Klen

Khmm,what will be different?You will still need to sit entire day in store and pray God for customers.Atleast on computer and internet you have more freedom.

ultimatebbwdotcom

Also you might want to add the following to your list:

Insurance costs.
Commercial property tax costs.
Initial stock and equipment purchase costs.
Alarm system (insurance guys will likely insist on it)
Shop fittings (usually 3 times more than your worst guess) you should include printed plastic bags, sign for shop front etc etc.
Get a business account at your bank of choice
Check out Accountants fees and your likely tax situation.
Draw up a business plan. At least 12 months that projects sales/costs at a minimum.
Advertising costs.
Visa account - should be free but contact a merchant to make sure you can get it and what their fees for retail are.

Most important - A list of product distributors, their unit cost and supply terms. Its unlikely that they will give you revolving credit iniitlally. In addition you'll need to work out who distributes which labels. Its not uncommon to have 20 plus distributors to get all the labels you need.

Theres probably more but off the top of my head it wasnt a bad start.

Splum

Record store? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Burridge

Thank you.

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NYC

kane

Another couple of things is you need to consider. You need to take into consideration employees. You may want to run it yourself, but if you are open 12-15 hours a day 7 days a week it won't take long until you are burned out working those hours. So you need to add in the cost of employees and everything that goes with them (workman's comp, social security, any benefits etc.)

Also you will need capitol to sustain you for several months. Many people say you should make sure you enough money to keep the business open for 12 months so if it takes you several months to start making a profit you won't close.

Another thing to consider: Once you get a place and sign a lease, what is the cost of breaking it? If your company goes under in a 9 months you don't want to be stuck paying a 10 year lease.

You may want to consider hiring some kind of a publicist at first to help you get some publicity for the new store.

One last thing is that you might want to look into what it will take to get in-store shows from bands. A lot of bands will show up at stores and do small acoustic shows. This can really help you get noticed. When I was writing for The Rocket I would see bands go to small record stores and draw a 1000 people to see them, many of those people would buy the CD so it could get signed and they now know about the store and think it's cool so they go back and tell their friends. Word of mouth will be your #1 marketing tool so you will need to develop ways to get this and be patient while it grows.

Jace

we have a few killer record stores here in Atlanta, whoever is saying they won't make it is an idiot

one of the main ones here is only about as big as a garage, they have at least 100k albums at any time, covering all genres, and it is PACKED in there every day....i would say they get EASILY 100 people buying records every day....there isn't a time I am in there, even at 1pm on a weekday, that I don't see 2-3 people checkout making purchases

a record store is something I have always wanted to open too, and I will one day....mine is going to be a record store / pez collectors store

there are only like 3 stores in the USA decicated to pez collectors, i wanna be one of them

Jace

oh yeah, there is a HUGE chain called Amoeba Music that specializes in records...one thing they do to get their stock in whatever city they are opening in, is take a HUGE ad out in a few papers saying "we will buy your records" and people will come down all day long and Amoeba will just buy full lots of records from people for REALLY cheap prices

http://www.amoebamusic.com/

kane

If you are going to buy records check out local auctions too. I went to a local auction not too long ago and there was a collection of about 3,000 records that went for $1000. I don't know much about what records are worth what so I stopped bidding when it hit $500, but that could be a great way to get some product in your hands at a reasonable price.

Burridge

kane, jace and ultimatebbw - thanks for all your suggestions and for holding back on the fearmongering. I live in new york city and i believe there will be plenty more succesful independant record stores to emerge in my city in my lifetime and if i try i just might be one of them. thanks again, and im most definitely open to more advice.

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NYC

kane

I would love to open a cool record store. I don't want to scare anyone, just want to help you get a realistic idea of what it would take.

If you do decide to do it, I hope you succeed and make a kick ass store.

ultimatebbwdotcom

Great suggestion and well worth negotiating with your landlord.

If i remember rightly its called a "Break clause" and even though a landlord will offer cheaper rent for say a 5 year lease than a 1 year - if you can take the 5 year but ask for a break clause to be put in at the 2 year mark, you should still be able to walk away with the preferential terms but not the millstone around your neck that goes with them.

teh ghey

Thats the LAST business Id start.
Haven't you noticed records sales are at an all time low?
Remember the old days when the top albums would sell 5-10 million?
Now none of them do
http://billboard.com/bbcom/charts/ch...+Billboard+200

All the Tower Records that I know of have either closed or are holding going out of business sales