It is not that easy to be a highly successful online seller or brick-and-mortar store owner for a retail business. You want to think about many different things from what is included in the business plan to setting up the perfect legal structure to support the company.
You surely want to set yourself up to success so Gary Friedman, CEO of Restoration Hardware, gives you some smart retail business tips below.
Get Business Insurance
You always want to be protected from what you do not expect. Even if you are the only employed person, business insurance is still necessary. The only thing that you want to think about is what coverage is necessary. In most situations you will need personal property coverage and liability insurance. At the same time, based on exact operations, there are other policies you will want to look at like business owner’s policy, auto insurance and workers compensation.
Don’t Forget About Taxes
Many retail store owners try to get clients by offering lower prices. This is not a bad idea but it can turn into a disaster in the event that taxes are not taken into account. At the same time, not understanding how much you need to pay in taxes and not paying everything on time can lead to extra fines that you simply do not want to deal with.
Always be sure you meet with an accountant and a tax lawyer in order to understand exactly what taxes you have to pay, together with requirements that retailers have to meet.
Build An Ecommerce Website
Even if the bulk of your orders now come from brick-and-mortar locations, it is a very good idea to build your ecommerce website. If you do not have one, it is very difficult to create an experience that is seamless and smooth. Also, you are restricted to customers that are close to the physical location. Growing is going to be pretty difficult.
No matter what you might think, when you invest the money and time needed to set up your ecommerce experience, you gain a lot of value. Even if you exclusively sell on Amazon or Etsy at the moment as a retail store, you still want to increase brand awareness through the power of your own ecommerce site.
Create And Use A Blog
Besides having a website and selling on it, you want to also run a good business blog. Content creation is often challenging for the small business but it is definitely something that has to be considered. This is because it can drive really authentic engagement and the brand gets much better exposure.
The most important thing is to be sure that content created is a higher quality than what most of the market offers at the moment. At the same time, remember that the blog allows you to promote everything in a more efficient way and you do gain access to another resource where you can advertise what you are selling. If the blog offers really quality content and becomes a high authority resource in the industry, brand awareness automatically increases.
