The ideal business location is difficult to find and you can’t just open up anywhere you want to. You need to think about the demands that area has. There isn’t much chance that you will do well if there is already 2 or 3 competitors only a few streets away. Or are there?
Are there competitors in the area that you want to move into?
If so don't rule out moving into the area because there is a competitor offering the same service as you do. You need to research them and see if they are a threat to you.
For example we are a vehicle body shop and only a couple of minutes away are a massive insurance body shop, with the latest equipment and money to burn. But that didn’t put us off because of a number of reasons.
They are REALLY expensive and they don’t do a great job either, they are more of an ‘open and closed book’ service. ‘Open and closed book’ service because they literally want to get your car in and out as fast as possible, with not too much care in what they do. But the reason they do well, is because they are part of an insurance company, who send their own customers to their own vehicle body shop.
Another reason is that any time that you want to get an estimate for repairs from them, they charge you £25! We don’t charge anything for an estimate. They do it because they don't have the time for what they could see as customers not getting the job done because of costs. Many people don't know the true cost of repairing cars, and once they see that price, a lot of the time they won't be back.
Our industry is going in 2 different directions anyway so we are neither a threat to each other so it’s all good. They want to concentrate on keeping profits to themselves instead of having independent companies on their referral list. Just common sense really.
With us it's more of a personal service you get, more time spent on the job to make sure it's done right because we have high standards and so do most of our customers. Plus many people don't want to claim their car insurance for any bumps they have had, so it works well for us.
You should look into this as well because you might think that your business is the exact same as another, but you might get a surprise to find out how different each business can be.
There are many things to consider when choosing the ideal location.
Do you know what the public transport system is like? How far from a transport station are you? Does that come into play with your business? Maybe not because most people have cars, but people with cars sometimes don’t want to travel across the city if you are too far out, unless what you are offering is appealing to them.
When we chose our location, it was only 10 minutes walk from the main street where it had bus stops, a train station as well as some places to grab a bite to eat while they waited. Also only a 5 minutes walk is a supermarket so we choose the right area because it literally has everything around it.
The motorway which connects the whole city is only a minutes drive away, so you could drive from one side to the other in 15/20 minutes depending on traffic.
Even though most people have cars these days, sometimes they don’t want to travel across the city, it’s the mental thought process of it. We are all getting lazier and lazier but you can’t win them all, but as long as you can win with most then I wouldn’t worry about it.
Still unsure of the location?
We were still unsure of the area when we moved in because we felt that nobody would be able to see where we were located, we were stuck away in an industrial estate. We wanted a place where we had passing traffic, but things are changing where I'm from, and most businesses are being slowly forced into these industrial estates. The benefit that we all have in the modern day is the internet.
Nobody has the perfect business and we all have our problems, as well as future problems that we don't know about yet. Be it the location or with the competitors around the corner, but just look on the bright side, it helps to drive you and your business forward, forcing you to try and think out of the box, which in turn will make you a better business person and help you to grow for the future. We all learn from mistakes, just try and minimise the mistakes as much as possible, because it's inevitable, they will happen.
@sheeshkababage