Am just trying to work out all costs involved, got the following:
Rent payed in advance plus rates
Stock Costs
Shop Fittings and Fitting of Shop
Till with inventory system
Barcode Security System
Bags and Promotional Material
Labour Costs for Staff
Can anyone think of anything else, contribute all other costs and can build up a picture and cost it all out! Cheers pals.
I have not read all the other posts...so some might have been said before. I own a couple of shops and have run many.
Comunications (tel + deposit, small website, PO Box)
Foreget the till. Use a nice POS system on a secondhand pc (any p3 will work) with a draw and thermal, receipt printer. I use
http://www.denverresearch.com/POS/posRest.shtml
looked at many free ones, but at a fairly small cost, this works well. Barcoding everything is a mission of note! For a smallish shop with small runs (I have about 2000 products) I would suggest a 2 line price marker, with the top line being the item code. Just start at 001 and keep on trucking up to 999999. Much, much easier than try to print barcodes. i dislike samsung thermals...epson seems to work well.
A small budget for a few local adds would be good - some full color flyers, also some quality business cards.
Depending on what you are selling a tag security system could be a usless expenss. Maybe have an an extra staff member. I used to run a shop on Oxford street that had some pretty expensive jackets that became "in" with the hip-hop crowd. It was a magnet for thieves, but with decent staff, it was fairly rare to have things nicked. I am from SA, so we got pretty heavy on thieves...it probably helped.
Banking and visa fees. You might need a deposit for the speed point.
Some fees will be one offs like shop fitting, pc ect.
Other fee's will be monthly, rent, wages, electricity. Try have at least 3 months of the monthly bills in the bank, but preferably 6 mnths.
Whatever stock you sell reinvest it in stock
Do not take any money out the bussiness for the first year.
