starting my own shop?

[exor]

Awesome shop! Your 2-y-o adds character to the photo.

[B-TECH]

Thanks, no matter what is going on in here, you can usually hear Sponge bob...lol

[ineedatech911]

I have some pictures of my shop also but I need to shrink them so I will post later. I have had my shop open for over a year now. We are located in Lander, WY and I have made lots of mistakes.

When I opened my shop I started out doing retail. That is a no no for a startup computer shop. We sank so much money into inventory and it never moved. You really need to know your market. Our town only has about 7000 people here. I moved out here from California and started the business. I had lots of clients in Cali and I just worked out of my Garage. I started out here and had lots of repair business but my retail stuff was just collecting dust.

Currently for my office space I pay $600 a month and then another $139.90 for utilities and thats not including phone $95(packet8) business internet $101 (cable). Thats approx $935.90 and thats not including taxes and other misc stuff. If I had a house with a garage again I would go back to doing it that way again. My advice is to start small. If you can get into a small office for under $400 with utilities that would be perfect. It allows you to save money so that when the time is right you can expand or if there is a slump in business you don't have to quit. You can just ride out the wave.

Also I thought it would be a good idea to get a pbx through Packet8. That was a bad idea because people just get annoyed with automated systems. I am canceling my service in June because it is an added unnecessary expense.

Spend time meeting people in your community. Thats how you grab new clients. Of course everyone has heard of the big guys like best buy because they have the advertising bucks. The best type of advertising is word of mouth. I worked for Nerds On Call in California for about 9 months and Managed the Stockton store. They have a great business model but they started to grow big too fast. They lost the personal service that you get from the small mom and pop stores. You can be big and still have that feel.

I will post more on here and I would give more advice but I have a website deadline to meet today so I am cutting this short. Good luck in your ventures.

http://ineedatech911.com/blog

[eazy]

I would recommend doing it part time, outside of your regular job until you get everything down. It took me a couple of years before I could get things running to near perfection. You can start up with very little over head. I would work from home before leasing office space.

[rick]

I do just service, no parts for sale. What a nightmare it would be to have to stock all that highly-volatile inventory. And, when a part doesn't work right they'll expect you to spend 20 - 30 minutes helping them figure it out. Is making $5 on a sale worth that? Not to me.

I do stock and sell some parts. But I sell everything at my cost. I just charge for my time. I tell people that up front. I'm their consultant and I'm on their side. If it's cheaper at newegg.com or amazon I'll help them get it there - and charge for the time I help them.

I stay pretty busy.

Also, do you really need a place? All you really need is a cell phone and a car IMHO.

[exor]

I have to agree with rick's entire last post there.

[ineedatech911]

The only things that you should carry are a couple hard drives, a sound card and a couple video cards. Actually don't carry the hard drives around just have them available. If you live in a large city you don't have to worry about it because you can just go up to a store to buy a new hard drive. What I was saying don't go and do what I did and have a hard time moving the stuff. Like I said if I could I would go back to working out of my garage!!

[ACS]

Yes, definitely go for it! Opening up a shop is a great move, no matter how many competitors are in the neighborhood. With a Computer Repair Shop you will never go out of business, I live in New York, we have computer stores next door to each other... or 5 computer stores in 3 blocks... (that's in Brooklyn)... yet all of them successfully stay in business.

I once read an article by a big time investor, who said something like the following: "Early on, when I was starting out investing into other businesses, I realized one simple truth - never ever invest into a retail business, because in retail business you are only as smart as your dumbest competitor next door, yet always invest into service oriented businesses, because you can charge 3 times more than what your competitor charges and yet sustain your own clientele who would come back to you because they liked your service better".

[mflstc]

I started my shop without shop experience. I bought a small mobile office trailer and paid $100/month lot rent. I also paid my own utilities. It is hard when you have to pay business rate for everything from electricity to phone/DSL. I enjoyed running my own shop and learned a lot. I was just informed of a rent increase on my lot, therefore I am moving the office and going to do on-site service only, for now. I work another full time job with a lot of overtime so it was hard to be open regular hours. I just got a contract with Installs INC. to be the local PC installer and set up person for 5 my local Staples stores. I will let you know how that goes. I will be glad to give anyone advice on questions about owing my own shop and business. I can tell you in the 2 1/2 years i was there my business was picking up but I really never made any take home pay.

[ineedatech911]

Here is some pics of my office space. I dont have all of the offices in the pictures but you get the idea. I will make a tour video soon.