Locate and design: find the perfect shop for your business
You’ve created an interior design palace in your home, the kind of property that would make Kevin McCloud from Grand Designs laugh with glee. Arabesque designs on the windows, pristine quilts on the bed, and sunlight seeping through the entire house throughout those long lilting summer days.
But there’s one problem – you’ve funnelled so much cash into the world’s greatest home that the business you run is looking more rundown than a tramp’s lair. But without an impressive shopfront, you won’t be able to reel in customers and keep your home rich in fine linens and wallpaper.
Indeed, finding a shop that’s well-designed doesn’t have as much in common with home design as you might think. Where making your home perfect is a matter personal to you, creating an ideal shop is about reeling in the right kind of customers.
With that in mind, we’ve come up with a few property tips to help you find and design the perfect place of business. Take a look.
The right location
A boutique coffee shop is unlikely to thrive on an industrial estate, much like a shop specialising in clothing for the elderly probably won’t make pretty green in a hip, youth-oriented location.
But an estate agent isn’t likely to tell you which property is perfect for you. When you’re hunting for a shop for sale, you’ll need to find advisors that you can trust, as well as have a working knowledge of the area that you can delve into on your own.
For our money, Shopproperty is a good shout, with a site that’s loaded with information and a sales team that’s upfront about the properties it’s selling. What’s more, this is a company that’s specially designed for anyone looking for a commercial property, so you won’t encounter staff more used to private residences.
A solid shopfront
The window of your shop can either draw in punters or repulse them – it’s all a matter of how you dress it.
And that doesn’t always mean putting the most expensive item in a window (a mistake made by many upmarket retail outlets). Instead, it might be about luring potential customers inside with amazing deals, astounding offers and mega savings.
In more general terms, choose a colour for the exterior of your shop that says a lot about its brand personality. Are you a royal blue kind of person? Or maybe you prefer a calming white on your shop front? This seemingly minor decision might seem trivial, but it could mean the difference between a shop’s success and failure.
If you’ve got any other design ideas for your retail business, let us know in the comments below.
