Well, from my experience. I used my own captal. Which does limit what you can do as far as advertising, merchandise and stock.
You should really budget for advertising and a lot of it. Lots of money can be wasted on different forms of advertising.
Also, try to keep your overhead as low as possible. Otherwise if your prices are too high its tough to be competetive. And if you start dropping your pants to get sales its a losing battle.
The other thing about retail is expect to work a lot of hours. Work weekends, evenings. And if you hire someone you still have to be there to oversee daily operations. Its a customer driven business so you or your employees need to sit there and wait for people to walk in the door. How you get people into your store and its location and PARKING are crucial. I would also target local people in your area or locate the store near other business that have a lot of traffic to generate more exposure. Like I said advertising can cost huge dollars and you have to be repetetive with it or it won't work. Depending on your products you might not see the fruits of yours ads for a few years.
Anyways, good luck with it. Everyone I know it retails knows its a very tough go. Esp. The long hours and remember the customer is ALWAYS right, even if you have to lose money to make them happy.
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