A Bright Idea: Opening a Lighting Store

Business Overview:

Opening a lighting store could be a profitable business idea for an opportunity—savvy entrepreneur. By opening a lighting store, you will sell interior and exterior lighting products. Upgrading or replacing light fixtures has recently become one of the most popular forms of home improvement for many homeowners because it’s a type of improvement that is fairly inexpensive, and that can have a beneficial effect on the appearance of their homes. Therefore if you approach this business in the right way you can definitely cash in on this trend and earn a respectable profit. You are likely to face competition, so you will need to ensure that you offer excellent products and fantastic customer service to make your shop stand out. Potentially you could also seize the opportunities offered by established stores in your community that sell related products by forming a joint venture with them. For example you could form a partnership with a furniture store or paint and wallpaper store, and attach your lighting shop to their store—thus saving floor space and taking advantage of your partners’ existing reputation and clientele. This is an approach that could work particularly well because lighting stores typically don’t require a lot of floor space. Whichever approach you take, opening a lighting store can definitely be a successful and nicely profitable venture so long as you’re creative and committed to making your store a success.

A Day in the Life of a Lighting Store Business Owner:

Lighting stores usually operate within typical retail hours, so as a lighting store business owner you will usually open up your shop around 9 a.m.—having arrived 15 minutes or so early to get set up. Throughout the day, customers will enter your shop and you will provide an excellent service, helping them find the right interior and/or exterior lighting products for their home or office. Your day will typically end at 6 p.m. when you would ensure that your store is clean and tidy, before shutting up ready to open again for business the next day. Other typical daily activities would include monitoring your inventory and placing new orders whenever stock levels ran low. You’ll also be monitoring your finances on a daily basis. You may also hire staff to serve customers and to open and close your lighting shop for you, as well as to assist you in the general maintenance and smooth running of your shop. In that case part of each day will be spent managing your employees and training them well. This will enable you to attend lighting trade shows so that you can keep up on the latest trends and offer your customers the most cutting edge lighting to be found.

About Your Customers:

Your customers will typically be homeowners looking to improve the appearance of their homes by purchasing new interior and/or exterior lighting products. Your customers may also be people looking for lighting products to make similar improvements to their offices or other types of buildings.

What You Need to Start:

• Business plan
• Marketing plan
• Storefront
• Inventory (interior and exterior lighting products, shades, a wide variety of bulbs, etc.)
• Staff
• Computer with finance software

The Good:

• It’s definitely a potentially profitable opportunity—upgrading interior and exterior lighting has become one of the most popular forms of home improvement.
• You don’t need much floor space to open a lighting shop—so the start up costs are lower than for other retail business.
• It’s excellently suited for forming joint ventures with other more established and related shops—you could share floor space with a furniture or painting and decorating store, for example.
• The demand for interior and exterior lighting products is always going to be there.

The Bad:

• It can be competitive, so you’ll need to be creative and offer excellent customer service to stand out against bigger and more established lighting stores.
• It may take a while for you to see profits as it can take time to build up your reputation and client base.

Resources:

• American Lighting Association
• The Lighting Association
• Bureau of Labor Statistics on Retail Salespersons
• Wikipedia on Light Fixtures

About The Author

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