The Specialty Shop

How to Create Your Own Unique and Profitable Retail Business

Author: Dorothy Finell
Pub Date: 2007
Your Price: $24.95
ISBN: 081447442X
Format: Hardcover

• Overview
• Sample Chapter
• Table of Contents
• Request an Evaluation Copy, INSTRUCTOR ONLY!

Chapter 1

Planning Your Business

The benefits of owning a niche shop are many. Retailers worldwide have told me time and again that a single category or a one-product line—a retail niche business—is appealing because it is safer, more cost efficient, and less wasteful because there are fewer markdowns. But to be successful, you must distinguish your chosen niche business as a niche operation and nothing else. Throughout this book you will find dozens of interviews with successful owners of niche shops in the U.S., Europe, and Australia, and their advice is an invaluable source of ideas, encouragement, and secrets of success.

What is a niche? In whole or in part a niche fills a void of some kind. It is popular merchandise (not fads) that other local shops don't carry and that you think customers are looking for. An entire shop can be a niche business, just as one item—in various forms—can be a niche item when it is set apart from the rest of the shop. In fact, in this book you will find several examples of shops that have created as many as 12 mini-boutiques within their shops, all of which are niche boutiques because the merchandise carried in each boutique is different from merchandise in the other boutiques. With more and more chain stores and shops carrying the same stock, it is imperative in today's market for your retail enterprise to be unique!


Finding Your Niche

Once you've decided to become a retailer, the next step is to decide what categories you might like to carry. Many of the shop owners you will read about chose categories that they personally loved and had great interest in: from pens to used books, wedding cakes to exotic masks, and miniature porcelains to expensive women's and men's apparel. The following categories will give you an idea of the wide range to choose from, and there are many more. When you visit trade shows and gift shows, you will be overwhelmed by the wonderful choices available to you. Information about the leading trade and gift shows, as well as "buying offices" for apparel, appears in appendix A.


Categories

After you choose your main category, you need to create an in-depth plan that addresses what types of accessories would go well with your choice. If you choose men's apparel, for example, besides the basic categories of pants, sportswear, and shirts, will you also carry underwear, socks, belts, shoes, ties, or ascots? Will your shirts be formal or casual, or a mix of both? What sizes will you buy? If you choose a pen shop, will you also carry stationery, diaries, inks, and pen paraphernalia? If you plan to open a jewelry store, will you carry genuine jewels, costume jewelry, or a mix of both? Will you carry items for men, or women, or children, or all three? Ideas for offering accessories or special services to bring customers in are limited only to your own creativity. For example, The Carmel Doll Shop in Carmel, California, offers repair services for dolls, dollhouses, and clothing in addition to selling many beautiful and often rare dolls.

If you open an apparel shop in Florida and specialize exclusively in resort and cruise wear, you might want to add a travel-desk corner that stocks pamphlets, brochures, and related information about resorts in Florida and other states. A travel agent or consultant, employed by the owner, could run the niche operation.

Many years ago when Danskin—a manufacturer of tights, leotards, shorts, tops, and scores of items related to dance and exercise—became incredibly popular with every female in the U.S., my husband and I decided to add a Danskin boutique in each of our stores, which developed into a niche business in itself.

Cookbooks, specialty books, and gift books can also become niches in themselves. Edie Frére, co-owner of Landis General Store, which has 10 niche boutiques within one shop, says that Tiffany's Table Manners for Teenagers has become a niche in itself because the book appeals to the particular customers in her upscale Los Angeles location.

If you are in a tourist area, you might want to add niche categories that cater to tourists. For example, if you are located in a historic city with or without a major museum and no other shops carry museum items, you might want to consider such a mini-niche in your own shop. The Boston Gift Show, the San Francisco International Gift Fair, and the New York trade shows all carry museum reproductions, and these could well be good sellers for you. If you live in a university city or town where the population is geared to cultural activities, a cultural niche operation of some kind is a natural tie-in—as long as the prices are also geared to the demographics of such a population.

You can read more about creating mini-boutiques in Chapter 4.

Underlying all your planning is The Golden Rule: The Right Item, at the Right Time, in the Right Place, at the Right Price. The Golden Rule is the first rule, the cardinal rule—the foundation, in fact, of good retailing.

The right item, of course, will be the one you have chosen and can't wait to sell.

The right time is self-evident. You wouldn't sell swimsuits in a shop in northern Minnesota in January, for instance. Nor would you sell children's ski suits in a Florida store in August. These are blatant examples of when not to sell. But a more subtle example is deciding to buy discounted Christmas items at 50 percent off and then selling them in January. At the time, the offer to buy discounted stock seems irresistible. However, it would tie up money needed for the next season's purchases. The right place will be an ideal, well-researched location for your shop, which I discuss in Chapter 3. Of course, there are exceptions to each part of The Golden Rule, including location. (We all know of instances where a shop is located in the middle of nowhere and it has no trouble thriving. But those are rare exceptions.)

The right price will be a product of your financial planning, your visits to trade shows, and your pricing research.

© 2007 Dorothy Finell.
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