If you’re planning on opening a new store, you’ll know that there’s plenty you’ll need to get organized before you swing open your doors to the public. You’ll need to find the right location, make the right changes to the interior of the store, and make sure that consumers are drawn in to view your goods. In this article, there are five key steps to getting yourself set up in your store explored, giving you a little guidance on this important and exciting process.
Table of Contents
Location
You’ll know from experience that the location of stores is highly important for how much footfall they experience. Place your store in the middle of the town’s high street, and you’ll find that the majority of shoppers will pass by and take a look inside. Place it on the outskirts of the town or in a place in your city that isn’t associated with retail, and you might see foot traffic simply pass by.
As such, picking a location is important. Of course, the rent is higher in those more desirable areas, so there’s often a tradeoff to be made between centrality and affordability. Make your decision based on your budget and secure your spot before you begin your subsequent plans.
Shop Front
The front of your store will be the first thing that consumers come across when they’re walking in town. They’ll be aware that a new store has opened in your plot, and the chances are that they’ll be curious about what you have to offer. Still, books are often judged by their covers and stores by their windows and signage – so getting these right is paramount to attracting your first customers.
When it comes to signage, you should approach the sign man in Birmingham, an expert in retail signs, to help you get yours just right. Meanwhile, your window displays should cram as many of your most exciting products in as possible. These, after all, will be what really generates interest in your store.
Stock
Speaking of those products, it’s important that you decide early on what you’ll be stocking in your store. This will vary from firm to firm, but on the whole, you’ll want your products to have some through-line or theme. A fishing tackle shop should have everything that a fisherman would need; a modeling shop should have everything from miniature trains to landscape features.
Bring in your stock as early as possible to ensure that you can fill the shelves in your store from an early stage, just before you open. A barren store will be off-putting to your first customers and may well encourage them to give your place a miss when they’re next browsing around town. Fill up that stock room so that you can always replace products once they’ve been sold too.
Marketing
Your store will attract the interest of those people who regularly shop in physical stores, but you might be unknown to those in your locality who often prefer to use the online marketplace to purchase their products. That’s something you might want to overcome, given that your store is somewhere they can find plenty of products that they’d like –touching them, feeling them, and asking you questions about them before making a purchase.
As such, you may want to use some of your investment cash to market your store and your products to the local area. You can do this online by building a local social media following, in print by advertising in the local newspaper, or by running a launch event that will leave local citizens in little doubt that an exciting new store has opened in their area. Marketing will help bring more consumers into your store in the first few weeks and months of your operation.
Staffing
Finally, when you’re managing a shop, you’re going to need plenty of assistance from assistants who are willing to work long retail hours. These will often be young people who are between jobs or who are looking for seasonal work when they’re home from university. You should also consider working alongside an agency in order to bring in labour for your store as quickly as possible.
Your staff will help keep queues short in your store and will help consumers get answers to their questions as soon as they pose them. You’ll sometimes need to be in the backroom doing management work, which means that you should also make sure you’re hiring staff that you can trust as the front of house for your store.
These five steps are fundamental to getting a new store opened and frequented in 2022.
