Hm... sounds like were in the process, of creating a buisness plan.
You know I'd be more then happy to help where ever you need help
Obv, First step would be a buisness plan. Not sure what your educational back ground is(obv good)... but there are some great online classes, and local college classes for specific people like you trying to learn a new area of business.
I used to hang around a skate shop, I would imagine a business plan, challenges, obstacles, and profitably would be close to the same. I think many owners of these types of stores, would like to see a profit but realize that it will be very difficult. I know one of the many challenges of that my friend faced with his store, was the fact that he would have to purchase all his snowboard gear, or skate gear at the start of the season, just because of the way the distributors were set up. So he had to constantly estimating his orders, and future sales, if he ran out this looked bad, and if he had to much obv his profits were slim. This I think is one of the biggest challenges for a private store owner.
My friend also would become very frustrated w/the hrs that he had to put into keep his store open, also finding really good help was also very tough.
One edge that I think can be easily gained over other stores, is in the online field. A lot of hobby shop type stores often overlook, or do not have the time and energy to run and online shop and brick and mortar. Yet I think a brick and mortar shop cannot be successful w/o the other. Its just to important to have a clean website, that allows your patrons to easily get updates on your products, not to mention allows you to sell to an area much larger then the target area of your brick and mortar store.
So I think it would be very wise to start w/ like a garage and a website, find a local ups hub that can daily pick up and deliver for your store. Once this aspect of your business is up and running and profitable, I think the brick and mortar store can easily follow.
Um.. obv because your winnings at poker and etc.. you would want to avoid having your personal assets at risk. So probably should start and llc. I know there are a ton of books out there on this sorta thing.
I think it would be important to figure out a plan of developing a very good credit line for your llc. These are very important in retail being that you are usually purchasing large orders a couple times of year and then basically waiting for someone to come along. There should be a cpa or accountant in your area that would specialize in these types of retail accounts.
There are websites out there where you can say like" I want this website built w/these features, and people from india can bid on doing the job for you"
There are also companies like the Jay Group, that specialize in offering customer service and shipping of your product, and processing orders. I think you have to be rather large to but it might be something worth looking into. Procurement companies I think they are called.
But would Imagine if your are good w/ books I think the first step is learning about how retail works and handling the constant money flow. Retail stores involve a lot of accounting obv and Understanding the amount of risk involved in retail.
Hope my random thoughts and points make sense. I hope they were hopefull chance are you are more knowledgeable on the subject to begin w/. GL keep me posted.
pm for skype if you want to talk about this stuff, I def enjoy any talk regarding business. and business ideas.
My life's Dream: Own my own Hobby Store
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