help with starting a fashion retail store

joegdoyle

I'm planning on opening a small fashion retail store, I already know the location & have sourced the stock from Asia. I just need to know the following

1: do I need to register? ( with who? )
2: should I start it as a limited company? ( If now can I do it later? )
3: should I register for VAT? I'm not sure we would go over the threshold in the first year

As I'm importing the stock I'll be paying VAT & duty so is it still worth registering for VAT?

I've been living in U.K. for past 18years but want to return home & start a business but not sure of the laws & regulations

Bandara

joegdoyle wrote: »

I'm planning on opening a small fashion retail store, I already know the location & have sourced the stock from Asia. I just need to know the following

1: do I need to register? ( with who? )
2: should I start it as a limited company? ( If now can I do it later? )
3: should I register for VAT? I'm not sure we would go over the threshold in the first year

As I'm importing the stock I'll be paying VAT & duty so is it still worth registering for VAT?

I've been living in U.K. for past 18years but want to return home & start a business but not sure of the laws & regulations

Best to speak to your accountant.

joegdoyle

sorry Bandara I do not have an accountant as this is my first business venture. I've worked for the same company for 14years but think its time to do something myself

Peterdalkey

1. register a business name with the CRO http://www.cro.ie/en/business-registration-business-name.aspx
2. register with Revenue http://www.revenue.ie/en/business/running/registering-tax.html, you may also need a PPS number.
3. Your call as to whether you should regsiter for VAT at this stage.

Some good information that is worth reading on here http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/types_of_employment/self_employment/setting_up_a_business_in_ireland.html

joegdoyle

Thanks Peterdalkey

jimmii

For retail VAT thresholds are pretty low so I would imagine you would need to register for VAT pretty early on if you don't intend to initially it would also depend on what start up costs you have when I opened there were a lot of initial costs I incurred that meant I got a few grand back in VAT which came in handy.

joegdoyle

Thanks for your reply jimmii. what sort of initial costs did you have? I think I've got them all sorted but would be a big help if I'm missing something. What sort of store do you have?

jimmii

We were really lucky as the unit was a first time let and was set up absolutely perfectly (€5k worth of lighting had just been installed etc). Retail display stuff like rails and mannequins are pretty expensive then there are little things like the till, safe, security system it all adds up pretty quickly.

joegdoyle

Yeah the unit we've been looking at was a boutique already so not too much to do. could I ask you about the cash register? did you go straight for one with credit cards or did you go for standard calculator sort?

jimmii

Was lucky there as I already had a touch screen computer so didn't have the cost of a full unit I just had to buy the software, receipt printer and cash draw. It did for the first year but we are going to be upgrading it to vend or something similar soon as it was pretty limited. Its well worth investing in a decent till system it makes the whole stock checking process a lot easier and it just looks a lot more professional to the customer too which is especially important in a fashion environment the smarter your shop as a whole the better the shopping experience will be. The card system is separate which works better for us as some times we do events outside of the shop so we can process card payments at them. Have you budgeted much for advertising? Even a small advert in a decent magazine is quite a lot at first you can trade off the "new" factor and get a good bit of free editorial. We started Facebook advertising towards the end of last year and that has paid off very well not only do we have a much larger social media audience now but the online sales we generated from those new likers paid for the advertising several times over which was a nice bonus! IMRO and PPI costs are relatively low but again its another cost to be factored in if you plan on getting those licenses. In store branding is pretty costly too for example a custom door mat is €200+ and you normally need 2 to cover deep cleaning. When budgeting just leave a decent sized contingency to allow for the extra bits and pieces.

joegdoyle

Do you need a IMRO licence if your only playing the radio? or is it for all music played? where abouts did you open?

jimmii

I am in Dublin 1. The IMRO things seems a bit of a grey area to me right now not so long ago a shoe shop won a case against them meaning they no longer had to pay as the music wasn't a reason people visited the shop but IMRO & PPI still insist you need one if you are playing any type of music. I found the link so you can see what happened!

http://www.tune-one.com/tune-one-news/phonographic-performance-ireland-ppi-forbidden-to-collect-music-royalties-by-court-decision/

There was a bit of a discussion on it here during the summer after the case my PPI is up for renewal soon and I am going to ask them about the case and whether it means I no longer need to pay see what they say! Even though this guy won I don't fancy having to go to court with them about it!!

joegdoyle

yeah I totally understand don't need the hassle with courts.....could you tell me roughly how much you think I'd need to start the store? I've got the stock sorted so that's not a problem

jimmii

Impossible to say its going to depend on the size of the unit and and the amount of stock you need to display and store and how well you want to display them. Even for the most very, very basic of shop fitting you are going to need a few thousand. My shop is pretty small (about 1k sqft) and we have spent around €4k just on furniture for display but that was because our shop has that kind of vintagey look that means you can get away with having "rustic" looking pieces!! Part of what we do is upcycling as well so we have quite a bit of furniture that has cost us next to nothing that we have done up ourselves. Initially we made do with a few Ikea bits to fill in the extra space but its not ideal as they are normally quite bulky and reduce the display space you have but they are cheap and the specialist retail stuff is just insanely expensive.

joegdoyle

Thank you so much for your help & patience......the store is going to cost us 600euros a month & already has been set up as a boutique so not much work needed. could you tell me where to get store insurance from?

jimmii

I got insurance via Chill and it worked out way cheaper than I was expecting! I thought we would be looking at €1k-€1200 and it came in under €600 with Aviva which was nice!! The stock & cash cover is fairly small but its more than enough for us.

joegdoyle

jimmii thank you again for all your help, I hope you and your business all the best for the future

jimmii

No problem always happy to help! I know how tough it can be to get going! Best of luck with it.