Adventures with Corndog: Corndog's Fish Store

McCheese_sl said:

Holy shit. It's amazing any small businesses ever get off the ground at all.

Good luck with arguing your case.

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That list is insanely retarded. I've found sometimes, that you can cut through redtape by telling them how it will benefit them to work with you to get up and running, i.e., more jobs. Maybe you can get them to turn their heads while you are working on that list. You are losing money every day you aren't open .

I'd stay away from the illegal stuff, as some are prone to do in situations like this.

Which city are you building in, if I may ask?

By the way, this follows rule #1 about business: always follow the money trail.

"Rule #1: If you can't figure out why something is done, chances are it's because of money. Rule #2: If you look into everything, and it doesn't seem to be about money, refer back to rule #1"

The reason for all that bullshit and hoops you have to jump through is so the various government agencies get their cut from you. My advice is not to screw around and hire or consult with an architect or someone with in-depth knowledge of all the hurdles you need to pass to get your business operating. As Lyrical already stated, every day you aren't open you are losing money. It's better to pay a little extra up front for a smooth opening rather than find out in a month or so you need X still done or Y still to finish and it delays you even further. The last thing you want to do is start paying rent before your business actually opens.

Yes, it is a nightmare opening a business, it can also be one of the most rewarding things you ever do in your life. If your business ends up succeeding, take solace in two facts. 1) You would have accomplished something 90% of people fail at (which is creating a sustainable business), and 2) if you do succeed, you can look forward to years of disgruntled employees and other wage slave types who feel like they deserve a bigger piece of the pie even though they took none of the risks....you know, just because they do a job where they can be easily replaced with little loss in your company's productivity.

As I said it before, get in good with the inspectors, talk about trying to create jobs, how much you've lost bla bla bla. Just like that one lady you talked about that operated for 1.5 years with no license, I'm sure they can tell you how to operate in the gray areas. Ask them to have an "off the record" conversation with you. I'm sure there are ways to be open and not be licensed. You are losing money every day, and paying rent now, with no sales. That sucks.

Tmac47_sl said:

Government at work.

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Just remember that even with the government, there are "deal breakers" versus "nice to haves." Sit down with them, coming to them "hat in hand" and they'll probably tell you. It might be they only must have a handful of these, and the rest they'll give you time to finish (while you are open). I deal with this stuff all the time with my trucks, with USDOT and the various municipalities. At one point, USDOT let us continue to operate and gave us 90 days to get up to their specs. There are lots of rules when you are dealing with heavy trucks, but maybe only 5% of them are actually enforced.

I'm telling you this from experience and not pulling it out of thin air. Not everyone in the government is a hard ass for the rules. As long as they aren't exposed to risk of losing their job, if you use some finesse, they'll give you advice. If you can't talk to them right, well, don't expect to open for a long time.

Corndog_sl said:

So the meeting with the city went well. Dismissed the crazy permit they wanted from me. Now they just want to see my water change system setup, with my plumber there and the inspectors at the same time to sign off on the plumbing permit. Which means quickly setting things up this week as we were waiting to see what was needed on that other permit before pressing forward to only have to tear it back out.

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Like I said, if you sit down with government officials, you can get a lot of stuff dismissed/put on hold. Get used to this. I still have to do crap like this every six months. They come up with some stupid standard, and I go and try to talk some sense to them. I just had a conversation like this with my Insurance Auditor yesterday. I'll spare you guys from reposting the retarded stuff he wanted. As long as you are in business, expect things like this to come up.

They never waive everything, but you can usually get them down to a manageable list. The important thing is to not get butthurt/emotional over this stuff, they almost never shut anyone down and a lot of it is negotiable. When it comes up, it shouldn't be a surprise, it's just a cost of doing business.

Just caught up on this thread. Growing up I had all kinds of fish, African Clawed Frogs, Firebelly Toads/Newts, Turtles, and then snakes that I'd catch. I was literally in the pet store 2 times a week buying something, or begging my parents to buy something. I'd swing by once a week to buy guppies for the newt and rosies for the frogs and turtles. It was just awesome, so I can completely see the market you are targeting here even if you aren't dealing with reptiles/amphibians.

It seems like in an industry such as yourself holding down costs is essential. I would avoid contracts at all costs until you can project a return on investment through sample advertising and research. My brother in law opened up a Taekwondo school in September in a city of 90,000. I made his website and had him listed on Google[posted quickly and didn't get to finish this]. He signed a 4 month contract for some flyer at $400 a month, which he thought would be a better ROI because of the type of city it is (not very tech savvy). Bottom line is the flyer has been running 3 months and he has had 0 signups, where as he's had over 7 signups through Google alone.

One trick you can do is that the 2010 census data was released and you could locate similar cities with your demographics and call another local fish store in another area. Ask them questions, network with them, tell them you are there to answer questions as well. Your businesses aren't competing and you should work together as much as possible to engage customers better.

I project you seeing between 77 - 113 receipts per month in a moderate scenario. Have a set goal per transaction and develop techniques to get customers coming back. You may even offer filter cleanings, tank cleanings, and maintenance. This will get customers back in the store to not only pay for the service, but to buy their fish food and other items while there. Depending on your town, how big is it? Maybe you offer some sort of direct shipping to the customer or drop off to certain areas. Can't serve the entire city? You need to gather as much information about the customer as you can. If someone comes in for a purchase, try to get their telephone number, email address, and name. The highest ROI in internet marketing is email marketing if your subscribers are built this way.

Using Square is smart, keep your payment system simple and dynamic. Sure the fee is insane on a grand scale, but like Lyrical said, this will allow you to focus on getting customers in the door. Keep all payment options open; cash, credit, check

Whole prices are best, keep the operations of your business as simple as possible. This also includes loyalty and membership ideas. Those efforts will not drive customers into your store. People who look at buying a fish don't do it on a loyalty card. You do not want to create extra work for yourself in areas that will take time away from really matters.

If you get a lot of drive by traffic, keep your logo/name/etc VERY simple and easy to interpret. You need to catch peoples eyes and have it instantly click in their heads without thinking. I'd recommend using the word fish in your name if you aren't.

For online marketing, keep your website simple and make sure you are listed on Google local places, bing places, and yelp. Ask each customer who makes a purchase if they would go share their opinion of their shopping experience on google or yelp. I'd say pick one or the other and rotate to keep it simple. Don't sink too much time into exotic fish seo if your city isn't more than 500k+. If you are the only one in town selling exotic or high end fish then you will automatically win that market by default.

I do recommend pay-per-click aka google adwords or adwords express for you. Google fish store [city] and see who is there. If 2 people or less are there (or if the ads are irrelevant) you are golden and won't be spending hardly anything for advertising. Make sure your operating in terms of cpa, not impressions (not sure why they was mentioned in regards to search marketing)

If you are able to get fish food at $3.50 and people on amazon are selling it at $7 or $8. Use that to leverage your business. Purchase 20+ units at wholesale and send them to amazon to be fulfilled. You would be bringing in between $1-2 per sale for doing nothing. If you are afraid of losing customers to online sales, then open up your own storefront via shopify and try to retain customers who need convenience. I can tell you right now for shipping you will pay:

$30 per month for stamps.com
$5.50 per shipmentish anywhere in the US

You may want to leverage some of those opportunities online if it helps your business during down time. On the other hand, do the flyers and phone book listings, but stay the hell away from contracts.

Corndog_sl said:

Cheakyeah, do you have experience selling on amazon using the fulfillment center? Being that they're Washington based. I could hand deliver my products. I'm finding Items that are selling on there at the lowest price of say 7.49 that I buy wholesale for $1.89. It seems like I could just deliver them there and they sell/ship them. And take a cut.

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Yes I have quite a bit of experience with it. Here is a pricing sheet that should help you.http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custom...nodeId=1161240

Amazon fulfilled is much more sustainable because you can compete at lower price points or maintain margins better. Even in Washington, Amazon will still have you ship to them, most likely to Kentucky. Msg me if you need some help on getting started

That's where creating relationships with your suppliers comes into play. Typically if you are running a good enough business you can setup a routine exchange request for defective or returned products where the supplier takes full responsibility. In some cases you do eat products or you may even give one out to a customer who didn't have the best experience.

Since August 9, 2012 we have had 1,853 orders, we've had 10 returns, plus maybe 5 unaccounted for, and maybe given away 10 free products for customer service. So I guess 1.35% of our orders have some sort of additional cost associated with them. Obviously we go above and beyond what we should do and generally don't wait until customers complain to act. I usually spot potential issues, address them, and take action before the customer even knows what's happened. This is very important since our Amazon account is roughly 6 months old and still building a reputation.

Our Amazon rating is 100%

So in the early stages your customer service has to be uncompromising - the customer always wins. I recently had a customer place a $65 order and put the wrong address in their profile information. It was clearly their fault and they asked me what could be done. My response was "There is only one solution to a problem like this, we will ship you another at no cost!" I could rant on for days - I just enjoy customer service.

We've made a ton of money on Amazon. I mean.. a lot of money

If Corndog ever decides to supplement his business with more focus on e-commerce, he would have quite an advantage being outside of some of the most populated states in the country (aka tax free). Also e-commerce is part of customer retention for those who need convenience. The business that I work for is structured as:

1. An individual has a problem and needs help
2. They are recommended a product from an authoritative figure, which they may buy on site
3. If the customer buys the product on site, they may come back or they may just look for it online. The same for #2, they may like the recommendation but go online to do research
4. If the customer decides to buy online, we try to fulfill that demand on our own ecommerce site
5. If the customer decides to buy online, but visits another shopping engine, we try to be there too

E-commerce is really a great option for many retailers, especially if you are open to growth. If you just want a place to sit still in and have a sense of enjoyment out of being small, then it's probably not a good option. One of our largest competitors is in the middle of nowhere and has hardly the walk in traffic or volume that our business does, yet they are 20x our size online.