Customer Reviews

Start and Run a Retail Business

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For anyone who is looking to delve into the abyss of retail planning & success, this is a proper place to start. The invaluable tips & worksheets provide a good starting point. Also, the author(s) put a great deal of emphasis on determining whether retail is right for you & the fact that you need to spend at least 1 year planning. As for me, I am happy to have read this book, and plan on keeping it as a reference guide.

MD

"The Start and Run a Profitable Retail Business book is a comprehensive guide and reference book for every new retailer and even ones who have been in business for some time. Complete with examples and illustrations backed by real-world experience and rigorous research, it is a powerful resource. Well written and well organized, it makes a great book for individuals, small and large businesses alike. I found it easy to understand and apply."

This has some good information as noted by other reviewers, but also a few shortcomings. Some of its advice will be useful only for particular businesses. It contains many references to fashion retailing and will be very relevant for people doing that.

The major shortcoming is that the technology chapter is woefully out of date. Written in 1998, it contains such chestnuts as, "We believe that every one of the personal computers in your store should have a CD-ROM drive." and "Providing information over the internet is a much better business proposition than selling products over the internet. Even if you could get your home page address to a huge number of potential customers, we do not believe that you should try to sell things to them." Considering I bought ther book online, I must respectfully disagree with the authors. This is not to say the chapter is entirely irrelevant. No better website advice has ever been given than, "Customers are not interested in bells and whistles when they visit a website. Instead, they want useful information and they want it quickly." I would give a new edition of this book with an updated technology chapter a four star rating.

"The Start and Run a Profitable Retail Business book is a comprehensive guide and reference book for every new retailer and even ones who have been in business for some time. Complete with examples and illustrations backed by real-world experience and rigorous research, it is a powerful resource. Well written and well organized, it makes a great book for individuals, small and large businesses alike. I found it easy to understand and apply."

I am starting a small retail business and found this books description to be along the same lines of what i wanted to know. But, I was disappointed when i recieve this book.

The book covers everything one would want to know about running a retail business. But, it was really written for large retail companies, not small businesses.

The book has chapters on merchandizing, buying, hiring sales people, managing sales force, etc. You will learn a great deal of information about analyzing your customers buying patterns, using formulas to calculate stock-to-sales ration, sales per square foot, gross margin return on inventory etc. You will also learn how to negotiate with suppliers, recruiting top notch sales reps and account managers, retail technology (ie. assett management systems), the in-store experience and analyzing competition.

If i owned a chain of retail stores, then this is a book i would want to read! If i owned a large department store, then this would also be the book i would want.

But, this book contains mostly useless information for small busienss owners. Its way too detailed for my purposes. If i had a dedicated person who did nothing but analyze my customer base and inventory and sales figures, then this is a book for that person.

As for "create a competitive niche business", well i didnt see much of any niche business discussion in this book.

I spent a LOT of time looking for a book that would "substitute" for 20 years of retail experience. This book is like having a mentor with that 20 years experience guiding you in all the important concepts and tactical decisions, and providing templates for planning, actions, and checking results. For a "how-to" book, it just does not get any better than this!

I originally obtained this book from the local library and immediately realized that I wanted to own it as a reference. Very good, detailed material about running a retail business. Highly recommended.

The authors did a good job of explaining the academics of retail. They covered everything from strategies for purchasing, competing with big chains, advantages of technology and training for employees. This is a great book for those concepts. However, the authors explain these concepts in much the same way Ben Stein talks about dry eyes. Colorful retail experiences could be used to make fun examples and make the book more readable and less like a lecture from a finance professor. My only other gripe was that examples from the non-clothing world would have been great, such as selling technology items that lose value as they age on the shelf. Those gripes aside, I would recommend this book to anyone who needs to understand retail 101. You will definitely walk away thinking about your next trip to Abercrombie differently.

This book is so easy and straightforward. This book is definitely a keeper! Also I love the templates in the back, especially the competition checklist.

Looking into starting a retail business prompted me to look for books that would give an insight into the world of retail. This book has not dissapointed. The writing is light while providing good information and real world examples.

The resource CD contains spreadsheets and documents such as job descriptions, payroll budget, supplier checklist, balance of business which provide a great starting point for the owner.