warehouse space vs store front

[GraphicDisorder]

I'm starting to think maybe it would wise to pick a college town (theres plenty here) maybe the one I'm printing for now.  Scope out the area for other printers , what rent is going to run me and move in without losing any of my current customer base.

Man its not the location You have got to look deeper. Get a friend to go under cover and see how these other guys are handling their customers. Get real bids from them. Have them ask to tour their shops if they can. I know that sounds kind of shady but at this point you are hurting and you need to do something. There are tons of shops that are in the biggest ghettos on this planet and they are cranking out work like crazy. I am in a spot that even when I give customers detailed instructions they still have a hard time finding it. There has to be some other aspect that your missing.

I hear it all from my customers. I know a little about every print shop that matters in my area.

I agree, I know this much.  When I got my Auto they all started shitting bricks because there is no autos in town that I know of.  One of them even had one of their suppliers come check us out and see the shop.  (Spying I think).  I gladly showed him all my new pretty blue stuff.  They don't scare me, I don't do local business, so they should only be scared of me if I decide to.

[royster13]

I do a couple hundred orders a year and at the most I see 10 of my clients face to face to make the sale.....

[JBLUE]

I'm starting to think maybe it would wise to pick a college town (theres plenty here) maybe the one I'm printing for now.  Scope out the area for other printers , what rent is going to run me and move in without losing any of my current customer base.

Man its not the location You have got to look deeper. Get a friend to go under cover and see how these other guys are handling their customers. Get real bids from them. Have them ask to tour their shops if they can. I know that sounds kind of shady but at this point you are hurting and you need to do something. There are tons of shops that are in the biggest ghettos on this planet and they are cranking out work like crazy. I am in a spot that even when I give customers detailed instructions they still have a hard time finding it. There has to be some other aspect that your missing.

I hear it all from my customers. I know a little about every print shop that matters in my area.

I agree, I know this much.  When I got my Auto they all started shitting bricks because there is no autos in town that I know of.  One of them even had one of their suppliers come check us out and see the shop.  (Spying I think).  I gladly showed him all my new pretty blue stuff.  They don't scare me, I don't do local business, so they should only be scared of me if I decide to.

I do want to clarify that I have not had anyone do that for me. But if I was struggling I would probably do whatever it takes to find out what I am doing wrong.

[Screened Gear]

This is my answer to this. How many store front screen printers have you seen?

Is this a trick questions? I've seen every store front printer there is in my area. Of course I haven't seen the warehouse locations since I don't lurk around in industrial parks.
Seriously though, there are 4 in my little area of Minneapolis alone and I've seen several more retail locations just driving around the Twin Cities.

I do know that one retail location printer has mentioned to me that there are a ton of time waster walk-ins.
I think a retail location would be hard for a one man operation to run efficiently where as a warehouse location could be run as a one man shop.

I've thought about getting a literal store front of 500 sf more or less on one the busier avenues in Minneapolis and outfit it with maybe a 4/1, flash, DTG and a heat press and then run the serious equipment from a warehouse type space nearby. The retail front would be used primarily as a show room and sales office to drive work for the warehouse location. My calculations put the the renting of two spaces in line with one decent retail space of totaling the square footage. Any thoughts on that?

Store Front to me is being in a high traffic area. Like next to a Subway restaurant or Wal-Mart.  You woudl be getting hundreds of walkins a day. Being on a busy street sometimes counts. The major difference for me for getting a warehouse is the cost and dealing with walkins. Store front here is $5-15 a foot and warehouse is $.50-$1 a foot. I get all my work from the internet or from refurrals so store front was not needed.

The reason I answered it this way is look at how many retail store front screen printers you see. In my area there are hundreds of screen printers But if you drive around you may only find 5 of them and they are not the busy ones. Most screen printers are one or 2 guy shops that don't have time to deal with walk ins. If I was a store front I would have to have a receptionist. I just don't think it’s worth the money or time dealing with tire kickers to have a store front.

[IntegrityShirts]

If you're a retail printer and struggling, find the best LOCATION you can for the money.  If you don't already have customers coming to you, then you'll need to attract them with other methods.  Drive-by business and advertising.  Make sure your website is up to snuff as far as you showing up on local searches.  I moved my business from a warehouse-type location with road frontage that was 5 minutes outside the town to a downtown location with lots of traffic one street off main and across from a park.  My business is up based solely on location because customers drive by and see my windows every day.  Picked up a local booster club account solely because of my windows and location.  My space is much smaller at about 1900 square feet but I have it all in here snug as a bug and running.  Costs less to heat too!  I put a door dinger on the door so when I'm in the shop it rings when a customer comes in and I pause production to go help them.

[Fresh Baked Printing]

I think it's possible to not necessarily have a "storefront" but still be visible. There are plenty of warehouse areas just off of a major road or near a busy intersection, that with the right location in the park/signage, you could still get tons of visibility without the retail SF prices. For me, in the city, parking is more valuable than just about anything.

[IntegrityShirts]

I think it's possible to not necessarily have a "storefront" but still be visible. There are plenty of warehouse areas just off of a major road or near a busy intersection, that with the right location in the park/signage, you could still get tons of visibility without the retail SF prices. For me, in the city, parking is more valuable than just about anything.

Exactly.  My goal was to get in a high-traffic convenient location as cheaply as possible.  There are usually warehouse-type properties one street back from main street that people still utilize.  In my case the road I chose is a better/quicker route than main st so it is used heavily.  An old garage building with a couple big windows plopped right in the thick of it with hours posted on the windows so if you want that free time to print and not deal with customers.  Print in the morning and open up around lunch time.  That way you control the walk-ins but people that call can still make an appointment to come in earlier for pick up or ordering.

[3Deep]

So whats wrong with the ghetto? by the way I really hate that word...but on the subject we have 3 main printers in our town and all 3 of us have store fronts....I,m in a plaza the other near a school zone and the bigger of us just built a new building with a store front and warehouse.  Location is not everything in the print game if you market right, like Graphicdisorder he is all internet perfect for him look at Killer out in the sticks...Its all how you market yourself/business.

[Shawn (EIP)]

So whats wrong with the ghetto? by the way I really hate that word...but on the subject we have 3 main printers in our town and all 3 of us have store fronts....I,m in a plaza the other near a school zone and the bigger of us just built a new building with a store front and warehouse.  Location is not everything in the print game if you market right, like Graphicdisorder he is all internet perfect for him look at Killer out in the sticks...Its all how you market yourself/business.

Let's just say people in the ghetto's of Rochester get shot every day, I'm sure Homer could back me up on that one. We have a higher homicide rate than NYC.

[3Deep]

I know people don't care about living anymore and that is really sad to say.

[Shawn (EIP)]

I know people don't care about living anymore and that is really sad to say.

99% of the time it's gang or drug related.  Make drugs legal, less people get shot.

[Shanarchy]

Like everything else, it comes down to what will work best with your business plan. If all you have is a DTG, you may not want a warehouse location. If all you do is contract printing, you may not want a retail location. I think if you look around you will find very successful shops in both varieties. Sam (Socalmf) and Homer are both retail and seem to make it work pretty good.

For me, a warehouse location works much better. I pay way less for a 2000 sq ft space (very nice, clean, professional, safe neigborhood, parking, etc) than I would for a 1000 sq ft retail space downtown. Also, I do not want to have hours I need to be there. My atmosphere works great for 'by appointment only'.

If I was to look at a retail space, these are the things I would ask myself:

How much more money is my rent? What is my plan to utilize the retail exposure make more than that increase in overhead to make this move worth it for me. 

Will I have a smaller space and will this effect me now or cause issues with growth?

Will I have doorway issues? think of Homer getting his auto.

Do I want to have dedicated hours and how do I plan to deal with the walk in customers who want 1 shirt?

Good luck in which ever path you take.

[ZooCity]

We do a split- downtown retail frontage open 6 days a week and production off-site.  Our location is unique and I drove hard to get our production on-site, which was totally do-able on our end and why I put a lot of effort into developing the space we're in but our landowners had some issues with lien-holders and entangled investments unfortunately, so I grabbed a good, stable off-site space for production.  We still might wind up with a whiskey distillery for neighbors in the end though, can't beat that. 

The big difference is we have an actual clothing line that we sell and typically accounts for a third to half of our sales in a given month.  If I tended to the line better it could be practically all we do.  So we have a good reason for the store front. There's almost no indication in the store that we do custom printing yet we generate a lot of custom print work from being here.  Word gets around and people put it together when you tell them all the merch in the store is printed in-house. 

If I only did custom printing I wouldn't really care about where we were.  In fact, I would prefer to be away from foot traffic and walk-ins.  As disappointed as I am in not being able to walk through a door and manage production, then walk back through and take care of the front end, I'm glad production is going to be hidden away, as printers we have to deal with so many variables and it's good to have a place that's conducive to uninterrupted focus and work.

Word of mouth is uber-powerful and worth more than any advertising in my opinion.  In our case, if I was just looking at the bottom line, we could put ourselves wherever we wanted.   I opened the retail front because we were doing insane sales out of a 10x10 canopy tent for four hours once a week during the warmer season at a market lodged in an alley behind a bar and a laundry service.  People were tracking us down to get what we had so it was clear that if we made ourselves easy to find things would go alright.  We're also a fairly popular venue now as we host art monthly and music and community events here frequently in the store.  I'm typing all this now because I'm on duty tonite and the second event of the evening isn't exactly my bag - this is the first cover of 'watchtower' we've been host to - so I'm holed up in the office w. earplugs doing some work.

This is rambling a bit but if you're looking into retail make sure you have a good solid reason to do so.  And keep in mind we're in a recession- you need to be more than just a storefront because we're all a little extra broke.  Put yourself in a community you enjoy and appreciate and you'll get the same back.  If you're looking around in disgust at the 'ghetto' you live in, having a store front there isn't going to make you happy.  Learn to love where you are or move on.  Also be aware, if you haven't already discovered this, that real estate can be volatile in retail areas.   In the end, do what feels good.

[Shawn (EIP)]

The Genesee Brewery is literaly across the street from my shop , on a hot summer day the stinch of hops is enough to make you want to puke.

[Homer]

The Genesee Brewery is literaly across the street from my shop , on a hot summer day the stinch of hops is enough to make you want to puke.

the taste of Genessee beer makes me want to puke. . it's like drinking warm goat piss.