93gsxturbo said:Can you sell beer and beverages? 5 dollar beers will have a lot better margins than anything else.
Yes and yes eventually. I can start with sodas and stuff and get a beer only license eventually. The hard part with that is you have to have "21+ hours" only to sell the beer.
In reply to Javelin :
Make sure to do your own vending. ALl of our locations we own the vending, and it is much better. We are averaging 6500$ a month gross on 2500 sq feet stores, in vending monthly.
For commercial property rental make sure you understand the term Triple Net Lease or NNN
Short answer: Though you are just a renter, you pay for new air conditioner if needed. You pay for parking lot repave if needed. You pay property tax and building insurance.
I would really argue that one should negotiate a gross lease. Of all our rentals, we only pay NNN on one. Given commercial spaces are empty these days, I am negotiating a lease right now (I texted this to Javelin on the phone), the power is with the renter.
I asked for 1 year rent abatement, 2 brand new AC. 20 year lease with 2 5 year options, and 2% yearly cap. Landlord agreed to all my demands, but a 7 month rent abatement. This is for a 9800sq feet space. Asking price was $4.25 a sq/feet. Negotiated to a $3.17 a sq feet.
We have stand alone rentals, where landlord wants me to take care of parking lot, which is fine. But I don't want to be responsible for roofing etc.
All the stuff that did not sell that is sitting in the back corner and dusty is lost capital
Sell it off even half price and get some money back to buy product you can turn over ,
Yes , I am really bad at that :(
mr2s2000elise said:In reply to Javelin :
Make sure to do your own vending. ALl of our locations we own the vending, and it is much better. We are averaging 6500$ a month gross on 2500 sq feet stores, in vending monthly.
Amen. Food and bevvy is where the money is in this sort of idea if you are doing game nights/build nights/test n tune. At the very least its low risk, low overhead, and high margin. Partner up with a local pizza place and get a cut of any zaa sales to your address. With the 21+ thing, can you do carry-ins from a separate establishment the way some dry strip clubs work? (The strip club is dry and allows carry-ins. The bar next door is not a strip club. There is an interior door between the two establishments so you do not have to have open intoxicants in public)
I once had the wild idea to have an auto parts store/tavern/ in the same footprint. Back in the day when core charges were a thing. Basically we could pay you back in cash for your core charge OR +20% (or whatever) for credit at the tavern. Figured it would be a perfect business. To the purchaser, the money is already gone on the core charge. If I can get it back in a credit to a decent tavern and get a burger and a beer with lunch and be on my way, thats a win for me since I am gonna spend it anyway.
93gsxturbo said:mr2s2000elise said:In reply to Javelin :
Make sure to do your own vending. ALl of our locations we own the vending, and it is much better. We are averaging 6500$ a month gross on 2500 sq feet stores, in vending monthly.
Amen. Food and bevvy is where the money is in this sort of idea if you are doing game nights/build nights/test n tune. At the very least its low risk, low overhead, and high margin. Partner up with a local pizza place and get a cut of any zaa sales to your address. With the 21+ thing, can you do carry-ins from a separate establishment the way some dry strip clubs work? (The strip club is dry and allows carry-ins. The bar next door is not a strip club. There is an interior door between the two establishments so you do not have to have open intoxicants in public)
I once had the wild idea to have an auto parts store/tavern/ in the same footprint. Back in the day when core charges were a thing. Basically we could pay you back in cash for your core charge OR +20% (or whatever) for credit at the tavern. Figured it would be a perfect business. To the purchaser, the money is already gone on the core charge. If I can get it back in a credit to a decent tavern and get a burger and a beer with lunch and be on my way, thats a win for me since I am gonna spend it anyway.
Very well said. Another thing (maybe doesn't apply to toy stores - I have no idea) but to cross your business over.
For example - we have coin laundries. We also have airbnb. Thus at my airbnb monthly get together I meet many other owners. They area always talking about cleaning/cleaning people/maintenance.
I offered my coin laundry stores as fluff and fold for them. We will deliver. We started with 7 airbnb customers. Commercial accounts are great. We have now 175+ airbnb we do fluff and fold for.
Similarly, we have hotels in Montana. We have no coin laundry there. I have contracted with the local coin laundry owner to get discounted fluff and fold for all 3 of our hotel properties. That saves our per room cost for cleaning and its cheaper for them to do it for me than paying hotel cleaning crew to do it.
If you can cross over business, you can network, talk, always you will learn something, and find people with common threads, and many ideas.
I know little about Hobby shops except that most I've seen locally have closed, I'd recommend a bunch of research on your area.
And as always with any business, find a niche that no one else does. The best way to do business is with no competition. I don't know exactly what that means in the Hobby world but I highly recommend it
OK so here is another wildcard idea for a business. A bit divergent but potentially very low overhead and high margin.
Part out appliances - just the electronics.
I would start with Ebay, and then eventually move on to an actual web site. A small storefront with just a counter service would be nice for local will-call. I know I would drive an hour or 2 for a part I could get same-day.
Personal experience - when my old wash machine died, I pulled the boards out of it aside from the one I had identified as bad - had burned traces. I sold all those boards and switches on Ebay and netted around $300. My new wash machine was only $500. When my dishwasher died, I pulled all the electronics out of it and did the same thing. It took about a year to get it all sold, but in the end cleared around $200 with really no investment besides 10 minutes of disassembly and listing time and about 1 square foot of shelf space in the basement.
I noodled something along these lines a long time ago as a retirement activity. What I had in mind was a building divided into four sub-stores: slot cars, T-shirts, comic books, wargaming. A sub-sub business with the slot cars was some sort of simple food function--e.g. pulled meat sandwiches, soda & chips. My thought was to find the local purveyors of those products and hit them with the suggestion of shared footprint so as to give your customers more than one reason to come to your place of business. Maybe you could do R/C stuff in the parking lot on Sundays (or whatever the slowest day of the week is). If I did slot cars, it seemed to me that you might see benefit in designing a modular track that could be reconfigured every three or four months so the track wouldn't become "stale". Try to think of crossover activities and develop a decent website emphasizing your clientele as micro-cultures.
If you decide to do it, you should let The Hive know so we might buy shares of ownership like crowdsourcing. I'd risk a hundred on something like that...
RevRico said:ProDarwin said:
Another thing that comes to mind is: 3d printers, home level laser cutters, vinyl cutters, basically DIY grade fab tools. There is a decent overlap between them and other hobby people as well... one of the common usages for them is to create figurines/etc. It could be an interesting market to serve - most of those items have no physical storefront but could benefit from one.
Makerspaces tend to cover that niche, but as far as actually retail selling them? Good luck getting lower prices than already exist online and still turning a profit.
right, that problem extends to almost anything offered in a hobby shop.
Just another anecdote here but our Hobby Town in Lubbock just completed a very successful move/upgrade in facilities. The news story lists the owners and they're super nice people. Get in touch and see what they're doing. It's working well. The store is always busy after work and on weekends.
I used to own a neat corner retail building in a historic downtown. It was 2 rental spaces and a big empty upstairs. High visibility and good traffic count. I didn't have a business I could put in it, and couldn't afford to keep it. I sold it to a wealthy friend who was seriously into railroad and hobby stuff and wanted to open a hobby shop. He had no startup capital issues- he had plenty of money.
He put in a fantastic hobby shop. It was enough to make anyone jealous.
His son wanted to be involved, so he let him develop an online component to the business. Same products as the retail store.
Two years later, they closed the walk-in retail building. The online was doing too good to justify keeping the building going.
Not sure what this means to you, other than make sure to not overlook online. If you do it well, you may never need a building (or the associated costs).
There is a certain romanticism to a great old school hobby shop. But don't let it seduce you into making bad business decisions.
ProDarwin said:Another thing that comes to mind is: 3d printers, home level laser cutters, vinyl cutters, basically DIY grade fab tools. There is a decent overlap between them and other hobby people as well... one of the common usages for them is to create figurines/etc. It could be an interesting market to serve - most of those items have no physical storefront but could benefit from one.
This could be another aspect for the business. Have a couple 3d printers and a good laser cutter/etcher for people to make their own projects. The makerspace I'm involved with has 4 lasers and a couple banks of 3d printers that are all kept busy, they even have a class on making miniture figurines.
I have been in business all my life and my success has come from selling people things that they need, rather than things that they want. So my suggestion would be to find an item or items that people need and provide them quicker, cheaper, higher quality or with better customer service than everyone else and you will do okay. And not only that but when the fad has run its course, or the economy starts to slip and people save their money for things that they need your business stands a better chance of weathering the slow years.
Along the idea of 3D printing... if your are competent in doing it, maybe offer in-store lessons. Some folks lack the patience to deal with the DIY learning curve and will pay for someone to hold their hand and show them the ropes.
This may apply to any number of modeling tasks. Like how to get really good paint jobs.
Another thing to consider-
The filthy casual. One of the biggest things I see, and the things that will keep someone like me out of the store and keep my wallet elsewhere is the intimidation factor. I've run into it on repeated occasions where you attempt to get into a fairly niche hobby like tabletop gaming (flavor to be determined by user ) and you absolutely get E36 M3housed by some neckbeard that doesn't think my type is good enough to share his BO. How do you approach that? There's plenty of little ones coming up that have interest in things like orcs and pokemon that would love to learn the games in a more conducive environment- is that something you could provide? A trainers gym for up and coming trainers, low cost tournaments, etc- could be a great way to get butts in seats and build your own community without relying on having one there to begin with.
bearmtnmartin (Forum Supporter) said:I have been in business all my life and my success has come from selling people things that they need, rather than things that they want. So my suggestion would be to find an item or items that people need and provide them quicker, cheaper, higher quality or with better customer service than everyone else and you will do okay. And not only that but when the fad has run its course, or the economy starts to slip and people save their money for things that they need your business stands a better chance of weathering the slow years.
This is what I did. I don't regret it. The economic blips are noticeable, but with 90% of my business being medical, they aren't cripplingly so.
But I'd much rather be running a hobby shop. I might have to revisit that in 8-10 years.
Being the cheapest guy in town is a race to nowhere, being the best guy in town is a race to profits.
I'd start off online-only. Go with Shopify. Keep the site fairly simple, don't get addicted to add-ons and apps. They've got some good programs to help with shipping etc and their prices are really reasonable.
Invest in a small light box and a decent camera, and make your pictures really good. Watermark them to keep them from being stolen (I think Shopify might have the ability to do this automatically) and use quality descriptions and quality photos to set yourself apart. You probably already know this from eBay selling.
Let that get things rolling as you start looking for your real world storefront. It may never happen, but the online store can build a rep and bring in some reasonable income as you get it together. For example, we have a local Lego reseller with a storefront that mostly consists of boxes on the shelves and a big bin of random Lego parts you can sift through and buy by the pound. Their real business is cataloging and reselling bricks online, but having the storefront brings in the casuals like me who would otherwise be having stuff shipped in from lord knows where.
About the 3D printers - I'm on a FB group for the Anker M5 printer. Almost EVERYTHING that anyone is printing is some sort of figurine. I'm here printing car parts and things to display wheels at shows, everyone else is doing dragons. Figure out how to bolt that on and there's definitely a demand.
Steve_Jones said:Being the cheapest guy in town is a race to nowhere, being the best guy in town is a race to profits.
This is huge and great advice.
I told someone once that being the cheapest means you have to cut corners , which means I'm not happy, you are not happy and that's just stupid.
Cheapest usually means the most expensive in my business too
Also remember there are 2 Golden rules, not 1.
Everyone says golden rule #1 is "the customer is always right". That is 100% correct, but You need to learn #2
They don't all have to be your customer. Let them be "right" somewhere else.
J-man,
when will those BRE slot car track sets be in stock?
Datsun310Guy said:J-man,
when will those BRE slot car track sets be in stock?
You know, I was thinking about that. Let me reach out to the manufacturer and see if I can get an account set up.
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