Retail outlet

laraido

I am in the earliest stages of setting up a fashion retail outlet. I'm just looking for any people out there to share their experiences in this area. I know it's a broad question, so any feed back would be great.

RainyDay

Have you got experience in the trade? If not, go to work for someone else for 6 months before you put your own money at risk.

PTL

Ive no experiance in that sector of business but my advice is .... get a good accountant and keep every reciept possible and rainy days advice is probably the best advice you will ever get if youve never worked in this sector before.

ck1

We have been accountants for a client since she established her retail outlet some three - four years ago. We dealt with her from approximately six months prior to him getting the first shop. She now has two.

She worked in the retail clothing industry for some 15 years prior to this and even now she is still amazed as to what goes on behind the scenes. She had no idea that there was so much paperwork and administration and she now wants to employ a manager to deal with some of this side as a lot of her time is being gobble up when all she really want to do is sell clothes. The main problem for her is cashflow as at the beginning many clothing agents will not offer credit. Even with 30 to 150 days credit, cashflow is still a big problem. She buys a lot of stock overseas, Germany, Spain, Italy, UK, etc. and in their first couple of year trading overestimated thus leaving her with a lot of stock which had to be sold below cost and the remainder went to charity. Not a mistake she will do again.

Cost of establishment is hugh, key-money for premises, legal fees, etc. The other main problem that she had was staff, first getting staff that were honest and reliable, but also getting staff that would keep the paperwork in order, balancing the till, etc.

VAT is probably the main ongoing outlay outside purchases. Because VAT is not charged on purchases overseas and most of the purchases would be overseas, it still has to be charged on sale. My advice here would be set up two bank accounts, one for VAT and lodge VAT on sales to it. It is so easy to run up a VAT bill but not so easy to pay it off and Revenue have become very strict on VAT.

Good luck if you do establish.

laraido

thats very helpful, thanks. I'm trying to chat with as many people as I can with relative experience. The more info I can gather the faster I can hit the ground running. please keep posting if anything else comes to mind. thanks again!