In a previous post I’ve talked about on-site versus in-shop repairs and how to choose the best business model for your computer repair business. Now I’d like to take that a step further and explore the age-old question: Should I continue to run my business from home or is it time to open up a physical store?
As always, I like to explore the pros and cons of both situations. This helps me understand which approach would be best for my business based on my goals. Here are some points to consider when weighing the possibility of opening up a storefront.
Pros of a Storefront
It’s tempting to want to take your business to the next level and have a storefront. It’s a physical embodiment of your brand and all of your hard work. Lets take a look at some reasons why this is a good idea.
Space
If you live in a studio apartment, there are only so many customer computers you can accommodate. That’s not including spare parts, office equipment, and anything else you might need to run your business. If you find yourself running out of space in your home and moving to a bigger place is not an option, a store front might be the best move for you.
Also, I feel it’s important to have a relative separation of your business and personal spaces. If your bedroom is also your office is also your repair desk, you may find it hard to work professionally when you’re sitting 5 feet from your bed. Get a storefront and you’ll then be able to keep all your business equipment in a separate location and it won’t be encroaching on your private space.
Growth
If you’re looking to grow your business larger than a one man show, you’ll need to start hiring employees. Although you can hire employees without a store front, it makes it much easier when you have a rally point other than your home.
Distractions
A potential downside to working from home, and one that I face often, are the distractions. At home, your office will be in close proximity to your TV, kitchen, bed, and yard…all of which may provide tempting distractions throughout the day. You may also have family members at home vying for your attention. It’s tough to set the work/life boundary when working at home. In your own shop, you’ll be removed from all of these distractions. You’ll be in an environment (hopefully) that’s conducive to work.
Drop-offs
There’s only so many customers you can service in a day as an on-site computer repair tech. To take your repair business to the next level you’ll need to stay put and have people bring their systems to you. While this is still possible from your home office, it may not be the best idea to have your customers coming over to your private residence. There may also be zoning issues in your town that frown on customers coming to your home.
Cons of a Storefront
Opening up a shop on Main Street may seem like an enticing idea. But there are more responsibilities and less flexibility involved in such a decision. Take these points into account before jumping in.
Employees
Although it is possible, it’s tough to run a storefront business all by yourself. That’s because running a store-front, at a minimum, involves greeting customers, handling customer issues, answering phones, and repairing systems. You couldn’t possibly do all of these things to a satisfactory level on your own. In that case, you’ll need to be ready to hire employees, which is a whole new topic onto itself. Just ask yourself if you’re willing to take on that burden before jumping into a brick-and-mortar business.
Work Hours
Does your schedule change every week? Do you like the freedom of choosing what time of day, or day of the week, that you work? If you like your work hours to be flexible, a store front might not be for you. A physical shop will normally need to keep regular hours in order to service drop-offs and pick-ups. You could hire employees to cover shifts that you’re not available, but even they will need the courtesy of a boss who keeps somewhat regular hours.
Overhead
One big consideration when working out of a storefront is the ongoing cost. You’ll not only be paying to lease the space, but you’ll also be paying taxes and utilities on the space as well. This is in contrast to your home, which you’re already paying for and which you can deduct the portions of it used for business.
You’ll also need to keep up the interior and the exterior including updated signage and advertisements. This will be easier with employees, but it’s still a significant increase in extraneous activity when compared to working from home.
Flexibility
It’s hard to change the direction of your business when you have a store front. If you decide that you want to move your business in the direction of website development or software training, a brick and mortar shop with hard drives on the shelves and a work bench for repairing PCs will become an unnecessary burden. While working from home, all you need to do is change your website a bit and you’re a new company!
Other Things to Consider
Location, Location, Location
If you do decide to open a storefront, it’s success will depend greatly upon the location. You want a store that’s easily accessible, in a high-traffic area, and in a different area than your competition. Sure, you can open a store off the beaten path and still rely on customer’s word of mouth and advertising to bring people in. However, the amount of extra customers you’ll need to cover the extra expenses of a store front means you’ll want to bring in as much traffic as possible. Location is therefore an important factor.
What are Your Goals?
Before jumping into opening a store front you need to asses your goals. Do you envision yourself planting roots in the community, hiring employees, franchising, repairing/selling hardware, and working standard hours? If yes, then a store front might be for you. If you want to have more flexibility and the option to shift gears quickly, it may be best to stick to your home office.
The Compromise
There’s actually a great way to compromise between working from home and renting a corner store in your town.
Office Space.
No I’m not talking about the movie (though it is a hilarious flick for folks who have ever worked the 9 to 5 grind) but I’m talking actual office space. More often then not, a small suite in an office park is often cheaper to rent and easier to maintain than a brick and mortar store front. With your own office outside of your home you’ll have the benefit of less distractions, more space, and room to grow. You’ll also have the option to hire employees or not, as there will be no need for someone to man the “front counter”.
You can basically treat your office space as a home base for your computer business. You can accept drop-offs if you want and not worry about people coming to your home. You also have the flexibility to shift your business model quickly since you won’t have a store front that needs overhauling.
The major disadvantage here is the lack of visibility. You will not get random walk-ins in an office building. But because you’re cutting costs in other ways though, it may be worth sacrificing the few extra customers a retail storefront would bring.
My Decision
So what did I decide is best for my business? Well, having recently started my computer business full time, I’m still trying to find a business model into. I’m seeing signs that hardware break/fix is becoming less and less of a commodity as computers become cheaper and more reliable. Yet I still really enjoy helping people solve computer problems.
For the moment I’m going to continue working from home. I have no desire to hire other employees. I like the flexibility of being a solo consultant. If I do ever consider taking my busniess out of my home, it will probably be to an office space instead of a store front. I’m just not the type of person who wants to be tied down to a brick and mortar shop.
In the end the decision to run your computer business out of a store front is a personal one. If anything, I would recommend that you run your computer business out of your home first, and then grow into another location if you choose. There’s just too much risk and up-front cost to justify jumping into a brick and mortar shop from the get-go.
Now I’d like to hear from you. I know I have readers who run their business from all the locations I mentioned above. Why do you choose to run your business from the location you’re running it form now? Do you plan to change that in the future?
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Great article! I have a good combination of both solutions. My garage was designed and remodeled into a computer repair shop – I don’t have to pay rent, and I don’t have to travel far! You’re right about the distractions though…
See a video of our shop here: http://www.youtube.com/user/Teknyka#p/u/9/9wWCpKqiHHc
I ended up hiring two technicians who work part time. Having employees helps me focus more on the important business needs while simple tasks get done by someone else.
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Matthew Rodela
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November 17th, 2011 at 1:34 am
Wow, that’s a great set-up you got there. That’s a great incentive for me to look into buying a house with a garage!
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I too have decided to remain mobile from my home. I love the flexibility! And with my iPhone 4S and a Squareup account I’m good to go!
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Matthew Rodela
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November 17th, 2011 at 1:37 am
Yes, technology is really making it much easier to run a mobile-only business!
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Great post. Started out running it out of my house for years but then started to get too many customers and the thought of them coming directly to my house was out of the question but also realized with the increase in customers and mainly business customers we would need a store-front location.
Yes need employees, yes need funds to cover those “extras”, yes can be daunting. But, if all you care about is simple break/fix for home users then I probably would not go the store-front route. But, if you are adding to your business model with other things then it might just be for you.
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To supplement my 4-5 average on-site appointments per day, I’ve been considering partnering with a local mailbox store as a drop-off location. I would pick-up computers on the way home, and I could work on them at home overnight or over the weekend.
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Dan
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December 12th, 2011 at 2:01 pm
@Mark…Very good idea and I think it could work. Friend of mine in New Hampshire just bought one of those “pack and wrap” that he used to rent in the same building. So now he can fix computer on-site, and mail packages at the same time. It’s really a very good route to go.
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i am currently working from home with my brother . But as the busness grows i will definaltey move into an office park of some sort
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I did the mobile thing for 2 years before venturing out into a brick and mortar location which I have been at for 6 years now. I initially enjoyed the flexibility of setting my own appts. I knew my avg time onsite and drive times to a tee, and I liked the free time I could sked in between call sfor some personal time, shopping, medical appts, or whatever. It was a big juggling act, but overhead was low and I made a decent living.
But in 2005, my Dad got ill and soon after died. It involved 2 round trip air fares and a few weeks of time off from my work. I had to ignore my business for this time and not only had to incur the expenses of 2 trips and a funeral, but I also was making absolutely “zero” income while I was gone.
Within 3 months after getting back, I took out a small loan to finance the move-in costs for a very small commercial suite nearby. It also made me decide to get a real merchant account to take credit cards which gave me credibility with my advertisements (not just paypal) Very soon after, I had my first employee, and enough extra customers to pay for it. The next time I needed to take some time off, my employee and subcontractors were able to handle about 75% of the work without my presence, so I was still making money. But I was having trouble growing to be able to afford 2 employees. My Yellow Page rep said he had the answers to that….
The only thing I would warn about is that once you get a commercial location and phone number, etc, that the Yellow Pages and others will come out of the woodwork to oversell you some big full color ads that they will embellish as the solution to expanding your business. They didn’t care if I succeeded or not once I signed the contract. Just watch your advertising budget. IMO, print advertising is almost dead, although it will still get you enough customers for this type of business if you watch your budget. Unless you have a big budget, I wouldn’t go with an ad any larger than a business card size ad. And don’t ever fall for the call tracking feature. You will be stuck with their number they assign that they own. If you drop out of that book, the number will ring no where. You can still get calls with an old phone book if the number is still good. To solve this, get your own virtual number for about $10 bucks a month that comes with call tracking, voice mail over email, call forwarding, etc. Someday, you will want more flexibility with your phone numbers and virtual numbers will help with that. And you also won’t have to worry about the phone company owning you. I port my virtual number to my digital phone that costs me $10 month for a total of $20/month. You might notice that I HATE our local phone company, their phone service and their books and reps. I primarily use the internet now, especially social media.
Anyway, mobile is great to start out with, but someday you will need to take some time off without losing new customers while you are away, and not alienating the ones you already have when they need you again and you are away. At least consider subcontracting to someone you trust and forward your calls to them so you earn something while you are gone. Learn how to represent each other. It is a good idea anyway to strike-up a relationship with another trusted tech so you can cover each others back when needed, not to mention some tech support for strange problems. If you can do that, then maybe you can stay mobile and avoid the headaches that having a shop causes.
What a topic, I’m sure I can write a book about it, literally. We have only scratched the surface here will all the comments I have read here. I wish I planned better in the beginning, but getting a shop kind of just happened out of my grief. But so far it has worked, but finding and keeping good techs to work with long term is another story we should talk about some day.
Dale
http://www.facebook.com/gakidoo
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Matthew Rodela
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January 3rd, 2012 at 5:28 pm
Great information Dale! It’s always interesting to hear real-life examples of what works for other people and how they arrive at that decision.
I’m sorry to hear of the tragic events that lead to your choice to open a store front, but it seems like you did what was best for you at the time. I’ve spoken on this blog in the past about the importance of getting to know local techs in your area and partnering with a few that can pick up your calls when you’re sick or on vacation and vice versa, so I definitely agree with you on that point.
I agree that finding and hiring good techs is a whole new topic! Someday I’ll get to that, but right now, in my business, I’m not looking to hire additional help anytime soon..I’m still working on growing my client base to keep myself busy!
Thanks again for your thoughtful comments.
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Storefront is not an option for us at this point due to the flexible hours and ability to make appointments with the customers ether at their location or a mutually agreed location. Some years down the road maybe that will change.
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