it is not a fact that by opening the third one you can make it successful. After all, firstly, it is immediately necessary to figure out how to entice their customers, and secondly, to provide such conditions so that in the future customers will return to your outlet. All these small nuances ultimately significantly affect the amount of start-up capital when starting a business and, in general, the attractiveness of such a trading idea.