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Old 07-31-2009, 09:55 AM   #31
Mustang
Grizzled Veteran
 
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Wisconsin
Quote:
Originally Posted by law90026 View Post
If you do take a large space, make sure you check whether sub-leasing is possible. Some rental agreements tend to make that a breach of contract and you want to avoid unnecessary legal issues arising.

At this time, I wouldn't want to even entertain the thought of getting a larger space with the intent of subleasing a space. The one exceptionally large space has been vacant for some damn near 3 years I think so, not a good opportunity.

Although, the spot that I looked at yesterday I really liked from a location and potential standpoint. It is along the main strip, centered in town & cheap rent. The downside is that it needs some work inside. Not a huge amount, probably in the neighborhood of $500-$750. Needs to be painted, have a 12" x 12" section of the drop ceiling put back in, the old cashier stand area needs to have the flooring replaced and some of the wood flooring needs to be replaced, but that is all pretty basic stuff. The landlord would cover repairing the bathroom that was basically destroyed.

My friend also said he could commit to more hours than I thought he would. He said he could do 2-3 days every week and 1 weekend so, that would be huge. He also mentioned that if his wife got a different job and took over the insurance, he'd work there full time for $25K. (Getting WAY ahead of ourselves here!)

So, with the potential of possibly putting in an offer to lease it, I need to clear up the following items. (In no particular order)

1. Accountant Discussions - Need to get the items in order to allow myself to hire employees and discuss a better inventory system than we are already using.

2. Finance - We have the cash to cover doing a startup, but I'd rather not burn through that. I'd rather get a loan to cover the costs of starting inventory, fixtures and probably 3 months of rent/utilities. Our cash on hand would cover the repair costs, 3 months of expected employee salaries, 6 months of rent and cash for new product lines. The local bank we use is pretty flexible. I'm not sure if they will need a full business plan so, we will have to talk to them. They are a small town bank so, pretty informal and my wife used to work there and keeps in touch with everyone still. Regardless if they need a business plan or not, I'll probably just go through the excercise for my own benefit. Bank finance is not essential to doing any of this anyways has I have other avenues.

3. Fixtures - I need to put together a store layout plan so I can finalize what I need as far as fixtures (Shelves, Counters, Register, Safe, Security Cameras). I won't be able to fix a hard number because I fully intend to use secondary markets to buy cheaper fixtures (going out of business sales, auctions and anything else I can find). I'll have to use past data to get a rough estimate though.

4. Credit Card processing. A black box for me right now, but the wife mentioned that the bank (see above) can help out with this. Not sure if the terms will be good though, but I can use as a starting point.

5. Business Association. There is a business association that I will need to join here (voluntary), but they help out with alot of items and have a mentoring program and other programs such as deals on credit card process and also a group health plan that you can join into. Basically a 1000 people have joined together to give them cheaper health insurance raters since they are acting like a large business.

6. Inventory. Need to work out the exact items I will be carrying and the amounts I want to order. Once I do that, I need to run items past the suppliers to make sure I'm not missing anything.

7. Admin Stuff. Primarily stuff like licenses, ADA items and employee rights. What I need to make sure if available or what needs to be posted. (Like signage about Employee Rights). Need to make sure my bases are covered.

Hopefully in 2 weeks, I'll have everything down and at that point, I'll make a go/no go decision on whether or not to proceed on this location. I had rough drafts of everything above, but now that I have a space in mind, I can fix more hard data to it (which is probably more important to present to the wife rather than the bank)
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