Store Front Rug Facilities

[tmdry]

For anyone who has a store front commercial facility that does primary rug cleaning and or as one of it's services.

Do you feel that by having a store front facility brings you more work? Rather than an industrial location where you won't get as much exposure?

If you're building is located in a busy street where you had say 1200 sqft or less of actual floor space to setup a rug "spa" facility, would you go take the risk and go with the higher overhead/lease vs an industrial location where you won't get the exposure to passing by traffic?

We are trying to figure out if we should lease a smaller warehouse in a busy intersection/traffic light, it's own building (not in a strip mall), within 20 feet of sidewalk/3 lane street, w/ very good exposure (bank of america, walgreens, att, ihop as it's neighbors - but not attached to the actual building itself), but pay higher rent w/ consideration that the location will bring in drive by new business bi-weekly to monthly direct mail/online ads campaign or get a larger to double the space facility/warehouse for less money but not be visible to any passing cars/traffic/civilization and rely solely on direct marketing/website.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Bill

 

[David VB]

Will zoning allow you to be in a retail area. In my city, I have to be in an industrial zoned area.

 

[Desk Jockey]

If you're visible I would think the you're going to get more business BUT how much more is it going to cost you over the industrial park?

How many more rugs do you have to do to afford the extra "walk" in traffic? A few you can write it off as marketing costs but if its quite a few that could be all your profits. : (

We are on a busy 4-lane street where traffic is heavy both in the AM & PM drive to downtown. I think it has some value but I also believe that most people are moving at fast and in a hurry to get to work or get home and pay little attention to us.

 

[tmdry]

The place used to be an old merchants/meineke, it has 2 bays, and an office, the buildings close by are all retail.

The difference in cost is about $1000-$1500 a month.

The location is in a 6 way street (both ways) it seems. The building sits right on a major intersection, so the cars basically stare right at the facility, which at this point looks pretty run down. I haven't gotten a chance to see the inside yet, but I do know it'll need all the walls/ceilings drywalled, flooring redone from what I could peek inside thru a window. I would also repaint the outside if the owner would let us, to draw more attention to the store.

 

[Desk Jockey]

That's not terrible, 5-10 more rugs depending on what you charge. You might be able to gain that just from location.

I'd want to paint the building even if it was on my dime. Then put up some signage to draw them in, maybe a picture of a pile of oriental rugs. ????

This is us, as I mentioned we get 3-4 rugs dropped off a day but the majority of those are small, 6x9 and below.

 

[SMRBAP]

I had a location at one of the busiest intersections in my area years ago, in a major mall/shopping district. Shared a lot with a gas station that had a full parking lot of people walking 15 ft from my door all day every day. Made virtually no difference and the building and signs were as prominent as it gets. All Pro Carpet Cleaning was a 30 ft long text basically, sub categories of service almost as prominent all over the building.

2 years and I could count on fingers and toes the number of rugs and jobs we got walk in. But Doc seems to get justifiable levels - different market as yours likely is from both of ours.

I added auto detailing, and we were slammed. 6-8 detailers going from 7AM - 7PM daily. A bad day was 14 cars, good days we did as many as 30 full details. It got to a point where we were booked out 3 weeks or longer at times.

Point being that certain services sometimes don't realize immediate impulse purchases driven by location or are aided by the anchors surrounding you. I believe our line of work falls into that situation.

Your lease is $18k more a year, sounds like you are going to have loads of material and labor to get it up to your standards, and you might want to consider all the other operational cost increases as well, insurance, utilities, changing your marketing materials, etc.

I'd lay out all costs, figure out what your average net is on the rugs you currently service, if the net revenues there don't cover the additional nut at minimum, don't do it.

Though I'm one to not increase operational costs (expand) until I am at capacity and losing work because of that for a period long enough to prove its a long term situation and not just a short term anomaly.

 

[Desk Jockey]

ya know there is always a demand for auto detailing here. We also used to offer it although not at Anthony's level.

We grew tired of it, mainly due to the hassle of when an emergency would pop up we would still have a car to finish.

It is also hard work, awkward angles and we would put a lot of effort into them for minimal reward. There is a market for the work, we just have other opportunities than pay better.

 

[The Great Oz]

The surroundings are probably more important than just visibility. People having their car repaired aren't looking for home improvement services but they were obviously looking for automotive services. Locate near rug and carpet dealers, designer furniture showrooms, upmarket anything home fashion that will help draw the right people (in the right frame of mind) past your storefront and the location will be more likely to pay off.

If you want walk-in business (by far the most profitable kind) just decide if you'd get more bang for your buck by using the money saved for marketing your industrial location.

 

[tmdry]

I did the #'s and we would have to be doing 10 rugs per day at the very min for it to pay off, with a goal of 75-100 rugs per week by the 3rd month.

From what I can see listening to you guys, just the drive by's wouldn't be enough...so the marketing budget would have to be increased in several thousands per month for a brand new location, and the start up $ just to get it going could take a toll on us to get it off the ground till people started dropping off rugs.

As Richard mentioned, when I compare it to floods, with the equipment and no additional equipment needed, I could do the same #'s w/out needing a store front facility. But we are not there yet.