Shop –Running a successful shop that sells anything from food stuff to cutleries, is not a hard task.
A shop is simply a room where you can buy and sell items of your own choice. One could choose to do retail or wholesale business depending on their choice.
Starting a wholesale shop may require a bit more of capital than a mere retail shop. Though all of them could be profitable depending on the location.
Plan to start
So, what are you going to start with in your preparation stages? First, evaluate what you have as an idea and the returns expected. Secondly, look at the customer availability and lastly capital you are expecting to pump into the enterprise.
Many people start business using borrowed loans. It is not new. As long as you are prepared to refund the money as agreed, you can borrow but consider the fact that loans come with extra repayment costs. In fact, it you can, avoid loans and just raise your own capital.
Now once you have paid the rent and fixed the counter and shelves, you will have to buy the stock which you must know how to sell per piece. Do the pricing of each item and, if possible, mark the prices on each item, for easy remembrance.
Where you are going to get your stock is equally important. Therefore, consider doing a thorough market research to find a suitable supplier. Suitability of a supplier depend on his prices and reliability.
Then, marking prices on items in your shop helps a lot so that, during first days in business, you do not make mistakes of selling some items at a loss. Remember, when customers start streaming into the shop, sometimes, you could be overwhelmed and tempted to sell a product at a loss. Avoid such rookie mistakes by minimizing the avoidable human errors.
How to talk to customers
Lastly, while serving your customers, make sure you do so in a polite manner so that they can tell your story out there.
A smile put on face when talking to a customer will cost you absolutely nothing; but can gain you millions of profits in referrals and return customers (retained customers).
In conclusion, outline your business type, know what to sell, location, pay rent, partition shelves and stores, acquire products and start business.
Always remember that your customer is your livelihood and making him or her happy will help stay you in business.
