Would you open a shop? Should I?

[Lilyofthefields]

Just that really.

I have an idea and a place in mind but I don't even know what questions I should be asking, let alone the answers.

I have zero experience of running a shop or business, although I briefly worked part time in a petrol station / village shop back in the 90s. I don't really know where to start.

I am 39, work part time for £42k, have no kids, no mortgage and no purpose in life.

If you earn so much working part time, is there a reason why you can't/don't work full time now? Setting up your own business will leave you very little on the short term and by 24/7.
Do you have money saved as a back up?

Saw one of these shops on TV recently. Can't remember if it was maybe Eat Well for Less? Sorry. Then shortly after that I went to visit Sheffield University and there was one inside their university buildings, so may be worth checking that out since student clientele mentioned.

Personally, I am confused as to why PPs are talking about your customers buying in bulk. Isn't the whole idea of shopping in zero waste shops yes reduce packaging but ONLY BUYING WHAT YOU NEED so therefore I'd be using your scales to buy my recipe's requirement of almond flour and chia seeds for my healthy loaf bar - if I wanted a large quantity I'd use the same packaging and carbon footprint as was required to get to your pristine dispensers in the first place so would buy online for best price. Or am I missing something?

Another one here wondering what you're doing part time for £42K please?

Is it this sort of shop?
www.scoopawayhealthfoods.co.uk/

If so this has been there for years but it's in a quite affluent middle class liberal green area alongside artisanal bakers etc.

I really wouldn’t OP, I own a small artisan style shop( bakery actually) and you can’t even imagine HOW much work it is. 100 hour weeks, (no joke!) barely making minimum wage if your lucky, hidden costs that eat away at your profit, a huge amount of responsibility, business rates, waste removal, staff, staff holidays, stock, ordering stock, health & safety, dealing with staff, (the hardest bit!) no stress free holidays, covering shifts, parking permits, shitty customers, and potentially losing it all. The demographics don’t sound great and no parking isn’t Ideal. Just bear in mind a business is deemed successful if you keep .10p off of every £1.00 you take. What are your forecasts like? And when you do your forecasting, half the amount you “think “ you’ll take because that will be the most accurate forecast!?

Don’t give up on your idea based on a few MN posts! It does sound like a great idea, and they are becoming more popular. But I do agree that sort of plastic-free shop needs a particular demographic, where people are prepared to pay more for the ideology.

I think the idea of a market stall or a van is a great idea, to test out your idea, make connections with suppliers and other retailers at a much lower initial outlay. You could gain lots of experience from that at a lower risk and build up your business from there. You could even do it alongside your PT job for a while.

4 years ago I left a public sector career if been working in for 2 decades to run my own business. Not a shop, but still with premises and staff and overheads. It wa scary as hell, handing my notice in, but I’ve not looked back. You can’t throw the towel in when things look rough, I’d say to stay in business one of the key skills is the ability to step back and think outside the box. So if sales aren’t going well, identify the issue and address it? Or diversify? So doing cooking workshops or something to bring in income and expand business.

One thing the scoop shops don’t seem to cater for is allergies.
With a seed and nut allergy in our household it would be a big risk to shop in these places because of the contamination risks.

Don't do it OP.

I own a shop - have done for 7 years - and am slowly winding it down. (If you advance search my user name you will see that I have posted on threads about high streets etc before).

This is going to sound horribly negative, but this is my experience talking! Here goes.

Your idea is lovely, but you say you have a high student population. They will only be in your town for probably 35 weeks of the year. They are also notoriously tight with money as they don't have any!

Pensioners are very tight with money as they are terrified of not having enough to fund their care when they are older.

Young families talk the talk but when it comes down to it they go and shop in Primark and Aldi, not in the independents.

People bang on and on about how they want a thriving independent high street but when the chips are down, people want the cheapest option. The cheapest option usually means the smallest possible markup for the retailer.

You say you earn £42k part-time. You will not earn anything like this amount with your idea. You cannot run a shop on a part-time basis; at the bare minimum you need to be open Monday-Saturday (you could possibly be closed on a Monday or a Wednesday but if people come to your shop and you're closed, they won't come back). So many times Ive read on here the fact that people don't shop in independents because they're not open in the evenings or on Sundays....

The actual costs you will incur will be:

• Rent
• Business rates (you can find the rateable value on the letting agent's details - then you can cross-reference this on your local council website to find out what the actual business rates will be)
• Refuse collection (businesses have to pay separately for this)
• utilities (these are charged at higher rates than residential accounts) - electricity, water, sewerage, internet, phone...
• Possibly maintenance for your premises - many business leases are what is called partially repairing or fully repairing leases. Google these. You will be shocked
• depending on where you are, there may be other tariffs/taxes to pay to your council based on your rateable value or your turnover - do you have a BID (Business Improvement District) that you'd need to pay in to?
• insurance - buildings/contents/public liability / employers liability
• staff costs - wages, pension * these are huge even if you're just paying minimum wage *
• accountant / payroll (I do my own book keeping but I pay an accountant to file my tax return)
• stock
• shop fittings, equipment etc
• marketing costs - you'll either need to spend hours and hours per week on instagram and facebook, or pay someone to do it for you - plus possibly flyers, advertising in local magazine etc
• website
• tax and national insurance

Once you've factored in all the above, you then have your profit, and this is where you can pay yourself your own wages (that is, if you're a sole trader. If you register as a limited company, it will be different and you will probably take dividends and then pay tax afterwards). The most important piece of advice I was ever given was by my accountant who said "don't forget to value your own time adequately"

You will face constant criticism from customers who walk into your shop and don't like what you're doing/selling. You will need to be really nice on all your local facebook groups and not disagree publicly with anyone. You will need to be really nice to the local business groups / community interest groups / every man and his dog in order not to get any bad reviews on social media. You will end up working many many hours per week and earning about £1 per hour after all your costs are covered.

You work part time for £42k. Enjoy it!!!!!

I don't own, but manage, a small independent and unfortunately I have to agree with everything @MrsSpenserGregson has posted.

Unfortunately the high street is in decline, people just don't spend the money they used to. My shop will be closing after Christmas, after 20+ years of trading.

Blimey MrsSpencerGregson, that sounds so hard. I also can never understand why anyone would run a small shop. Maybe a cafe - or creperie type place? They seem extremely popular with students and those wanting to eat out on lower incomes.

OP, could you run a niche version of your shop, say focusing on pet food, for example? You could be out on an industrial estate so you'd have loads of parking, and customers can buy what they need and have the car for bulk buying. Depends if that's a market you know about.

Hi OP, I had an idea recently about a scoop type shop but a mobile one going around residential areas, villages etc. I googled it and found there were a group of mums who had set up such a business, I can't remember exactly but it was somewhere south, possibly Devon. For me personally living rurally that would be an amazing service to have and I would definitely use it. You could also have set delivery times that could work around your current part time work so you wouldn't lose that security initially.

You wouldn't have the overheads of having a business premises although you would have costs of Van, tax, insurance and I guess you might need a food hygiene rating from the council.

I would love to set something like this up if I had the capital. The problem I find with scoop shops is that they don't usually have parking close by which puts me off. There seems to be one of these shops popping up in every town around here at the moment.

Good luck whatever you decide to do.

The sad reality is that as and when the small traders develop the market sufficiently, the big chains will introduce/extend their range of loose produce and knock most of the independents out the game.

The sad reality is that as and when the small traders develop the market sufficiently, the big chains will introduce/extend their range of loose produce and knock most of the independents out the game.

Yes, just like happened with organic produce.

Obviously the overall effect for the world is good, but not great for small traders.

Once you get your idea PROPERLY together, you could try to do a pop up shop. These are just temporary, for example month or 2, to see how and even if it would work where you are. Obviously you are risking money, but much less than if you sign a long lease.

I agree with others though. As someone who owned and sold and now am looking forward to be someone else's employee who doesn't have to deal with council, hygiene, HMRC, 2am armed burglars and subsequent police dealings, clean ups and expensive repairs, stay with your part time work.
Maybe get yourself a market stall on your days off.

Think. How much will your new shop need to turn over to be able to pay you £42K a year whilst working only part time?

We have recently closed our high street shop after 30 years, footfall had dropped by 25% in 4 years and it was no longer viable. We did have a good 28 years though.
Some tips.
Do not accept the asking rent. Negotiate as if your life depends on it (it does). Then push for incentives going in, free rent period, landlord to pay towards your shopfit. Landlords are desperate at the moment so push them as far as you can.

1. Look at how you can get out of the lease if it goes wrong.
2. If possible, set up as a limited company and try to avoid giving a personal guarantee, then if it goes wrong you will not lose your house.
3. Check the business rates payable. They can be horrendous.
4. Do not accept the asking rent.
5. Be prepared to work long hours, we had to open 7 days a week, and bank holidays except for Xmas day and Easter Day.
6. If you have a busy Christmas, do not spend all your takings as business drops off dramatically in January. The number of shops that opened in our centre, had a good Xmas then ran out if cash in March was high.

It is very easy when you are starting to get excited and over confident, but try to look at the worse case scenarios. Sorry to seem negative, but if you get it right it can set you up for years.

Could you try and get a pitch at an artisan market on the days you don't work? Start from there and see if the numbers work?

If it was a fail could you easily enough go back into your well paid job, would your morale be broken?

I don't want to be negative, but so many shops have opened & closed over the past 15 years in the town where I live. It seems a very hard thing to succeed at. Services, eg beauty salons, are doing well. But shops selling stuff do terribly.

You'd have to undercut the online retailers, basically.

I think you should do it as a delivery service rather than a shop.

Stick with your part time job at £42k

This x 1000. Find a couple of interesting hobbies or do some volunteer work in your spare time if you feel you are lacking a purpose in life.

Running a shop you'll be working 60-80 hour weeks, probably for less than NMW.

Have a look here OP. I found this site the other day as I also would love to open a shop like this (and also have no retail experience). This couple were the same and set up a shop in Totnes, and they’ve written a ‘guide to’ that’s freely available on the website.

thezerowasteshop.co.uk/

You will be swapping golden handcuffs for wooden ones.

You will be tied to the shop earning less than minimum wage, when you are not in the shop you will be daeling with suppkiers, ordering, paperwork etc.
You will be working 80 hours a week.

I worked in retail for 20 years, it's bloody tough. I would say no way. Could you sell online instead, or take up a rewarding hobby?

There are 2 zero waste shops in my small town and both seem to be doing well ALTHOUGH they are within other shops / a sideline for the original shop. But people go to these shops now for the zero waste/refill part alone.