Christchurch, the home of the car yard and the coffee shop. It seems as soon as one closes, the exact same type of business opens in it’s place. I can see the thought process now:
“Wow that place is set up for a car yard, I could open one up. It’s the perfect place. I can see a car yard here”. That’s because you have seen a car yard there! Unfortunately that and running the idea past a friend or two is the only planning that’s been done. Then voila! The doors open, and it’s all great… until it fails. The problem is not finding out the facts. Why did the shop that went before you fail? This should be more than a 10 minute consideration, but the key consideration to deciding if it’s a plausible business venue or not.
I know you’ll tell me, you’ll do it better, newer, brighter and different, but how can you do it differently if you don’t have a measuring stick? You can’t do it better, if you don’t know what the ‘worse’ was. Find the old owners, or make the real estate agent give you a feasible report on the past business. This is your investment, so do whatever it takes to find out what really (honestly) happened to the other business. If you can’t find an answer, walk away. If the reason is so hard to nail down, or no one has bothered, then walk away.
Which leads to another point, if your sole inspiration to set up shop is the location, think again. Great businesses, fantastic restaurants, and profitable car sales yards don’t happen by accident. They see the need, create the business and then find the right place, not the reverse of this order.
Of course I don’t need to say, if it’s a large chain that has moved out: Starbucks; McDonald’s; Volvo; don’t think you can do the same thing better.
