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screen printing => General Screen Printing => Topic started by: Shawn (EIP) on October 20, 2011, 11:08:53 PM
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warehouse space vs store front
let's assume the warehouse space is on the first floor with a loading dock
pros:
Cons:
?
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Pros for warehouse.
Cheaper rent
Limited walk ins
Cons
None for me
I dont know what I would do in a retail environment. Go crazy maybe ;D
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This is my answer to this. How many store front screen printers have you seen?
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We have been in a store front since 1993 and it has been successful. The upside is you can charge retail prices for small one piece two piece dtg or embroidery jobs.
The down side is putting up with time wasting pita customers. I learned real quick and hired a girl to be our customer service person. I like the fact that we are accessible to the public and are in a highly visable location. You never know who is going to walk in the door, and I mean that in a positive way. Good Luck
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The key is a blend of both. We are a storefront, but we are far enough off the road that it keeps most crazies out. I would not want to be in a retail strip mall...bad idea.
You want to be easy to find, but not too easy.
Brannon or Sonny, is that about what you would say about my shop? I also see that in a lot of other shops around here, but you guys are in more shops than I am.
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We are slightly off the beaten path, but we are still on a main road that gets a bit of traffic so we are really still store front but it looks like 2 warehouses.
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This is my answer to this. How many store front screen printers have you seen?
Is this a trick questions? I've seen every store front printer there is in my area. Of course I haven't seen the warehouse locations since I don't lurk around in industrial parks.
Seriously though, there are 4 in my little area of Minneapolis alone and I've seen several more retail locations just driving around the Twin Cities.
I do know that one retail location printer has mentioned to me that there are a ton of time waster walk-ins.
I think a retail location would be hard for a one man operation to run efficiently where as a warehouse location could be run as a one man shop.
I've thought about getting a literal store front of 500 sf more or less on one the busier avenues in Minneapolis and outfit it with maybe a 4/1, flash, DTG and a heat press and then run the serious equipment from a warehouse type space nearby. The retail front would be used primarily as a show room and sales office to drive work for the warehouse location. My calculations put the the renting of two spaces in line with one decent retail space of totaling the square footage. Any thoughts on that?
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we are moving from a high traffic retail area, 30 mph speed zone in a plaza w/ a 7-11 (high walk-in) to another main road in a 45 mph zone, not in a plaza. . . . We are not an impulse buy product so we don't need that type of availability. We did it for a while to get the awareness, but now we need an open floor plan, bay for vehicle wraps, less walk-in BS. . .if you market yourself right, and being a one man shop - you should really look into a warehouse. you should still be easily found if needed, not in a sketchy area, safe for soccer moms. . now is the time to jump, buildings are vacant everywhere, dying for occupants. . .negotiate a good deal and stop fking around moving those machines. . .get a shop set up RIGHT and start making phone calls.
oh by the way - we are going from 2200 sq/ft to over 7k. . .the cost is 300/more a month.....WIN. . .
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I am in an industrial park, no walk ins, no foot traffic, nobody bothering us about printing 2 shirts. I couldn't be happier with that currently. We are in 8,000 sqft.
If I ever decided to go with a store front, I would do a small 1-2k sqft one in a strip mall and put a person or two down there taking orders and have it all produced here. I think that would work best, let the workers do work, let the sellers sell.
So far though we are still probably 99.9% internet. We have some word of mouth locals and it is increasing rapidly but I don't have the hands to handle the local market yet.
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we are moving from a high traffic retail area, 30 mph speed zone in a plaza w/ a 7-11 (high walk-in) to another main road in a 45 mph zone, not in a plaza. . . . We are not an impulse buy product so we don't need that type of availability. We did it for a while to get the awareness, but now we need an open floor plan, bay for vehicle wraps, less walk-in BS. . .if you market yourself right, and being a one man shop - you should really look into a warehouse. you should still be easily found if needed, not in a sketchy area, safe for soccer moms. . now is the time to jump, buildings are vacant everywhere, dying for occupants. . .negotiate a good deal and stop fking around moving those machines. . .get a shop set up RIGHT and start making phone calls.
oh by the way - we are going from 2200 sq/ft to over 7k. . .the cost is 300/more a month.....WIN. . .
That's awesome man your shop was a squeeze.
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I have warehouse experience and a shared loading dock 12 feet from my entrance though my issues there were a bit different , one being next door to a bigger shop (that now does my contract work) and 2nd being located in the ghetto. If I move into a warehouse space today I'm still only going to have the same amount of business but I would have higher rent and a power bill. The wife argues that a retail location has the potential to generate the money to cover the higher rent do to walk ins and what not... and she would work the customer service counter/show room. We figured that we would have "walk-in" hours 12 - 6 unless other arrangements have been made and closed to the public on weekends unless a pick up is needed. I've been out of my basement for 3 years now , in 3 different locations business being the same no matter which spot, my obvious issue is not being seen... and yeah being a shotty sales rep for myself.
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One retail location I know has hours from something like 12-5 or something, allowing them to print in peace in the morning and a bit in the evenings.
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I'm starting to think maybe it would wise to pick a college town (theres plenty here) maybe the one I'm printing for now. Scope out the area for other printers , what rent is going to run me and move in without losing any of my current customer base.
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I'm starting to think maybe it would wise to pick a college town (theres plenty here) maybe the one I'm printing for now. Scope out the area for other printers , what rent is going to run me and move in without losing any of my current customer base.
Man its not the location >:( You have got to look deeper. Get a friend to go under cover and see how these other guys are handling their customers. Get real bids from them. Have them ask to tour their shops if they can. I know that sounds kind of shady but at this point you are hurting and you need to do something. There are tons of shops that are in the biggest ghettos on this planet and they are cranking out work like crazy. I am in a spot that even when I give customers detailed instructions they still have a hard time finding it. There has to be some other aspect that your missing.
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I'm starting to think maybe it would wise to pick a college town (theres plenty here) maybe the one I'm printing for now. Scope out the area for other printers , what rent is going to run me and move in without losing any of my current customer base.
Man its not the location >:( You have got to look deeper. Get a friend to go under cover and see how these other guys are handling their customers. Get real bids from them. Have them ask to tour their shops if they can. I know that sounds kind of shady but at this point you are hurting and you need to do something. There are tons of shops that are in the biggest ghettos on this planet and they are cranking out work like crazy. I am in a spot that even when I give customers detailed instructions they still have a hard time finding it. There has to be some other aspect that your missing.
I hear it all from my customers. I know a little about every print shop that matters in my area.
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I'm starting to think maybe it would wise to pick a college town (theres plenty here) maybe the one I'm printing for now. Scope out the area for other printers , what rent is going to run me and move in without losing any of my current customer base.
Man its not the location >:( You have got to look deeper. Get a friend to go under cover and see how these other guys are handling their customers. Get real bids from them. Have them ask to tour their shops if they can. I know that sounds kind of shady but at this point you are hurting and you need to do something. There are tons of shops that are in the biggest ghettos on this planet and they are cranking out work like crazy. I am in a spot that even when I give customers detailed instructions they still have a hard time finding it. There has to be some other aspect that your missing.
I hear it all from my customers. I know a little about every print shop that matters in my area.
I agree, I know this much. When I got my Auto they all started shitting bricks because there is no autos in town that I know of. One of them even had one of their suppliers come check us out and see the shop. (Spying I think). I gladly showed him all my new pretty blue stuff. They don't scare me, I don't do local business, so they should only be scared of me if I decide to.
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I do a couple hundred orders a year and at the most I see 10 of my clients face to face to make the sale.....
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I'm starting to think maybe it would wise to pick a college town (theres plenty here) maybe the one I'm printing for now. Scope out the area for other printers , what rent is going to run me and move in without losing any of my current customer base.
Man its not the location >:( You have got to look deeper. Get a friend to go under cover and see how these other guys are handling their customers. Get real bids from them. Have them ask to tour their shops if they can. I know that sounds kind of shady but at this point you are hurting and you need to do something. There are tons of shops that are in the biggest ghettos on this planet and they are cranking out work like crazy. I am in a spot that even when I give customers detailed instructions they still have a hard time finding it. There has to be some other aspect that your missing.
I hear it all from my customers. I know a little about every print shop that matters in my area.
I agree, I know this much. When I got my Auto they all started shitting bricks because there is no autos in town that I know of. One of them even had one of their suppliers come check us out and see the shop. (Spying I think). I gladly showed him all my new pretty blue stuff. They don't scare me, I don't do local business, so they should only be scared of me if I decide to.
I do want to clarify that I have not had anyone do that for me. But if I was struggling I would probably do whatever it takes to find out what I am doing wrong.
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This is my answer to this. How many store front screen printers have you seen?
Is this a trick questions? I've seen every store front printer there is in my area. Of course I haven't seen the warehouse locations since I don't lurk around in industrial parks.
Seriously though, there are 4 in my little area of Minneapolis alone and I've seen several more retail locations just driving around the Twin Cities.
I do know that one retail location printer has mentioned to me that there are a ton of time waster walk-ins.
I think a retail location would be hard for a one man operation to run efficiently where as a warehouse location could be run as a one man shop.
I've thought about getting a literal store front of 500 sf more or less on one the busier avenues in Minneapolis and outfit it with maybe a 4/1, flash, DTG and a heat press and then run the serious equipment from a warehouse type space nearby. The retail front would be used primarily as a show room and sales office to drive work for the warehouse location. My calculations put the the renting of two spaces in line with one decent retail space of totaling the square footage. Any thoughts on that?
Store Front to me is being in a high traffic area. Like next to a Subway restaurant or Wal-Mart. You woudl be getting hundreds of walkins a day. Being on a busy street sometimes counts. The major difference for me for getting a warehouse is the cost and dealing with walkins. Store front here is $5-15 a foot and warehouse is $.50-$1 a foot. I get all my work from the internet or from refurrals so store front was not needed.
The reason I answered it this way is look at how many retail store front screen printers you see. In my area there are hundreds of screen printers But if you drive around you may only find 5 of them and they are not the busy ones. Most screen printers are one or 2 guy shops that don't have time to deal with walk ins. If I was a store front I would have to have a receptionist. I just don't think it’s worth the money or time dealing with tire kickers to have a store front.
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If you're a retail printer and struggling, find the best LOCATION you can for the money. If you don't already have customers coming to you, then you'll need to attract them with other methods. Drive-by business and advertising. Make sure your website is up to snuff as far as you showing up on local searches. I moved my business from a warehouse-type location with road frontage that was 5 minutes outside the town to a downtown location with lots of traffic one street off main and across from a park. My business is up based solely on location because customers drive by and see my windows every day. Picked up a local booster club account solely because of my windows and location. My space is much smaller at about 1900 square feet but I have it all in here snug as a bug and running. Costs less to heat too! I put a door dinger on the door so when I'm in the shop it rings when a customer comes in and I pause production to go help them.
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I think it's possible to not necessarily have a "storefront" but still be visible. There are plenty of warehouse areas just off of a major road or near a busy intersection, that with the right location in the park/signage, you could still get tons of visibility without the retail SF prices. For me, in the city, parking is more valuable than just about anything.
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I think it's possible to not necessarily have a "storefront" but still be visible. There are plenty of warehouse areas just off of a major road or near a busy intersection, that with the right location in the park/signage, you could still get tons of visibility without the retail SF prices. For me, in the city, parking is more valuable than just about anything.
Exactly. My goal was to get in a high-traffic convenient location as cheaply as possible. There are usually warehouse-type properties one street back from main street that people still utilize. In my case the road I chose is a better/quicker route than main st so it is used heavily. An old garage building with a couple big windows plopped right in the thick of it with hours posted on the windows so if you want that free time to print and not deal with customers. Print in the morning and open up around lunch time. That way you control the walk-ins but people that call can still make an appointment to come in earlier for pick up or ordering.
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So whats wrong with the ghetto? by the way I really hate that word...but on the subject we have 3 main printers in our town and all 3 of us have store fronts....I,m in a plaza the other near a school zone and the bigger of us just built a new building with a store front and warehouse. Location is not everything in the print game if you market right, like Graphicdisorder he is all internet perfect for him look at Killer out in the sticks...Its all how you market yourself/business.
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So whats wrong with the ghetto? by the way I really hate that word...but on the subject we have 3 main printers in our town and all 3 of us have store fronts....I,m in a plaza the other near a school zone and the bigger of us just built a new building with a store front and warehouse. Location is not everything in the print game if you market right, like Graphicdisorder he is all internet perfect for him look at Killer out in the sticks...Its all how you market yourself/business.
Let's just say people in the ghetto's of Rochester get shot every day, I'm sure Homer could back me up on that one. We have a higher homicide rate than NYC.
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I know people don't care about living anymore and that is really sad to say.
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I know people don't care about living anymore and that is really sad to say.
99% of the time it's gang or drug related. Make drugs legal, less people get shot.
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Like everything else, it comes down to what will work best with your business plan. If all you have is a DTG, you may not want a warehouse location. If all you do is contract printing, you may not want a retail location. I think if you look around you will find very successful shops in both varieties. Sam (Socalmf) and Homer are both retail and seem to make it work pretty good.
For me, a warehouse location works much better. I pay way less for a 2000 sq ft space (very nice, clean, professional, safe neigborhood, parking, etc) than I would for a 1000 sq ft retail space downtown. Also, I do not want to have hours I need to be there. My atmosphere works great for 'by appointment only'.
If I was to look at a retail space, these are the things I would ask myself:
How much more money is my rent? What is my plan to utilize the retail exposure make more than that increase in overhead to make this move worth it for me.
Will I have a smaller space and will this effect me now or cause issues with growth?
Will I have doorway issues? think of Homer getting his auto.
Do I want to have dedicated hours and how do I plan to deal with the walk in customers who want 1 shirt?
Good luck in which ever path you take.
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We do a split- downtown retail frontage open 6 days a week and production off-site. Our location is unique and I drove hard to get our production on-site, which was totally do-able on our end and why I put a lot of effort into developing the space we're in but our landowners had some issues with lien-holders and entangled investments unfortunately, so I grabbed a good, stable off-site space for production. We still might wind up with a whiskey distillery for neighbors in the end though, can't beat that.
The big difference is we have an actual clothing line that we sell and typically accounts for a third to half of our sales in a given month. If I tended to the line better it could be practically all we do. So we have a good reason for the store front. There's almost no indication in the store that we do custom printing yet we generate a lot of custom print work from being here. Word gets around and people put it together when you tell them all the merch in the store is printed in-house.
If I only did custom printing I wouldn't really care about where we were. In fact, I would prefer to be away from foot traffic and walk-ins. As disappointed as I am in not being able to walk through a door and manage production, then walk back through and take care of the front end, I'm glad production is going to be hidden away, as printers we have to deal with so many variables and it's good to have a place that's conducive to uninterrupted focus and work.
Word of mouth is uber-powerful and worth more than any advertising in my opinion. In our case, if I was just looking at the bottom line, we could put ourselves wherever we wanted. I opened the retail front because we were doing insane sales out of a 10x10 canopy tent for four hours once a week during the warmer season at a market lodged in an alley behind a bar and a laundry service. People were tracking us down to get what we had so it was clear that if we made ourselves easy to find things would go alright. We're also a fairly popular venue now as we host art monthly and music and community events here frequently in the store. I'm typing all this now because I'm on duty tonite and the second event of the evening isn't exactly my bag - this is the first cover of 'watchtower' we've been host to - so I'm holed up in the office w. earplugs doing some work.
This is rambling a bit but if you're looking into retail make sure you have a good solid reason to do so. And keep in mind we're in a recession- you need to be more than just a storefront because we're all a little extra broke. Put yourself in a community you enjoy and appreciate and you'll get the same back. If you're looking around in disgust at the 'ghetto' you live in, having a store front there isn't going to make you happy. Learn to love where you are or move on. Also be aware, if you haven't already discovered this, that real estate can be volatile in retail areas. In the end, do what feels good.
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The Genesee Brewery is literaly across the street from my shop , on a hot summer day the stinch of hops is enough to make you want to puke.
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The Genesee Brewery is literaly across the street from my shop , on a hot summer day the stinch of hops is enough to make you want to puke.
the taste of Genessee beer makes me want to puke. . it's like drinking warm goat piss.
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Uhhhh how would one know what goat piss tastes like lol? :o
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there was a party. . bikinis, a hot tub, we were on a farm . .yada yada yada. . I ended up in the hospital. . . ;D oh wait. . I have no idea. . .
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LMAO!
The topic at hand-
I to have been entertaining a small retail spot to go along with my small warehouse spot but just the fact that you have to be commited to a retail spot for certain hours makes me not want to do it.
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there was a party. . bikinis, a hot tub, we were on a farm . .yada yada yada. . I ended up in the hospital. . . ;D oh wait. . I have no idea. . .
Goats in bikinis... right. :o :P
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I've been paying $1/ft at my industrial spot, but just found a .85/ft storefront located on a very busy corner downtown. Only 1 mile from our college. I'm going to check out the power supply and layout tomorrow...
I think it would work great if it was designed with walk-ins in mind, with space alotted for them to peruse and select all comfortable like. I think some may be turned off if the orders aren't huge quantity, but if you had a dtg to cover short runs...