Any ideas for cheap shop units?

bizzyb

My wife has always wanted to open her own shop,she has retail experience from various jobs in the past units in our town are available for 300-400 euro a month for smaller units 600 for larger.Population is approx 2000 with many surrounding rural villages coming in on a daily basis. It has a few pubs, 3 takeaways, 3 ladies clothes shops, 2 coffee shops,hairdressers,barbers, stationery/gift shop,filling station,chemist and a supervalu, prob 1 or 2 i missed! She was thinking a euro discount shop and i was thinking a traditional sweet shop(large national and secondry schools).Any ideas? She plans on market research on whatever she chooeses shes not going to just dive in but i said i would just throw it out there incase there is ideas she might have missed?

Bandara

Traditional sweet shop is a fad

Its this years Smoothie/NoodleBar/Milkshake etc etc

Euro shop can be profitable if you know what your doing and have contacts to buy correctly.

I'd be very dubious with such a tiny pop. area though. Why are you limiting yourself to your town? Theres no point paying 400 for a dead location when you can get a busy one for 800 and actually make a profit

fasttalkerchat

Prioritise location. Then you have to look at storage space. Euro shops buy in bulk so you can expect to use 25% of the floor space purely for storage if its a small unit.

highlandseoghan

Euro shops are doing huge business at the moment. I am just unsure if 2000 population is enough to make a euro shop survive, my guess would be no. I would stay away from the old sweet shop business, some of them are doing good but there is a lot not surviving and closing down. I would be looking at other areas where there is a higher population, rent will be a little bit higher but there would be a higher volume of customers around that could come into your shop. Euro shops make money because they take a little profit on each item but they sell so many products everyday this is where the profit comes from with only 2000 in the town i cant see this working.

Talk to locals in the town and ask them what do they feel the town needs. What do they hate having to go to other towns city for.

Recessionbust

Euro shop is a good idea. However be aware that a lot of these independant ones that open even in good locations close within the year, the reason that the large well known ones do so well is because the buying power they have, also range is everything as I'm sure your wife knows already.
The fatal mistake that some of these make is buying cheap tack which give high margins but they will sit on your shelf for some time tying up your capital.
In this climate I would buy a stock range that people need rather then the novelty goods.
There is plenty of suppliers for these lines, Astro, Fitzpatricks, Cagnett etc that only require a €300 min spend so it allows you to split your orders between suppliers though bare in mind the more you spend the more you save.
As mentioned I would stay clear of the old sweet shop while a great idea they are this years smoothie bar.
Good luck in what ever you decide.

sandin

There's a little shop beside the schools in Newbridge and basically it directly tragets the school market + a little local market.

Opens from 8am to 5pm Monday to Friday, closes during school holidays and sells well priced a decent quality sanwiches / rolls + the usual sweet shop stuff but not the big selection of a larger store.

By having tight opening hours, she just needs herself and a part-timer for the business, the level of stock is quite low as Cox's wholesale is around the corner.

Maybe that's an idea. Hoever the negative is if the schools are too small. In Newbridge between boys & girls there are about 1400 pupils.

Traditional Sweet shops would need a much bigger population. And whilst rent is low, its turning stock you need to think about. Stale and old stock = no new customers.