Research before starting a business

[Benjamin88]

Hi all,

I am wanting to start a store selling vintage motorcycle riding gear, clothing, parts. Eventually I would like I build up to actually selling refurbished/custom motorcycles that I would be building on site along with making modifications to customer bikes and installing parts we sell but I do not want to get into a repair business.

My main questions before I dive into really persueing this is:

1. It is a select market, is there information out there or how would I go about researching and getting information to know how well I may or may not do. There are no other local businesses that specialize in this type of niche.

2. If I were to build motorcycles off site but sell them in the store, would there be anything conflicting or illegal since I'm not a business supplying to bikes to my store?

3. My current job has me traveling the country as a service tech and I'm usually gone mon to fri. I have 2 other people that would be interested in going into business together but they also work the average mon to fri 8-5 job. Would starting the store part time in the afternoons and weekends hurt the business too much. We don't really want to quit our day job and have this fail on us.


Thanks all!

[Fulcrum]

1 & 3. You're going to have to make a choice here I think. You may be able to start out small on evenings and weekends, but this may be the type of business that won't truly shine until you can go at it full time. Also, I do know of custom car shops that have vehicles shipped to them from across North America due to their reputation of quality service.

2. talk to a competent business lawyer in your area who is familiar with the type of business you are proposing.

[Daniel Arbizu]

May I suggest trying to sell your bikes online first. You can save on overhead, see if it is really going to be profitable, and expand your market reach. You can get your own website or just start using already established
classified sites or even eBay. If you do have your own website you can easily get customers using Google Adwords or Bing Ads, which target people who are already looking to buy your product.

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[Benjamin88]

Well I would actually like to do that soon. The main reason for the store front is some of the big suppliers require you to have an actual showroom before they will let you buy from them. I would like to have certain products on a web store and I predict that most of the custom bike sales will be from online buyers.

The real big picture for me is to have a full custom shop and store so I can quit the day job.