Terri Ramsey Beavers A family store is something that every town enjoys across the world. It might have been handed down across generations, serving locals for dozens or even hundreds of years. It takes pride of place in your life, and you want to do all you can to make it work for you and your family. That means taking hard decisions and planning for a more profitable future. In this quick guide, we’ll provide four tips to help you manage your family store a little better, ensuring you keep in profit and can invest in improving your offering to your customers.
Advice
A family store is, in a sense, isolated from the wider business environment. Unlike large chain stores, which have a wealth of experience and feedback to act upon, a family store has to operate via intuition and the scant advice available to them. That means that you can steal a winning advantage by finding the right providers of advice. For retailers, you might find that this website, which covers trends in the retailing space, could help you identify new trends and products that you could adopt.
Apps
If your parents owned the store that you’re currently operating, they’ll have done their accounting on paper, with a pile of receipts around them. This was a hugely laborious part of their job and will have exhausted them after they officially closed their doors for the day. Today, the effort that they put in seems monumental, considering the wealth of apps out there to help small business owners better manage their financial affairs. Most stores will be able to work with accounting software, linked to their till system, which balances the books for them. If you’re looking to streamline your financial operations further, consider NetSuite optimization to fully integrate your accounting software with other business processes. This technology is hugely helpful as you face an uncertain future.
Bonds
Building bonds with your customer base is of vital importance as a family store. You are likely being undercut on your prices by online retailers and chain stores in your vicinity. That means that you’re competing on something other than trust: on personality and convenience. Offering a brilliant customer experience is one thing, but building lasting bonds with your regular customers, many of whom will be local, is key to making a profit each month. Do this, and you’ll avoid unpleasant moments when you’re losing cash as a firm.
Renegotiate Rates
Many family stores will be renting their property. Others will be paying a mortgage or will own the building outright, but will still be paying large bills for the operation of their store. Whether you’re paying rent and bills, or just bills, there’s plenty of renegotiation you can do here to bring those bills down. Even if you’re fairly certain that your providers won’t budge from their current position and prices, there’s nothing to lose in getting in touch and making an enquiry. If you strike lucky, you could end up saving hundreds of dollars over a year.
Making and saving money as a family business is difficult. These four tips could help redirect your energy into areas in which you can make the most profits, saving money as you do so.