Friday, March 28, 2008

Entry3_20400495

Finding the Perfect Location


When opening a store what do you think the most important factor to success? This article tells you that location is one of the critical factors in opening or expanding your vendor.
When Tony Calamunci, the president of Johnny’s Lunch Franchise, was 12, he dreamed to make his family’s Jamestown restaurant into a nationwide franchise. However, he didn’t hurry because he wanted it to do right. It took more than a quarter century to realize his dream. Transforming a small-town hot dog joint into a national franchise takes an extraordinary amount of planning and strategy. To operate all these works, Calalmunci hired experts to help his dream come true.

His first step in the expansion plan was contracting a professional management and a location research consultancy that conducted in-depth interviews with more than 600 patrons of the original Johnny’s Lunch and used the data to create a target customer profile. John Orton, the vise-president in charge for real estate for Johnny’s lunch, says “We need density within the first-mile radius of our locations because our primary day part is the lunch period.” Devon Wolfe, a managing director at Mapinfo, suggests for entrepreneurs to think about the following questions. Who is your customer? Who else is out there that you’re competing with? What kind of budget do you have for marketing? What does your business plan say? Before expanding your business you should answer these questions and do the math.

One of the most important parts Tony had considered was picking appropriate neighborhood demographics. He needed to target the right costumers. Even when you’ve chosen the right demographic space, you have to examine your competion and your timing. ” Selecting suburbs won’t be a good choice because there aren’t many people during the lunch period.
He also considered his neighboring vendors. Orton says “If you’re in a center with Leann’s Nails, Joe’s Tax Service, and Omar’s Feed Supply, it creates a different perception in customers’ mind than if you’re next to Starbucks, Panera and Chipotle.” In other words, big brands can make good neighbors.

All of these jobs are done by experts paid a lot of money, but don’t be frustrated though you can’t afford to hire these experts. You can use the internet simply searching the terms like ‘business demographics’ There are a number of venders that have indexes that will match up with your concept. So don’t dive for the dartboard when selecting sites because changing your stores location several times could kill your business.

Reverence : http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/mar2008/sb20080324_098559.htm?chan=smallbiz_smallbiz+index+page_top+small+business+stories

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