Advice on starting a retail business

[JBGoodsMusic]

Hello!

I'm looking to start a business. Perhaps I'm a little a head of myself though, let me introduce myself. My name is John Johnson, I'm 22 years old. I have a small amount of business experience, I was a manager at some local restaurant chains. I know, it's not much, but it's what I have. Either way, it taught me the in's and out's of some of the more day to day exercises, especially when it came to finances. In addition, it put me in the position of being able to watch and experienced and successful businessman.

Anyways, without rambling too much more, I'll be blunt. I want any and all advice I can get. Criticism is welcomed, provided it's constructive.

The business I plan on starting (and almost already have) is a Music Instrument Retail business. While I would, one day, like to have a physical storefront, right now it's a completely "from home" type deal. At the moment, I basically "flip" instruments. Buy old or in less than stellar shape instrument, fix them up, and then re-sell them. My plan has always been to do this for several years, putting all the money made to the side, as well as adding what money I can from my current day job into the pile. After five years or so, I hope to have enough to start the actual physical store front.

Now, as I said, any advice is more than welcome, right now my main concerns are marketing on a budget, and adding to my start up finances in any way I can. Any advice?

[Wozcreative]

As with any business you should develop a brand for yourself. Name, logo, Website. Package your instruments in a unique but cost effective way. Do a lot of online marketing, if you are creative do some "custom" instruments with cool engravings or paint jobs and sell them on some websites like etsy, ebay, etc.. these will give you an "in" if you create some strong pieces and people may buy your other generic stuff as well. Get business cards, visit shows and network with people. Get bands to use your instruments and maybe offer a "give-away" type deal. Many options but you will have to figure out what is best and what will bring the best ROI.

[nealrm]

My suggest is that you start this as a part time sideline business. Have a day that will make sure that you have food, shelter and clothing. Use any extra to build the business. This will also give you income while you are building your brand and getting your SEO in place. Once you think you business is up and running. Start putting your salary in saving and only living on the income from the business. If your bank accounts are still holding steady in a year, then quite the day job (be sure in remove taxes from the balance). Keep the saving to one side for a rainy day.

[huggytree]

sounds like your business is going to be Online for now..

its not a bad idea.....part time FOR SURE......until it gets going....its a perfect part time job

get a website, post tons of photo's of each product.....and give a 30 day money back guarantee

it will work

you may never need to open up a brick and mortar store

[Pack-Secure]

As I was a musician in my earlier days, this sounds like an wonderful idea for a company. "Bring back to life instruments that still have life in them."

Get as many testimonials as possible is the best advice in this type of business I could give you. People want to know that you know what you are doing.

Good luck and "play on".

Some interesting names that are available are "PlayOnInstruments" "PlayOnMusic" "PlayAgainMusic" "PlayAgainInstruments". Just some ideas that crossed my mind.

[fayt]

First of all you need to do some research and find out what other music repair shops are in the area. Next you need to look at retail music shops and see if they offer repairs (most seem to). Next you can buy a guitar for $200 or electric for $400 - $600. So when you do repairs how much are you making? $25 - $100 total?
Fixing up old ones and reselling, you won't make a big profit unless it's a rare antique.

The only way I can see this being profitable for you is to contract with colleges, schools, etc. Any place with a bunch of music equipment and do their repairs.

Other than that, don't expect to get rich off it.

However if you are in a major city like New York City or Washington D.C. then it can be profitable. But smaller towns, no. Not likely.

[MJKBIZ]

Hi I hope the following will be helpful.

1. Think about the purpose of your business, why you want to start a business.
2. Continue to do research on different instruments, how they work, different cheaper yet effective ways to fix different problems with instruments
3. If you don't have one, find a mentor who is in the same business and try to learn from them. Or you can find a mentor at organizations such as Score.org and see if there mentors can offer additional advise. I already have one business going but I plan on starting another and I'm going to use Score services.
4. Come up with a business plan. You can google "business plan" to find different templates that can act as a guide.
5. Include in your business plan your reason for start a business, your possible competition, marketing strategies, how big you want your business, how many employees you will need and what type of employees you will need. Also figure out who your target market will be.
6. As far as figuring out your marketing budget, shop around for different marketing companies that will post your business online and see how much each of them charges and compare them. Also you can market for free on social media websites like facebook and twitter
7. Also keep on adding whatever money you can to your savings account and talk to your local banker about any business loans (if you believe you will need them). Make sure you find out the time you will have to pay the loans back and the interest. Also another way to cut cost is to find a business partner or partners that can help finance your business.
8. Additional ways to market could be word to mouth, business cards, flyers (which you can create for free in Microsoft word, besides the cost of ink and paper), Online advertising using websites such as google and yahoo. You can also make brochures, take before and after pictures of the instruments you fix so individual can see your work. If you are a music major for example or if you just have an interest in music, try to build a relationship with the music teachers at your local schools. They may have plenty of intruments that they or someone they know owes that may need repair.

Remember to keep an open mind. The market is out there, their are people in need of your services, you just have to figure out who they are and how to provide the service better than your competition.

I hope this helps and good luck!

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[JBGoodsMusic]

Hello

Thanks for all the input, it really is appreciated. Some are things I've already done/thought about, but more are ideas that I haven't had and am glad to try. As I said before, this is a very long term plan, I do not plan on having a brick and mortar store (if, as one poster pointed out, I need/want one) for at least five years, barring an unexpected major success.

I do already have the more well known "free" advertising, ie facebook, twitter, ect. I was wondering, are there any not so well known free or extremely cheap ways to advertise?

Also, I forgot to add this into my original post, some geographical information. The town I live in is probably the most musical town in the state, and on top of which, the local university is a world known music school, and there are always new and old musicians coming to town. This is one reason I moved here, the simple opportunity. The local music stores have something of a poor reputation, the ones who have good product have horrible service, and the ones with good service have less than stellar products. I'd like to bridge that gap, more or less.

Thanks again for the input!

[KennethT]

Hi John,

First of all congratulations, even though it is still in infancy having the courage to start out is more than most. To give you a little background, before I started my own Digital agency in Internet, Social Media Marketing and SEO, I actually started and ran a family Online retail business for 4 years. Put it this way, I learned the hard way and blew nearly 100k just on Google and Yahoo pay per Click advertising just in the FIRST year. Damn!

You are doing the right thing right now by running business from home, Saving and having a part time job.

Physical storefronts are nice, but the reality is that most are under a lot of pressure from online retailers and space is always expensive. However there are still many that are successful. The key in this day and even more so for the future is that you have not only a brick and mortar store, but also an ONLINE presence. That is NOT an option it is a must.

I would suggest you explore the following strategy. Most of the retail clients I deal with now on a daily basis are trying to play catch up and do this now because they have no or little online presence and are now feeling the pressure.

Build an online presence. How? Well for your type of business, get an eBay store for one if you don't already have one. Start selling on eBay and getting your "brand" out there. Start a blog for free. Wordpress is free and you can create a basic site in a couple of hours. Start blogging consistently. Start a Facebook page, Twitter and LinkedIn page too. Ideally you start a YouTube account and start uploading videos of your work / product too.

Why are you doing this? Because online success is all about 2 things. 1.) Traffic and 2.) conversion. Traffic doesn't come overnight and doesn't come from one source, but many. That is why you should set up all those above "channels" to get traffic -AND THEY ARE ALL FREE - apart from eBay of course. Overtime when you are ready to launch your retail store you will already have built up 4-5 years of online traffic that generates INCOME and offsets pressure to rely on walk in traffic with a brick and mortar store.

Conversion is another subject, but essentially you need to start capturing peoples email addresses and BUILD A LIST.

You can PM me at anytime, as I did the above on my own business and do it everyday with other Main Street businesses. Good Luck.

Kenneth