Ponderings on business growth and capital requirements

[SumpinSpecial]

Hi Guys,
I'm a little bored in my day job at the moment and unable to work on my online shop, so I'm tossing around fantasies of how my shop may grow. I currently operate out of my home. I have an extremely limited amount of inventory that I keep at home (well-organized) and otherwise drop-ship stuff to my customers. I'm an online retailer of pet supplies.

At some point, I suspect in two or three years, I'm going to have to expand out of my house, stop doing the drop-shipping and maintain my own inventory. I'm already chafing at being unable to control my unboxing experience, and as mentioned in another thread here, drop-shipping distributors don't provide decent product photography required for online sales. So if I need to buy wholesale just to take pictures, I may as well hold all of my own inventory.

Luckily, there are tons of available warehouse spaces in my local area. I've been browsing listings when bored, for fun. I am thinking I should start small, about 1500 square feet of space. One "amenity" I haven't seen in any of the warehouse real estate listings is how the service with the post office might be set up. Would I have to ask the local post office (assume just for simplicity that I use USPS and not UPS or Fedex for now) to send a truck by my place once or twice a day? Would it need a contract?

If we're talking purely warehouse/distribution operations, is location much of a concern? (As opposed to a retail space where location is critical.)

What else will I need to know in a few years when I'm ready to start working on this growth seriously?

[SumpinSpecial]

Another thing I've been pondering, is that since I am a retailer rather than a distributor, maybe I should just move into a retail space instead of a warehouse. Retail spaces cost more, of course. But it might be good to have a brick and mortar sales channel as well as my online channel. Plus, since shoppers do prefer to be able to touch and see things for themselves rather than look at pictures, it would serve me well to set it up like a showroom/retail shop.

Opinions from other retailers here? Let's chat about this. I'm not emotionally invested in either idea yet, I'm just exploring ideas and doing way-in-advance research. (I'm a big time researcher.)

[Bobjob]

That's good question about the mail service, I don't know the answer.

You want the facility to be in a decent area (you don't want to get robbed). We have a office warehouse in a white trash part of our town. We've never had any trouble outside of the occasional stranger coming to the door. Our facility has an alarm. My friend owns a small hardware store with a small pet section and he says the pet stuff does very well.

My dog plays fetch, so I'm always trying new balls with her. I buy the trial versions locally, then if she likes them I purchase though Amazon. Something I learned the hard way. A tennis ball becomes rough after weeks of fetch and it acts like sandpaper to a dogs teeth. Either always use new tennis balls or use soft/rubber balls.