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Locations
Unless you contain your business to your
home, you may need office space, warehouse
space, manufacturing space, retail sales
space, and more.
Offices
Office space may be required to house employees,
meet with clients, and to add "brick
and mortar" legitimacy to your business
("10 Main Street" sounds much more
business-like than "10 Maple Street"
or "PO Box 10"). Read more about
your options in our article on office suites.
Stores
A store provides a location for
displaying
and explaining your product or
service, taking
orders, making deliveries to
your customers,
and providing customer service.
Today's businesses
develop a strategy that combines
two approaches
to reaching their customers.
Each has its
advantages and disadvantages:
- physical stores - having a storefront with a real address
may be cumbersome, but it allows customers
to touch your products and you to make a
personal appeal. On hand inventory allows
the customer to make a purchase and walk
out with the produce. Store fronts also imply
a permanency not found in Internet stores.
- web site and online stores - many new businesses begin online because
Internet stores are quick and inexpensive
to set-up. There is no negotiaing lease space
and the outfitting of the store is electronic.
In many cases, you can open your "virtual"
store and be selling products in just a few
minutes, and the store can be open around
the clock, every day of the week, without
the hassle of hiring a staff. Online stores
also allow you to reach a vast audience by
electronically eliminating the distance to
your store. However, selling online does
have its drawbacks, including restricting
your potential customers to those with Internet
access, higher charge card transaction fees,
product delivery costs, and dependence on
technology.
Keep in mind that many small
businesses operate
without stores and rely instead
on "mobile"
stores (pushcarts and vending
trucks, for
example) or on outbound sales
people that
visit potential customers at
their home or
place of business (such as door-to-door
sales). |
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