Opinions wanted!

[Susiejo]

Good. Write up a solid business plan before you spend any money. When choosing a location do a traffic study to determine ease of access (this can be as simple as counting the cars that pass each hour). Coffee houses (Starbucks, etc.) often do detailed traffic studies so if you find a location near a coffee house...the work's done for you.

Expect little to no profit the first two years and plan accordingly. If you both work do NOT quit your day job if at all possible. Consider carefully should you decide one of you needs to devote all day to your new enterprise. Expect 18 hour days and little sleep. It takes a lot of work.

A friend at work decided to open a coffee shop in a well traveled plaza and quit his job to devote all his time to it. Despite all his hard work he lost the business and his house. This is not something to be done lightly and the odds are not in your favor.

I don't want to discourage you but I would really hate to see you fail...and a large number of small business' do.

Don't worry Crash Moses about discouraging me. This is what I wanted, a good honest look at the good and the bad about looking into this kind of venture.
Thankfully my hubby has a good job and I haven't had to work outside the home in years. We tried to work it out that way so that I could stay home with our daughter which I also home school. So if we do this, I won't be quitting a job to do it. My mother in law, who lives with us, is retired and she wants to get in on it too. She is very active and I think being retired has gotten kinda boring to her.

Thanks to everyone for your input!

 

[shakeytails]

I live in Big Clifty, Grayson County side. Lived in this area for about 20 years, so it's home now. People treat us like we were born and raised here. DH knows more people than I do- he's hung out closer to home and knows more farmers and other locals. We have horses, done business with the Breck Co Amish, and we'd be at the Meade Co Fair horse show this week if they still had classes for Saddlebreds.

You might do OK in Leitchfield if you could keep costs down. I think I've seen more "vapers in the wild" in Leitchfield area than I have in E-town. I don't know the cost, but what about doing the flea market for personal interaction and also having juice and less expensive hardware at the Peddlar's Mall in the glass case area?

 

[Doc Diego]

Having opened and closed a business before, there's no such thing as too much planning. Undercapitalized, didn't have enough specific business knowledge, and I had a partner that, well, ...ahem...don't have partners I now work as a spreadsheet wizard in a retail environment, and I'm half-way through my masters degree in business. If you're serious, then here are some quick notes on what I learned the hard way:

Know your customer. Everyone wants to sell as much as possible to everyone. That's not a marketing plan. In reality, 20% of your customers will provide 80% of your business income. You have to know your ideal customer intimately, and what they want. Find a way to give it to them, and they'll reward you with dollars and keep coming back. Design everything around those ideal customers- from ads, to coupons, to the layout of the shop, to the products you offer. Marketing involves every aspect of your presentation to your customers, so focus on the customers who'll be loyal. That's who you market to, that's who you have to connect with. Do it well, you'll probably succeed. For example, give them a name. If it's Stephanie, who's twenty or thirty-something, currently smokes light analogs, has a nice professional job, then design a shop that she would come into. Design your ads that speak on a personal level to entice Stephanie to stop by.

Have enough cash when the doors open. Plan properly, manage credit lines properly, and understand that you're going to have negative cash flow, especially at first. When business is slow and sporadic, you're going to take hits. Even if you're planning small, and the overhead is low, you need cash to carry you through. If the checking balance is too low to pay the bills, everything becomes a mad scramble. It's nearly impossible to dig yourself out of a deep hole of debt once you've fallen in, and wondering whether the phone or power will still be on tomorrow is a good way to get insomnia and an ulcer. Does wonders for your doctor's income, but it does nothing to improve your situation.

Don't monkey around with taxes; pay them on time.

Don't overestimate the market. That's easy to do. Plan highly conservatively, and design the business to make profit on small volumes. It's far easier to scale up to meet business needs than it is to cut the budgets and scale down to meet reality. Always aim for profit. If you aim for a break-even point, if you miss slightly, you've taken a loss. If you miss your profit target slightly, you've still made money.

Don't try to be a super-store immediately. Specialize in good products, and work with products you know and wouldn't have a conscience attack selling to your mother. Too much product selection also equals slow inventory turnover, which kills cash flow. Again, it's far easier to ramp up to meet demand than to scale back.

Lastly, work with suppliers you can trust. They are your partners, and the right supplier who can support your business growth will be worth far more than the unreliable supplier with slick deals.