Now, here’s a lady with guts. Recession or not, she’s opening a specialty, walk-in bookstore in Utah. And her clientele — kids — have chronically low disposable income!
Witte decided early last month that the time was right to start a children’s bookstore. She’s already got a name picked out, Fire Petal Books, and a location, a 1,400 sq. ft. space in Centerville, Utah, just outside Salt Lake City. The only problem is that she doesn’t have startup funds.
via New Children’s Bookstore to Open Near Salt Lake City – 2010-03-04 21:45:00 | Publishers Weekly.
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One Comment
In order to start my own shoppe (a used bookstore with a few new titles each season), I had to wait until I didn’t require a ‘living wage.’ Even then, I got chest pains when I borrowed the $130,000 for mortgage, and start-up money (and enough to float me the upward to three YEARS) before I began to see any profits (and why something like 75% of businesses fail in the first couple of years and more in the first five). I never took money out for myself (although the write-off make it possible to survive), and I started seeing money the end of the first year, and actually got a minor-league ‘paycheck’ (most of us call it a draw on the business, rather than a true paycheck because when you have to pay bills first, on the list, you, the owner, are last (this means employees get paid first, very frustrating).
A dream is exactly that. I had the dream for thirty years (maybe from the first day I walked into the used book department of a larger bookstore!), but actually living the dream is another thing.
Good luck to her, but the reality in this economy is that even when you could broach a lender for start-up funds in days gone by, a high-risk business, which is what most people who start gift/book/and even small restaurants are, are SOOO high risk, banks won’t front the money that is almost certain to be lost.
What I would recommend for this woman is to ‘sub-let’ space in an established business. Maybe a struggling business like a gift shoppe, or maybe a small cafe, and get to live the dream…on a much smaller scale (using their own ‘living wage’ paycheck to front the start-up and up to the five years it will take to ‘build a name.’)
I now have a name, and I get ten times the customers I had in the beginning months (don’t ask, but things happen in business that keep you from the estimated growth you planned on. Mine was urban construction THREE times in the ten years we’ve had our operation).
IF it were not for online, I would be gone. And unlike the online sellers who have no brick and mortar, I put almost every last cent back into the business to keep this battle ship afloat (in this economy it is definitely a battle to remain in business).
“I,” too would do only online and pocket more of the profits, but alas, in this economy I can’t sell the building I bought (so I’d never have to pack and move the books and shelving, as several of my compatriots in the business have had to do more than ONCE in the ten years I have been here). So, I’m stuck paddling, as the book business evolves (with Kindle and the iPad).
I don’t regret my enterprise, but what this young woman needs to know, when you work for yourself, the old joke is you only work half-time. Whatever 12 hours a day you want!
IF I had it to do over again knowing what I know now, I am not sure I would have an open store. However, I do love books, and I do love my job!
Debbie