markw wrote:
what would be the perfect location?
Well the shop in the link would actually be very good for a shop like mine.
Being opposite the car park customers would not have far to lug large items. We are also about far far more than framing & art; craft shops like ours don't exist in this area and we do very well with very very little natural footfall - we're a 'Mecca' for crafters, more come to us than go past us. Our footfal would increase by the thousands of percent.
We reckoned we would do the turnover required
BUT we would need a lot of staff and I should imagine that there would be quite a turnaround of staff too. We would need a manager on both the framing/art and the craft/giftware/etc side and at least two DAMN good framers with underlings. Everything would need to be barcoded EPOS'd/computerised etc etc etc. It would be a 'machine' - no character - maybe?
My wife and I would become personnel managers - we could rarely be hands on, it would take more 'running' and that was not what I wanted to be when I grew up. (I'm in no hurry to)
Then, when all the massively increased overheads are taken off the also massively increased turnover, we, at the end of the day would simply have provided some employment, increased the turnovers of our suppliers, made the taxman a bit richer - plus a lot of (other) shoplifters - but ourselves? Well, we'd probably not have a much higher take-home than we do now and definitely not as good a quality of life.
As it is I think we've got it right - but it was pretty much by accident - we just wanted to do as best we could at something we enjoy, right here in our lickle village, without having to 'commute'.
To our East we have Brighton, Hove and Worthing. To the West, Littlehampton, Bognor and Chichester, and those towns and cities are connected to us by other smaller towns and villages, there is hardly a break in the housing between Brighton and Chichester.
To our North we have Guildford and the commuter belt, plus the Gatwick area, Crawley and Horsham. We put ourselves in the middle of 2.5 milion people in a 25 mile semi circle and not one shop like ours in it, we did not look at it this way 12 years ago, just became gradually aware of what there was to tap into and evolved by demand.
We are dead easy to find and you can park bang outside the door, our staff are like family and don't just sell things - they know how they work too.
If we were younger and/or more ambitious our goal would be this on a bigger scale - a huge craft centre, not in any precinct or big town/city, but on a busy 'A' road near here, where all the big garden centres that have coach parties are located. It would centre around a damn good art gallery with framing. There would be a restaurant, again a 'damn good one', some accommodation and each craft would have it's own unit which would also run courses and workshops.
Every time we go to a certain place for a meal we see it and think 'what if' - an old barn system - complete with two cottages. This place was up for rent for YEARS on the A259 just outside Worthing - planning permission for food/hospitality could easily have been changed to retail, or have it added. We looked at it when we ran out of room in our first shop - about 9 years ago. The deal was this £75,000 pa rent plus rates, plus, as a condition, you would have had to build an access road and a carpark. Or you could buy outright for ten times the annual rent. £750,000 for some old listed flint outbuildings, just shells.
'Yeah - RIGHT' we thought. I know the rent would be higher now, but I doubt if it would be as high as that place above, and had 'now' been 'then' we would definitely have gone for it. In fact we would have bought it, then spent about twice that re-fitting it and building the road/car park!
Sorry for going on, but maybe I'll inspire someone - I've only ever seen one place like my dream place and that was in N Wales, but not in the right location.