Moving a business to another town/city

[anonuk]

Thinking about moving to be closer to family. My family all live about 1.5-2hrs away and while it’s not far in the grand scheme of things, I’d like to be closer. My sister and her family have just moved back from New Zealand with kids the same ages as our kids, and my brother has kids we never get to see, so would like to do it for them as much as anything else.

That being said, our main source of income is our business (with the other being a house we rent out in the town we currently live), so we would have to move the business with us.

Most of our sales are online so moving wouldn’t really affect our customer base as such, as losing the local business we do have wouldn’t really make a lot of difference.

Our current premises is a 4,500sqft industrial unit that we’ve spent a fortune getting the way we want it (we had another £25k planned for the next year but that’s on hold now). We would likely need 2 or 3 lorry’s to move everything so no easy task, then there’s the house move as well and it starts to feel like a lot of hassle.

In terms of staff, they wouldn’t move with us as they have ties to our current area so we’d need to cover the costs of redundancy as well I presume.

I was just curious as to whether anyone here has ever moved a business and how it went? Did it affect sales in the end?

 

[Newchodge]

Thinking about moving to be closer to family. My family all live about 1.5-2hrs away and while it’s not far in the grand scheme of things, I’d like to be closer. My sister and her family have just moved back from New Zealand with kids the same ages as our kids, and my brother has kids we never get to see, so would like to do it for them as much as anything else.

That being said, our main source of income is our business (with the other being a house we rent out in the town we currently live), so we would have to move the business with us.

Most of our sales are online so moving wouldn’t really affect our customer base as such, as losing the local business we do have wouldn’t really make a lot of difference.

Our current premises is a 4,500sqft industrial unit that we’ve spent a fortune getting the way we want it (we had another £25k planned for the next year but that’s on hold now). We would likely need 2 or 3 lorry’s to move everything so no easy task, then there’s the house move as well and it starts to feel like a lot of hassle.

In terms of staff, they wouldn’t move with us as they have ties to our current area so we’d need to cover the costs of redundancy as well I presume.

I was just curious as to whether anyone here has ever moved a business and how it went? Did it affect sales in the end?

Decide what works for you. Whatever other people have done is irrelevant - every business is different.

Perhaps think very clearly about why you want to move now?

 

[japancool]

Does your business rely on local trade? I assume not.

 

[Mark T Jones]

I completely agree with @Newchodge - it's more an emotive decision than a practical one, so you need to make it yourself.

Though you do need to be aware of costs - and in reality, even an online business will suffer from business interpretation which people usually underestimate.

 

[MikeJ]

Do you need to be there for the place to operate? Is it feasible to buy/rent a small flat for you to live in a few nights per week, and move your main home?

 

[IanSuth]

Bit of a different scanario but has some salient points.

Just pre covid a colleagues brother was running a successful gardening & landscaping business. His son was having issues at school and starting to get in with the wrong crowd.

He came across a small farm in Wales and thought the obvious solution was to move, his wife move her dog grooming business to a farm building, they do up and rent the other buildings out to small businesses and a holiday let and he drive up and stay with his mum initially to service existing clients whilst he grew new ones in wales gradually reducing days here and increasing time there. He could do it with the equity he had in his house in Berkshire and his son could start again out in the country.

Even ignoring the COVID disruption - it has not worked out.

What he could charge here is not what he can charge in Wales and customers are MUCH harder to find for a gardening business in rural Wales than Urban Reading. Same for dog grooming/walking. Whilst they did up the outbuildings during lockdown no-one really wants to rent a holiday bedsit in a yard with a dog groomers and industrial lockups (even empty) in the middle of nowhere they want pretty and/or close to interesting things to do.

So he is spending 4 days/ 3 nights a week in Berkshire trying to keep his current customers and survive - he also doesnt see his son much who is struggling as he doesnt speak Welsh (which the local kids switch to as soon as he approaches) so just feels isolated and a fish out of water

Do you research, double check it, do it again and get someone else to give a view before you make a hard to reverse decision with your business

 

[NickGrogan]

How often do you come into the office?
How often do you need to come into the office?

If you're only needed once a week then moving house and not the business seems the easiest way.

Is the business big enough to pay a manager and you can direct from home, come into the office once a month or less?

 

[Shopclicks]

I don't know if this is a suitable solution for you and your circumstance.

A client of mine who runs an online only business, never sees his stock. He buys and has the stock sent straight to a fulfillment warehouse. His orders are checked and sent to the warehouse each day and he receives a daily update on stock levels and deliveries.

He goes to the warehouses occasionally to check the condition of the stock.

He also has other products dropshipped.

Have you looked at fulfillment warehouses as an option?

 

[IanSuth]

How often do you come into the office?
How often do you need to come into the office?

If you're only needed once a week then moving house and not the business seems the easiest way.

Is the business big enough to pay a manager and you can direct from home, come into the office once a month or less?

Or even better - hire a manager to keep old site going and try and recreate in new part of the country as a 2nd branch using the economy of scale of shared back office functions

 

[Socio South West]

There is never going to be a correct answer to this question, but whatever you commit to in the end, don't look back with a 'could of, should of. would have' mindset.

You have to prioritise the importance of the stability of your business vs your commitment to family life,

Is there anything to say that your sister is going to settle in the area you propose to move to? It would be a real disaster if you moved everything to be near them and then they moved away.

You use the words 'would like to do it for them' - what you are contemplating doing is putting yourself through a stack of stress, upheaval and disruption to do this - Can you reorganise your lifestyle a bit maybe to cover reasonably frequent trips to visit them?

There's also a strong emphasis on kids in your words.... Kids soon grow up and want to go off on their own adventures: Working with French holiday property owners, a typical scenario is for buyers to be a 2+2 or 3 family with young children... fast forward 10 or 12 years and teenagers don't want to be dragged off to France yet again so the property gets sold. The same will come to pass with your kids, and your nephews and nieces.

Loads of other points and scenarios - take your time and consider well. Best of luck!

 

[anonuk]

Apologies, I’ve not been on recently to respond to the questions raised.

The business isn’t really big enough to employ a manager unfortunately. My wife and I both work full time for the business, and are quite hands on so if we removed ourselves, we’d have to employ two more people (at more than we get paid) to do the work we do.

With regards to fulfilment warehouses, we have looked at that as a fulfilment solution in the past, but the main issue is we manufacture many of our products to order, and have about 1400 different skus, many of which share core components, so if we had to manufacture stock of all 1400 skus to send to a fulfilment warehouse, it would be much more expensive than the way we currently do things.

We did look at it for the more popular skus that sell 100+ units a month but we decided it wasn’t worthwhile in the end.

 

[MOIC]

I would keep the business in situ and have weekends away as a family. . . . Until kids have outgrown the ‘family’ thing.

You sister’s family can also visit you during weekends, if you/they want a closer relationship.

I understand the attraction of being close to family, but it can also be good to keep a distance, so you are fully involved in your business, which seems to be the priority.

Moving your warehouse, lock stock & barrel, and to replicate the same in a new location will have its negative points and will take 6-12 months to adjust.

Only you know the value and benefits to your family of upping sticks.

It won’t be easy.

 

[Waddy]

Can you move somewhere half way between the two?

 

[skaracay]

This is a huge change in your life and very costly. I'd move my house.