How to open a store

Opening a store today is an adventure and requires having a little capital, some contacts, but above all a lot of self-confidence, energy and perseverance.

 In this article we want to give you some keys when creating a store, documentation, bureaucracy, financing, etc. Read carefully and if you have any questions leave a comment and if we can we will help you to open the project of your life, the store of your life.

Steps to follow:

1. Make a business project. It is important that before starting the whole process to open a store you do some numbers to see if it is a viable business or not. We recommend that the numbers be based on these criteria:

• Number of people who will pass in front of the premises
• % of people who will enter the store
• Average price of what people will buy
• Margin on sales
• Store costs: staff, material, services, etc.

It is recommended that businesses where we will have few people in the store are businesses with a lot of margin and businesses that we will have a lot of people may have little margin but always more than 15%.

2. The first step before opening a store is to have an idea, some questions like: what competition do I have in this store? Will I sell something that people need more every day? Will I solve a problem for the people of the city or neighborhood where I set up the store? This idea already works on other sites? All these questions will help us decide if our idea is something else, an idea to set up a project or just an illusion.

3. Validate the idea. Ask trusted people if the idea you have to open the store is a good one or not. Also ask people who are not so much of your trust since it may be that your friends do not dare to remove the illusion. Finally, you can do a small questionnaire on the people who pass by on the street.

4. Get the papers. The granting of an opening license for any business should take between 15 days and four months, but, in reality, this process takes between six months and two years. The first thing to do is go to the district board or the corresponding town hall and speak with the technician who processes the file. Another common mistake is to rent a premise that has already been renovated, mistakenly believing that in this way no work has to be done and, when the opening license is processed, the city council demands changes because the previous owner had not carried out any formalities.

5. The expenses of opening a store. In addition to requesting the name of the company, then you will have to ask the city council for the license, that takes a while, the cost is relatively low, finally you will have to become self-employed, which costs € 238.79 per month, and electricity and water depends what you spend, then count on the quarterly VAT which is the difference between purchases and sales (with invoice). Then the lease of the premises since in the invoices they have to withhold € 18 that is also paid every three months with VAT.

Another option is to set up a company but the cost of this is already € 1000 in documentation plus 2000 of share capital.

6. The name and the marketing. It is important that in order to create a business that works you have a good name and a marketing behind more or less thought, once you have a good name you have to go to the commercial register you have to send names, you always have to list three different names. The cost of this is € 30 more or less.

7. Save on everything you can. The principles are hard and that is where you should save as much as possible since you must invest what you can in making yourself known, the key to a store, at the beginning is that people quickly get to know it. There are ways to save money when opening a store for example, that the wrapping paper itself is the one we use to give away, that the shelves are simple wood hanging on the wall, that you distribute the advertising yourself, that you hold contests where the prize is store material.