what should be the business plan for a retail warehouse
I am looking for help in writing the business plan for a retail warehouse store in line with Costco or Uncle Sam's club. Will appreciate any help please.
Sriram
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Welcome to the site Sriram. It would be helpful if you can expand your question and include a lot more detail. As it is, it is very generic. This way you will get much more useful answers. – Susan Jones 13 years ago
2 Answers
Your business plan should include the competitive environment for your store as well as your competitive advantage. No one is going to invest if there is no improvement in the status quo. In addition, you will need to have at least 3 years of financials to determine projected profitability.
Hope this helps.
There are several strategies that you could deploy for your retail warehouse business. Before Zappos.com became the retail juggernaut that we know today, they used a model known as Drop Ship. Here's how it worked:
1.Zappos.com held no inventory.
2.Footwear vendors would send a periodic inventory list to Zappos.com
3.Zappos.com would compile the list and post the footwear brand data online for customers to see.
4.Zappos.com would process the sales transaction online, and send the shipping information to the Footwear vendor.
5.The vendor would then ship the shoes directly to the customer.
By using Drop-Ship in conjunction with your warehouse space, you can reduce overhead and buy yourself some time to learn the business, while getting acquainted with consumer preferences. Zappos.com generated $8 Million in Drop-Ship Sales in 2006. However, they evenually dropped it and did everything in-house in order to enhance the end-customer experience.
Good luck. Also, many warehouses are located in MIDDLE-America in order to reduce shipping time i.e. UPS has a major distribution hub in Kentucky. You'll need to do some serious strategizing.
