After you have developed a vision of what you want to achieve the next step is to develop a strategy to implement this vision into a real life solution. Your strategy should provide real solutions with facts and plans to the points raised by the vision; you should start with the most basic question in retail, why should a customer buy from my store. To answer this question we will take a look at three common strategies in retail:-

• I will offer the greatest variety of goods to my customers.
• I will offer the greatest prices to my customers.
• I will offer the greatest customer service.

To offer “the greatest variety of goods” we need to dominate a product like books, office supplies, toys etc.. and provide your customers with every thing in that area. To offer “the greatest prices” you need to have economies of scale and bulk buying from suppliers in order to drive prices down and cost out competing businesses.

Typically the big retailers are the ones who can carry out these strategies well, because of their size and buying power. Unless you are one of them it will be difficult to survive if you base your business on only these two strategies.

To offer “ the greatest customer service” is something you can do and do very well, in fact if you are not one those big time retailers this is going to be your best competitive edge. However this is easier said than done, in order to offer “ the greatest customer service” your whole vision and subsequently the strategy to put the vision into practice has to revolve about giving your customers the best customer service. Having said that does not mean that you can charge as much as you want and have any old variety of goods, remember people are willing to pay so much for good customer service. You have to figure out a good mix of:

• I will offer the greatest variety of goods to my customers.
• I will offer the greatest prices to my customers.
• I will offer the greatest customer service.

The most important factor to consider when opening a retail store is location. There are different types of locations you can consider, the following are common locations:

• Downtown
• Shopping Centers
• Strip Malls
• Ethnic Areas
• Office district areas
• Busy Intersection
• Near large residential areas

Each location type offers different advantages and disadvantages, consider the following when choosing a location:

• Regular traffic situation.
• Transit traffic situation.
• Parking issues.
• Regular customer base.
• Transit customer base.
• Rent.
• Road access.
• Amount of promotion and advertising required in order to draw customers.
• The number of competitors in the same area.

You need to consider all of the above and any other factors which are more specific to your business before deciding on a business location.