tile shop

[Peter]

Good luck with it, you're a brave man in this day and age with so many established shops going under and the rest of them just treading water, but if it works out then fair play.

Have you ever run a shop before and got many contacts and advisors in that area? Costly venture with lease, rates, stock, running costs, staff wages etc to pay out before you make a penny. Need to sell lots of stock just to break even.

 

[Discount Tile Supplies]

If only we all could have the correct advice John.

Like most things in business if it was that easy we would all do it. At the moment, in retail and trade sales, it is about breaking even or treading water and occasionally making a profit.

But “win some lose some” is an often occurrence, no different to when most of you guys set up tilling. I’ve been selling tiles for over 30 years and yes starting off now is difficult. But people doing it now are wiser and smarter.

Plenty of prep work and knowing your market. No different to setting out a large floor, rush it with no prep work and it will cost you dearly and in the long term possibly fail.

Distributors are falling over each other to supply new tile shops exclusively; you just need to cherry pick the products that you feel you can sell.

Nothing is a dead cert these days in what will and wont sell, look around any distributors warehouse and ask them. If you knew what was going to be a good seller you would be sitting next to Hector Riva tugging on a cigar!

But this recession isn’t going to last forever and it is a survival of the fittest. T/G CTD and similar companies owned by T/P or Saint Gobain don’t need to make money at the moment they are cash rich companies and are pricing other retailers out of business but you have to either move away from the cheaper tiles they sell and sell different, wiser and give good customer service. Its not all about price, looks at Topps they are moving away from cheap as there is no money in it, unless your owned by a multi billion pound company.

So as long as you don’t tie yourself in with a hefty long lease and massive rates etc. you could make a go of it.

Or do you all think that T/P CTD and T/G pay no rent and have no staff wages? They don’t get tiles and adhesive much if any cheaper than other importers I can assure you. But they don’t mind working on small or zero margins to squash their competition as they are subsidised by the parent company,

Sorry to go on guys and ladies! but stop lining their pockets!!!! as once the competition is finished and they have the monopoly, prices will go through the roof.

Good fortune to whoever starts in business today as it is not about luck any more.

 

[ms.tiles]

Hi

thank you for the comments, I have family to work for free until we are established and i expect them to learn the basics from me, tile ranges, adhesive, grouts substrates etc.
My wife has run shops, not tile shops but has qualifications in running shops merchandising etc.

We're not interested in taking any money out of the shop until it's established as we'll be working aswell, my wife only works 2days a week and my father is retired. If we get a good customer base then people will be getting a wage but we're all under the impression its going to be 6 months of hard graft but im certain the opportunity is there for an independent tile shop in my area to work and work well. 10 miles away in another town there is 2 tile shops side by side and they survive.

I started tiling 7 years ago and was a milkman at the same time to pay my bills so im not afraid to put the work in.
Sorry for going on but I wanted to show how prepared I am and we're still researching and probably will be for a few more months, its definitely something we're not jumping into.
Many thanks

 

[martin1c]

Good luck to you Ms.tiles. You sound like you're in it for the duration. As long as you can get people in the door and follow up with great advice you won't fail. You've probably done it already but speak to local trades and installers and offer them a discount or referral fee. Most businesses fail these days because they just expect to open their doors and people form an orderly queue - you have to work to get to that stage.