subject: How The Internet Could Save Your Business! [print this page] A couple of days ago I was speaking with my accountant and as we all know, things in the Irish business world have changed dramatically, (and not for the better).
Anyway, I put it to him straight - "So Noel who's making money these days? Sure we're going through tough economic times, but there's always someone who's making a fortune, no matter how grim."
I was quite astonished by his response. 95% of his customers aren't making money. A staggering 95%. How can this be?
In one word "expenses." Times have changed and although sales are down for all the obvious reasons, often there is but little you can do about the expenses. One buddy of mine used to be in the furniture retail business, and when he made his exit about a year ago the business was turning over about 100,000 a month. Sounds like a pretty excellent number and it is, however, note that his rent and rates totalled 160,000 per year, (not to mention insurance, staff, pay, deliveries etc) which is a sizeable chunk.
Now factor in, that mid credit crunch, sales fell to 10,000 - 15,000 per month, and that the business no longer trades. What this means is that these guys are unlikely to get into the furniture retail game again, at least in the traditional way. Simply because the risks are too high.
The thing about a traditional physical retail store is that it has a finite market. For example in a city, you are probably working on a one hour drive time to your store maximum. What this means is that you are totally dependent on a very small local economy, if you're only relying on the traditional way of doing business. The problems with this are beyond obvious.
So, what my buddy is doing now, (because he's resilient) is opening an online furniture store, again for all the obvious reasons. He sets up his store one time and while there are costs associated with an e-commerce site (basically means your website can sell product), its absolutely minuscule in comparison to a physical retail store. The store/website is open 24 hours and you can go online and buy anytime you want 24 hours a day, 7 days a week rain, hail or shine.
In addition, you have access to an extraordinarily large worldwide market, or at the very least the English speaking world, which is practically 50% of the world population of 60 billion bodies. Clearly, these are good reasons to get it going online. Not to forget the phenomenal efficiencies of a system that will allow you to email as many thousand people as you want for virtually zero cost.
