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Do Your Homework To Find The Best Location For Your Business

Written by: Tim Knox

Article Overview: This week our discussion on starting a brick and mortar business continues. We’ve already talked about creating a Startup Plan to manage the process and conducting market research to gauge the viability of your idea. If you missed those entries visit TimKnox.com and click the "Columns" tab.

Do Your Homework To Find The Best Location For Your Business

This week our discussion on starting a brick and mortar business continues. We’ve already talked about creating a Startup Plan to manage the process and conducting market research to gauge the viability of your idea. If you missed those entries visit TimKnox.com and click the "Columns" tab.

This week we discuss how to find the best location for your business. This isn’t a difficult process, but will require some homework on your part. You can use a commercial realtor to help you scout for locations, but the real research you must do yourself.
When I was scouting locations for my brick and mortar store I took the time to drive around town to familiarize myself with every foot of vacant retail space available.
I spent a lot of time sitting in parking lots. You can learn a lot just watching cars go by at different times of the day. For example a location may be great in the morning, but lousy in the afternoon. Or maybe the parking lot is full at lunch, but empty the rest of the day.

You should also consider which side of the road works best for you. For example a drive thru coffee shop has a much better chance of success if it’s located on the side of the road with the morning rush hour traffic, while a takeout joint has a better chance of success if it’s located on the side of the road with the going home traffic.
Here’s how I found the best location for my store in my hometown of Madison, Alabama. The city of Madison is sandwiched between Highway 72 on the north and Madison Boulevard on the south. Both stretches of road contain fast food restaurants, strip shopping centers, and lots of vacant retail space.

I was opening a specialty retail store, so foot and automobile traffic would be essential to success. On the Madison Boulevard side of town the predominant strip was a Wal-Mart center, but I knew that locating near a Wal-Mart was no guarantee of success. To the contrary, Wal-Mart is notorious for killing smaller neighbors, so to survive in a Wal-Mart strip you have to be a niche business in a market that Wal-Mart doesn’t already own. My products were firearms and self defense items, which research told me that Wal-Mart was phasing out at most stores, so locating next to Wal-Mart could be a good move.

However, there was a lot of empty space in the Wal-Mart center, which told me that either those retailers tried to, but ultimately failed to compete with Wal-Mart on its own turf or there wasn’t enough traffic for them to survive.
I spent some time in the Wal-Mart parking lot at different times of the day and found that - in my humble opinion - there was barely enough business to keep the Wal-Mart open, much less smaller retailers.

The problem is that the south side of Madison is not a high growth residential area, which is needed to sustain a rural retail location. Madison Boulevard is busy during the lunch hour thanks to nearby industries, but because there is a major interstate running parallel Madison Boulevard is not heavily trafficked at other times of the day, hence the abundance of vacant retail space and my decision to look at the north side of town.

Highway 72 bounds the north side of Madison and is heavily trafficked most of the day because it connects the city of Huntsville to the east and Athens to the west.

The north side of Madison also boasts a number of affluent residential developments. Most of the residents living in those neighborhoods drive daily along Highway 72 to and from work, making it one of the most heavily trafficked highways in North Alabama - at least that’s the way it appears when you’re stuck in traffic there.

There was vacant space on the north side of the highway in a Publix Shopping Center and two other strips anchored by smaller grocery stores. The Publix Center appealed to me because it was also home to a Books-A-Million, a Staples, an ice cream shop, several restaurants, and a number of other niche stores, guaranteeing traffic throughout the day.

Across from the Publix Center were a number of vacant buildings that would have worked well except for the fact that they had small parking lots and no opportunity for foot traffic.
After doing my requisite site research it didn’t take long for me to realize that even though the space in the Publix Center was smaller, yet more expensive than all other space along the way, it attracted more organic traffic than the other locations. I knew the amount of traffic my store would get from patrons going to other stores in the strip would be well worth the extra cost.

That logic proved true. I expect there are very few gun shops in retail strip malls, but the location has proven to be a winner for us. We have men coming in while their wives are grocery shopping at Publix and couples coming in after they dine at the restaurants in the strip. We even have women stopping in after getting their nails done. Go figure.

Now that you know how I chose the location for my store, next week we’ll talk more about the other things you should consider before choosing a location for yours.

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Article Tags: automobile traffic, better chance, brick and mortar, brick and mortar business, brick and mortar store, city of madison, commercial realtor, conducting market research, drive thru coffee, drive thru coffee shop, fast food restaurants, madison alabama, morning rush hour, rest of the day, retail space, rush hour traffic, scouting locations, startup plan, wal mart, watching cars



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Critique Small Business - Well, several things come to mind for me and is dependent upon the type of busienss (home based/ internet, brick and mortar). Being in the business financing field the first thing that comes to mind is business plan...Particularly, business history, financial plan/ projections/ budget as well as your present market and competition.... And lest not forget the three L's...Location, Location, Location!
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
LastMinute New Web Site (Draft) - Louis, I like it much better than the previous one. I like Topic, Location, Date, Discounted Price. That is what I need to know to get interested. I believe that you are moving in the right direction. Andreas
Picking a corporate lawyer - Hi Everyone, I was just curious to know what's the most important criteria a small business owner should look at when choosing a corporate lawyer? -Cost/hr? -Location? -Reputation/Referral? -Experience? -Personality? How did you pick your lawyer? And what's a fair price to pay per hour? Thanks
Re: Fashion - Nana, At you choice you may choose to research the fashion industry a bit more. There is obviously a Business side to it as well as a creative side to it. Find out all the types of roles that exist in the industry. Some that come to mind merchandiser, Window dresser, floor plan organizer (someone needs to determine the layout of a retail store to best sell the goods), fashion consultant (Yorkdale mall has fashion consultants that take you around and tell you what looks great on you - you also get a cut from the sales). This is what I've observed from the business side, you may know more. All these roles I've written about will help you grow as a business person and make the contacts in the industry...possible stepping stones. But further more you'll also notice that you need to develop some business acumen possibly tailored to the fashion industry. When I was at Ryerson I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur someday too. I knew I needed some basic business courses to get a foundation to build from. I was in a Tech/Business Major (I'm sure Fashion has something similar - Fashion/Business Major) and then started to create my own minor. Here are some of the courses I took: Marketing, Law, Entrepreneurial, Management, consulting.. and a few more . Also, I'm sure that within the Fashion Major there are also courses you have to take where you can use your creative side and create designs. Typically within a Major there are focuses you can choose - ask the program coordinator. Your next step is to do some research. 1. Visit Commercial retail outlets like H&M, Banana Republic, or jacob. Tell the Manager your doing some research for University and would like to know what types of Corporate roles exist aside from the roles on the retail floor (like sales associates). If she asks you to elaborate then you can use some of the roles I mentioned above. 2. With this information in hand you can visit the Ryerson Fashion department and inquire with the Program Coordinator on what focus within the Fashion Degree would help you the most. In my program there were 5 different focuses within the Tech/Business program. Just a quick aside. A good friend of mine too has a dream of fashion. he want to create a niche fashion line tailored to skinny men (I can't mention the style). He's in Business school but not in the Fashion program... He's in International Business but all his Minor courses are tailored to running a successful business ... similar to the ones I mentioned above for myself. I have no doubt in my mind he'll make it 'cos his vision is that strong.


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