There is an old saying where buying a house is concerned - location, location, location – find the right house in the right location and you will live happily, but buy in the wrong location and you will live to regret it.
Where business is concerned this saying is even more relevant.
There are many things to consider when looking to find the right location for your business, especially if it is a retail business. You need to look at the amount of passing trade, whether it be on foot or by car.
If there is not enough passing trade then you will find it very difficult to make a living but, on the other hand, if there is a lot it might well be that you could not afford to have you businesses there as the rental costs would reflect the high passing trade.
You have to take into account what your average monthly turnover will be when you are considering business location. Ideally everyone would like to be right in the town center, but those locations are normally taken up by the large chain groups who can afford the high rent asked for those sites.
It can though be far more cost effective to be located just on the edge of the town center, as the cost of rent will be cheaper and the parking more available.
Some years ago a friend of mine was faced with the problem of finding where he wanted his shop to be, obviously the town center was out of the question because of the reasons already mentioned. But he did find a nice sized shop on the edge of the town that suited him both for the size and the cost of the monthly rent. So for those reasons alone he signed the rental contract and opened up his business.
What he had not taken into account though was the fact that his shop was just along the road from a set of traffic lights, and for this reason his business boomed. Because as the lights turned red people ended up sitting outside his shop looking at his window display like a captive audience. Obviously once he became aware of this he took full advantage of it and as I say his business did extremely well.
So you really need to look at what surrounds the location of your proposed business and take into account things that can make a big difference to you turnover.
It has to be said thought that even after finding the ideal location for your business your problems may not totally over.
With business there is always a constant ebb and flow, economies go up and economies go down and for the past couple of years it has definitely been on a downward spiral. As trade gets less and less so does your monthly income and what was once an affordable rent begins to take up more and more of your turnover leaving you less profit.
As this happens to your business it also happens to the businesses all around you too and some of them will, unfortunately, not be able to survive the lack of custom. As this happens you can begin to see more and more empty premises around your business, unfortunately this begins to drag a once prosperous area into decline and nothing puts off prospective customers more than a lot of empty shops so you lose even more business.
If you are looking to set up a business it can sometimes be much better to look at the sort of business that is more mobile. That way if an area does go into decline then it is simply a matter of looking for a more prosperous area and taking your business there. This is obviously not so easy though if your business is a bricks and mortar business such as a shop.
Nigel Thomas is the owner and founder of Samoht Publishing and publishes Earn Extra Money with a Sandwich Delivery Business which can be purchased in all the popular formats at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/292697 or at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BNAQCMQ
