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If you took a stroll through the shopping paradise that is Prince Street in downtown Manhattan, you’ll come across two different camps of brick-and-mortar locations: need-have stores and Pretty-have stores. If you are smack in the middle of the bustling SoHo neighborhood, you are more prone to find the latter, with sky-high real estate prices that suit tenants like Apple and Louis Vuitton – firms that might do well even if they didn’t have Tam outposts. But go a few blocks east and you may land in Nolita, a cute, hip neighborhood with a little more to do. In many cases, Nolita is the land of must-have stores – including us Heels.
In the process of retail development, the distinction between must-have and must-have products is crucial. This is how we built our company 23 profitable stores since my co-founder Lisa Bubber and I first founded Studs — the retail and e-commerce brand that redefined the ear piercing experience — in 2019. Because, because it seems, there is no such thing as a business built on ear piercing without physical space to perform the piercing itself. Here are three pieces of advice I give to any recent entrepreneur who desires to grow their business and desires to know if a physical store is right for them.
1. Ask yourself a query This query
As an entrepreneur, my biggest piece of advice to other business owners seeking to expand their retail footprint is to begin by asking yourself one query: Why? In our case, we knew we wanted stores attributable to the nature of our business. Without them, we won’t accomplish our mission – that is why you will find us in Nolita, not SoHo – and in 23 other locations across the country.
In other words, ask yourself: What is the purpose of your store and how does it fit into the broader context of your business?
For some firms, a nice store can still be extremely essential to the overall value proposition. Stores can offer much greater than just transactions. Physical stores can offer their customers an experience that supports their overarching brand identity. Other stores may simply be a destination, a home for community gatherings that support the brand’s mission.
2. Take care of your funds
If you must have a store in a practical sense, you have to have the option to afford it. And if you really want a store, take care of your funds. Ask yourself the following questions:
- What can I afford?
- How much product can I expect?
- How many people do I would like to have in the building to sell the product?
- And finally, how do you make enough money to pay the rent and hopefully have more?
The decision-making process becomes very different for firms that simply need to have a store – but the store is not vital for the company’s profits. Let’s take a dynamic cosmetics retailer that sees its brick-and-mortar offerings as an extension of its community-building strategy: How to design experience Does this make it more attractive for consumers to take trip of their busy day to go to the store in person and enter the brand’s world, somewhat than simply buying the product online?
In Studies and for many other service businesses, this pondering is still paramount, but we also need our stores to be financially sustainable. Return on investment becomes a much more essential piece of the puzzle.
3. No detail ought to be neglected
So you have already identified the “why” of your retail expansion and how you may have the option to afford it in the first place. My third and final piece of advice concerns your business model. Every detail of your business model will have an impact, and the more you study and refine your business in the early stages, the easier it can be to scale.
In the early days of Studs, we spent a lot of time answering all sorts of nitty-gritty questions. No detail might be neglected. How do we price the product? How many people will work in the store and how will they be paid in a competitive market? What are the store opening hours? All these decisions contribute to the store’s economics, which – spoiler alert – can and can be they alter radically from district to district, from city to city, from state to state. Analyzing the economics early on, in the absolute smallest detail, will make the day-to-day running of your store much smoother.
Looking ahead, I expect to see more must-have stores in general, but that definitely does not imply must-have stores will disappear. Owning any retail location is labor, and it doesn’t matter what type of store it is. But these three suggestions make the process a little easier to navigate, especially when you are just starting out.