Although location is important in starting a business, it is only one of many factors that determine the success or failure of your enterprise. A few years ago, I bought some warehouse real estate. I wanted to start a warehouse shipping business over the Internet. It seemed like an excellent idea at the time. Unfortunately, I was a little bit off. You see, I was out of the loop. By the time I got into Internet sales, it was already a little bit too late. The market was already saturated, and I was not Web savvy enough to overcome the obstacles. Still, I knew better than to give up. Although I wasn’t in a traditional location for a warehouse retail space, I decided to give it a go anyway. To tell you the truth, the shop was a little bit out of the way, and although there were outlet stores about 10 miles further down the expressway, I still did not expect large numbers of people to stop at my store.
Things worked out better than I imagined. Within a few months of opening the warehouse retail space, I was already starting to break even on operating expenses. In another couple months, I was on my way to becoming a successful warehouse retailer. My retail warehouse was doing so well, as a matter of fact, that I was soon able to afford to upgrade it. It didn’t really look like a good retail store at that moment. It looked like a warehouse with a cash register thrown in. Once I gave it a more professional appearance, business grew even further.
The great thing about my warehouse retail store was that I was able to use my success and popularity to get a wholesale business going. Soon, my warehouse retail outlet was shipping all over the country. As a matter of fact, nowadays we get almost as many orders over the Internet as we do from customers coming in person!
A big part of our success was our location. The placement that I thought would hold us back actually helped us. You see, most of the people coming from the city passed right by our shop. It was only a matter of a quick detour off of the highway for them to visit. Although it is not a great location for people looking to stop in for a quick shopping trip, it is ideally placed to take advantage of the warehouse outlet shopping excursions that so many people go on nowadays.