Things to Consider Before Opening a Retail Business

Business is all about playing the dice smartly rather than flowing money like the river and being ignorant about the surrounding at all.

India’s retail market is expected to nearly double to US$ 1 trillion by 2020 from US$ 600 billion in 2015, driven by income growth, urbanization, and attitudinal shifts. While the overall retail market is expected to grow at 12 percent per annum, the modern trade would expand twice as fast at 20 percent per annum and traditional trade at 10 percent.

India’s Business to Business (B2B) e-commerce market is expected to reach US$ 700 billion by 2020.

Know the area more and take care of the following factors before opening a retail business:

Average Age

It is important to know the locality well beforehand when one has already decided to open a retail business. While doing the legwork make sure to know the average age of the local population residing in the locality.

People often make mistakes by choosing a place without much of research, they end up opening a business, which youth connect with more and the store happen to be opened in the locality, where majority population belongs to the retired old people or middle-aged. These people would not connect with the product and the result is a pure loss for all your hard work.

If you are going to sell customized heavy bullets and bikes, how will the retired people, (who walk on their third foot and live on their pensions) afford to ride such expensive and heavy bikes!

Measure the Pocket Size

If one is pro in studying business or how the world around functions, traveling is important. Travelling to different places will open the gate to see the world in a different way.

For example, one would have noticed that all the uptown folks like to go some particular places or can be seen hanging out in some particular area, where no trace of middle-class folks can be seen.

That is because the businessmen, whoever set up their business, do a study and start their business depending on the pocket size of the customers. You may have flown a lot of money to open an expensive international designer bag shop but the locality comprises of only middle class or lower-middle-class people, who earn less than the cost of one bag, how they will afford to make your business run!

Easy Access to Basics

Find an easy access to your basic requirements, for example, the supplier should be able to deliver the products in time and there should be an easy connection with the highway or main road for smooth transportation of things.

If the location of your store, branches out to many thin lanes to reach the main road then no supplier will agree to work with you in the first place, then comes the customer dissatisfaction, if they do not find their choice of things on time, why would they bother to come to your store.

Sense the Capabilities

Setting up a retail store needs a lot of labor; to start with construction, fixing furniture, arranging things, cleaning, polishing and many things go under the surface to make a retail store stand tall.

One has to look at the employment status of the people residing next to your location. If there are slums close by, you can help provide employment opportunities for the people. If the people around belongs to working class, you have to depend on the contractor.

Moreover, the kind of things you are going to start selling also depends upon the locality and the kind of work they do.

One can open a multiple brand retail store, where grocery items, clothes, and household items, can be consumed by everyone.