Business Location

If you want to start a food stall or a restaurant or plan to go into the retail business, it is very important that you choose a good location for your business. It is also important to choose a good location when you are about to start a production or manufacturing house.

To evaluate the location that you have chosen, answer the following questions:

What is the total cost of renting or acquiring the property?

What is the estimated cost of any necessary repairs, remodeling etc.?

Does the site provide as much space as you need?

If customers visit your place of business-

-Is adequate, convenient and safe parking available?

-Is public transportation available?

Is the location likely to develop "drop in" or "impulse" consumer traffic?

Is the site located at a popular area (E.g. Near a movie theater or a shopping complex)?

If not, you will have to spend a lot of money marketing your product/service and it will eat into your profits!

What other types of businesses are located around your site? Are they going to compete with your business?

Is fire protection close by?

Are basic utilities available (E.g. water, electricity, sewer, gas etc.) at a reasonable cost?

Are you going to be transporting products from one part of India to the other? If so, are the expressways located close to your location?

What is the history of the site? What types of businesses were previously run at the site? Why are these businesses no longer there?

After seeking answers to these question you will be able to get a good judgment of how good the location you have selected is.

In some businesses some questions are more important than other questions. For E.g. If you are in the manufacturing business, you will not have too many customers coming to your site. So you do not have to bother about customer parking. If you are in the retail business, customer paring is an important factor.

If you are an entrepreneur you will generally find it most convenient to start of your business right at home. This removes a lot of overhead costs of rent, electricity bill etc.

Only if your business is so large that accommodating it at home will be difficult, think about choosing another location. In some cases, it is required that you set up at some other location, (E.g. when you are starting a restaurant) in that case, you have no choice but to choose the location wisely. Let the location questionnaire above guide you in your decision.