Looking at Our First Possible Space to Rent

Thursday March 14, 2024

Leslie and I met up with a realtor to look at a great spot. The price and location were within our budget (or so we thought), and the location couldn’t be better for the price!

We looked at the place and both agreed that the place was perfect for us (we’d still have work to do, but it was pretty clean, so we could open pretty quickly and make upgrades as we went)

That’s when it started to seem out of reach. The rent would be $1,200/month, which is great considering it is across the street from a major mall, and between two busy highways. But then we asked about the triple net (where you contribute to the common areas that all leasers pay and is based on your space size.). That ended up costing an additional $600/month. Yikes! And then we also had to add in Utilities, and any maintenance upkeep up to a $1,000/yr.

We were still pretty optimistic, as the foot traffic alone would contribute to our success, but initially, that was a lot of money a month we’d have to pay until the money started coming in.

On the way home, I started running scenarios through my mind. Another issue was, if we sold all of our current inventory, we’d be able to pay rent for one month, but then we’d be out of inventory. Replenishing inventory at the rate we’d need to to keep up with expenses was would not be sustainable. Especially for just two people.

I proposed that in order to even consider this space, we’d have to have a solid game plan for making 3x Rent to even start. We wouldn’t exactly need to be making that right off the bat, but we’d need a plan that could be implemented in reaching that goal within the first year.

The realtor did offer to give us a couple of free months, but the risk stilled seemed to high.

And we also had to consider that we were not going to be open all the time. We both have jobs, so we’d be paying for a space that we only used a few days a week, and most of our events would be Free, so we’d have to find a way to make enough money through those events to pay the bills.

In the end, while this place is ideal, it’s not ideal today. But it is a goal now.

Be bounced ideas off of waiting till later in the year, or even next year, but we really need to launch in the spring. Whether it’s this year or next. We need to take advantage of people wanting to be out and about, and be able to use our upcoming vendor events to promote our space and events.

We wanted to have a good core group that would come to events throughout the winter, like book club groups.

If we waited until fall/winter to even begin, then we’d be at the mercy of solely advertising through social media and may not have time to host/promote events during the holidays.

And if we waited until next year, we were afraid of losing the momentum we had already been building. All the books we’ve been buying and uploading can be exhausting, so we felt, if we waited a year, the bookstore would be placed on the back burner and would be difficult to maintain that momentum or even take the chance of losing it all together.

We decided to revisit the smaller space that we felt might be too small for what we wanted. The space is nice, the rent is 50% less and includes utilities. We both feel this may be a better place to start, so we’ve set up a time to look inside, and if it feels like it would work for where we are now, we may move forward. We’ll be back to let yo know.