Business in recession

Volter

Hi,

I am just wondering what is the best business to start up in recession period?

Thanks.

Darragh29

Volter wrote: »

Hi,

I am just wondering what is the best business to start up in recession period?

Thanks.

It's not just a recession you have to take into account here, there is also the small matter of the unavailablility of access to venture/start-up capital/banks being shut for lending...

Whatever it is, in the current climate, it'll have to be something that requires very low input costs to get it off the ground...

edanto

Anything that saves people money.

MB74

If someone has a genuine idea will they be giving it away for free????

Suaimhneach

New businesses, new ideas, innovation and entrepreneurs will be a key factor when this economy starts to turn around. Generally, people arent as rich as they once were but they are still need goods and services, so depending on what you're selling you may well do just fine.

Go to Enterprise Ireland or similar, your local county council enterprise board (some are better than others, beware) and ask for a meeeting.

Best of luck.

CathalMc

Companies that have started in a recession:
HP
General Electric
Sports Illustrated
MTV
CNN
Microsoft
FedEx
Burger King
Google and Paypal made their big growths during recessions.

The point being that new business isn't dead, it is just difficult, but potentially extra rewarding. There is, I believe, some saying that thrifty lessons learned by companies getting started in a recession leads to some very lean and mean business machines.

Anyway, if you want to brainstorm here, you'll need to bring more to the table - what are you skills/experience, what type of capital have you access to?

What irritants will people pay to be rid of, even during a recession? People are changing their shopping, travelling and social habits - what is the effect of this. Eg: now using cheaper stores, watching the pennys, staying in, watching more TV, eating in more etc.

So a stream of consciousness discussing these trends: will this recession help drive households towards free/low-cost media entertainment on the net, and is this need being supplied in a legal extent in ireland? Could it benefit from a local touch, more local touch? Could a savings/coupons based model (pigsback.com etc) be involved? How about food coupons - or restaurant coupons. This is could be a good time to negotiate food deals, when eating out is on the decline. Pub, coffee-shop business is bad too. But gambling, religion, job-hunting, money-management is up. People will spend to save, but will pay more to gamble now too. Relatively more old people are also searching for jobs, since retirement plans are in disarray. I wouldn't be surprised if it's there's a majority of men who are job searching too: finance, manufacturing, construction being the big lay-ers-off. What does a household where the wife is now the provider need? Household products catering to a man's sensibilities? Selling household chores with less feminine if not masculine advertising - interesting to watch for that! Adult entertainment, media and, um, physical acts is up, and so too the paraphernalia.
What is the future for social media in a recession - and will it ever find it's true profitability wheels beyond advertising? Could you be that cog: profitability for social networking media? What would users accustomed to getting free social networking services be easily swayed to paying? A service? A product?
Is there a service in a software system advising drivers of the optimum routes, downloading and parsing petrol station prices, determining best ones to call in en-route, or advising a de-tour to optimise overall petrol consumption, given a list of tasks/places to be, and downloading traffic conditions over the day. Sounds like it's worth a second look - has it been done? Should it be done? Is Ireland (and typical driving patterns) too small to make use of it - in the US? How about integrating grocery prices with that - balancing the optimum of savings from that with any extra driving to be done... maybe this kind of thing might be useful for long-haul drivers, plotting out the optimum petrol stops etc. - or maybe they already do. Maybe there's a good idea a few iterations away from this, maybe it's all pie in the sky - let me know!

I followed a similar line of thought with some other people last year, and am soon to be a company founder in my own field. Tautologically perhaps, but the funding is out there for ideas, savvy and drive that are too good to be ignored.

Darragh29

Now is the perfect time to start up a business. If you can start up now, you will be well ready for an improvement in market conditions whenever that comes about, and it will, it's only a matter of time.

I'm starting up a business now with the intention of selling it in 5 years time. I've been at this entrepreneurship since 2005 and I found it impossible to do anything right when the economy was booming. Now that a bit of reality has returned to the Irish economy, I'm finding that it is much easier to start up, people are more inclined to give you their time now and if you are offering value for money, you are given huge respect now.

I went into my bank last week and met my Relationship Manager to set up a merchant services account for a new business that will trade online, and my bank could not do enough for me. We talked for an hour and nothing was a problem. This time last year, I could not even get a meeting with them. Now they looked at me in admiration for coming in to them to start up a new business when people are nearly throwing themselves into the Liffey with the doom and gloom that is out there...

This recession can be the best thing that could have happened for small businesses if you have a certain perspective on things. I'm not saying it is good for people losing their jobs, but if you have an idea and the inclination to "go at it", you have more chance now of being successful than probably at any time over the last 10 years I think.

CathalMc

Thanks Darragh, that's all very positive sounding - like you are on to a good thing. What general sector is your enterprise in? Would you say it is a business that benefits particularly from a recession market? And did you require significant funding, and was sourcing that hard - it didn't sound like you were applying for a line of credit from the bank for instance.

shoutman

Would be very interested to here more about your new venture Darragh.

murphaph

New Ca$h Converters franchises in the right areas would do well IMO. Brand has plenty of scope for expansion in Ireland-already a household name in Britain. According to this there seems to be just 5 stores in the Republic. Hardly swamped. The costs they give for opening a franchise with them seem high though, well, for a store with only ambient stock (no refrigeration equipment) and a pretty basic store concept tbh. I'm sure you could shopfit a CC store for less than 70k judging by the ones I've been in. I reckon the master franchisor needs to do more marketing to deserve their fee though.

Darragh29

shoutman wrote: »

Would be very interested to here more about your new venture Darragh.

I'll post some details up here tomorrow for ya...

EDIT: But then I'll have to kill you! ;-)

delllat

murphaph wrote: »

New Ca$h Converters franchises in the right areas would do well IMO. Brand has plenty of scope for expansion in Ireland-already a household name in Britain. According to this there seems to be just 5 stores in the Republic. Hardly swamped. The costs they give for opening a franchise with them seem high though, well, for a store with only ambient stock (no refrigeration equipment) and a pretty basic store concept tbh. I'm sure you could shopfit a CC store for less than 70k judging by the ones I've been in. I reckon the master franchisor needs to do more marketing to deserve their fee though.

those cash converters are really crap places to buy anything though

the one in thomas st sells 2nd hand things for new prices

and if u try to sell them something they offer peanuts

its a good business plan if it works,i just cant see enough people shopping there to make it profitable

murphaph

delllat wrote: »

those cash converters are really crap places to buy anything though

the one in thomas st sells 2nd hand things for new prices

and if u try to sell them something they offer peanuts

its a good business plan if it works,i just cant see enough people shopping there to make it profitable

Absolutely-any business will fail if it's not run properly, especially now. One could reasonably expect an increase in goods being offered to the store in bad times and one can reasonably expect that people will want to buy things at a reduced price. Get the pricing wrong in any store and your gone but I reckon this offers a good chance of decent footfall in a recession and then it's yours to mess up. The problem with cash converters as I see it is that they seem to do no advertising in Ireland so what does your fee get you? a bit of training and some of their software?

Bandara

murphaph wrote: »

Absolutely-any business will fail if it's not run properly, especially now. One could reasonably expect an increase in goods being offered to the store in bad times and one can reasonably expect that people will want to buy things at a reduced price. Get the pricing wrong in any store and your gone but I reckon this offers a good chance of decent footfall in a recession and then it's yours to mess up. The problem with cash converters as I see it is that they seem to do no advertising in Ireland so what does your fee get you? a bit of training and some of their software?

The standard practice is to offer you a third of the value of the item.

delllat

Hammertime wrote: »

The standard practice is to offer you a third of the value of the item.

a third of the resale value or the new value?

murphaph

Hammertime wrote: »

The standard practice is to offer you a third of the value of the item.

I thought in Cash Converters the customer could nominate how much they wanted up to the maximum resale value. The reason being that the customer will want to get their item back and the system in CC allows the customer to pay interest which prevents their item from going on sale, the higher the original money paid, the higher the interest. I believe this interest is where the store makes a lot of its money, not on simply buying low, selling higher.

DubTony

So Cash Converters is a Pawn Broker?

murphaph

Yeah, but not like the old fashioned ones. Still the same basic service of course but there's a difference between a modern c-store and an old corner shop, though essentially the same thing.