Moving from home working to a shop (eeks) - advice please

Olly1_2

marmite76 wrote: »

Slinky is right. If what your business needs is storage and an office, why are you taking a lease on a shop? Because it is there? Because that is the first thing you came across?

The storage unit would be the better option. there is lots of choice and the other option if you need storage and an area to package and receive goods and an office, would be a little industrial/warehouse unit which will have everything you need and a (WC!). I don't know where you are but most areas across the country have a load of that kind of thing and particularly at this time in the economic cycle.

send me a private message if you want to know more.

lease negotiation is not all about the rent and it is not enough just to have a break clause. you need to ensure that it is worded in a way that will actually work for you when you come to need it. many do not.

Good luck.

Marmite 76

Storage rooms are not right for us - tried all three local places - visited, re-viewed, tried to convince myself they would work, but none had elec in the units which we would need (pc based business). The warehouse/industrial unit would be perfect - exactly what I want but a lack of these over past 3 months means we started looking towards shops which are cheaper and more of them around. We would rather pay more for an industrial unit but they all start around £7000pa in this area as the small ones are gone. Business can afford £7000pa but it is a lot to pay for a trial run to see if premises are right for us and when you add elec, phone, staff etc it makes for alot of outgoings. We check websites daily but as soon as one appears thats right sizew/price it goes 'under offer' straight away and we cant even view it - gah!

Thanks anyway

PasturesNew

If you're running a PC-based business but are selling items - and have a shop front area. You could look to see if you can sub-let that part to a PC repairman.

Lots of PC repairpeople work from home and might love to be able to rent serviced space from you. The commercial equivalent of a lodger really. The two businesses might sit well along-side each other and there could be mutual benefit to be gained. Depending on the location/premises, you could even try to cut a deal with, say, a secretarial service that's running from home. Offer them a free desk/chair/electricity space in exchange for receiving your deliveries when you're not about etc. Set some core hours to that, say for fairness, that they'd need to be on site at least 10-3pm Mon-Fri for 45 weeks of the year. Just an idea of how the space could benefit you and other home workers to make you more comfortable with the commitment you're undertaking.

A secretarial service, if the premises are in the right place, would benefit from people dropping off and picking up work. Maybe they could charge the PC bloke for covering his space/phones when he's out for £20/week too. It could work quite well with people covering each other.

Olly1_2

We thought about that but stock value is very high and so far all insurance companies say we have to have great security (digicom or redcare alame and grills etc) and be only people with access to premises etc (deliveries, repairs etc all fine and a few are ok about the occassional customer visiting so long as we are not a shop), but when we mentioned running my cousins business from the same place they were very much against that as they say the insurance is then invalid due to someone else having access to the premises - you cant win sometimes

Savvy_Sue

Whatever you do about getting your rubbish taken away, do not use WasteTech ...

Olly1_2

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

Whatever you do about getting your rubbish taken away, do not use WasteTech ...

After reading that thread I wont use them ... am confused anyway as I thought that you would get a local council bin and dispose of rubbish that way anyway..? If this not the case? When you pay rates, water etc I thought that included the rubish collection (within reason of course). At present working from home we have no room in house wheelie bin anyway so take rubbish to the local recycling centre (our rubbish is always just cardboard boxes which we flat pack and dispose of).

What sort of price is an annual waste uplift then (obviously not with wastetech lol) - this will be another cost to budget for that we knew nothing about. When waste disposal was mentioned before we spoke to someone at the local council and nobody has called back (over a week later grr).

Savvy_Sue

I suspect that in taking your business waste to the local council's recycling centre you are already in breach of some regulation or other, because they are usually set up for household waste. I know that at ours you cannot take a van there without jumping through MAJOR hoops, like proving the van is registered to your home address and in your personal name, ie no business vans at all at all at all.

I know there have been cases where the council has suspected someone of using the local recycling centre for business waste and got VERY shirty with them, even though they were just having a good clear out of a garden shed.

I am sure your council does offer a business collection service, but they will charge for it. And there are other options, which may be cheaper / better - our council, for example, cannot provide a lockable bin for business collections, which means that anyone can dump their rubbish in YOUR bin.

However, if your waste is primarily cardboard, I would look into getting a recycling collection for that. I'm not at work for the next couple of weeks so can't make any helpful suggestions based on who we use, but keep your eyes peeled for local businesses leaving out cardboard taped up, and see whose tape it is!

blue_monkey_2

Waste: We had one of the Hippo type bags for our cardboard - we paid £35 for each one and that included collection. This was from a local company, not Hippo where the cost is much more.

Something that came to mind is that you had seen a shop, I would check out that it is fine for you to use it as storage and not actually trade out of that shop, the Local Authorities might not like the fact your shutters are down all day, I know they are not keen around here as they like the shops to look open and attract people to the area. I would check this out.

Oh, and don't forget business rates - have they been mentioned? In London for a 1st floor apartment size office they are 11k pa!!

What about a log cabin type think in your garden. Do you have room for anything like this at all? I used to use the garage and a shed, you can have heating put into them to keep the items you sell warm. Just a thought really if you have the space at the bottom of your garden.

agesofelegance

I'm just about to do the same thing and tying to find out who the best/cheapest folks to go with for phone/bb/electricty etc so any tips gratefully received

Just found a lawyer to sort the lease (3 year 1 year break clause) and trying to decide if I need to do the extra searches any advice on that score please or whether i should save my money

I'm elegible I think for small business rate relief so sending the forms off asap and worth looking at if you haven't so far