Opening a Formal Wear Rental Store

Business Overview:

Opening a formal wear rental store is one of the better business ideas for anyone who wants to make a profit helping others look their finest. As a formal wear rental store owner you’ll hire out clothing for special occasions. The occasions will vary, but the most common ones include weddings, fine dinners, proms, formal garden parties, and so on. Many people prefer to hire the formal attire for these types of events because the type of formal clothing worn to most special occasions (such as tuxedos) is not worn very often. Therefore it’s usually much more cost effective for most people to rent rather than buy their formal clothing. This is why opening a formal wear rental store represents a potentially profitable opportunity. By offering outstanding customer service, you can build up a solid base of repeat customers who will return to you for their formal wear needs each time they have a formal event to attend. By working hard, keeping your customers happy and providing an excellent all-around service, you can certainly build up a successful formal wear rental store which generates a very respectable profit.

A Day in the Life of a Formal Wear Rental Store Business Owner:

As a formal wear rental store business owner, you will open up your store at around 9 a.m., allowing 15 minutes to set up your shop beforehand. Throughout the day customers will enter your store or telephone your shop to hire or inquire about renting formal clothes. Based on their needs you will help them select the ideal formal attire, and you will take their measurements–waist size, inseam, collar size, and so on–to ensure that the formal clothing fits them perfectly. You will also receive hired clothing back from happy customers, which you will then either clean yourself or arrange for it to be cleaned by an associate, so that the clothing is returned to a pristine condition ready to be rented out again to someone else. A typical day would end around 6 p.m., when you would close your shop after ensuring that everything is tidy and in order, ready for opening again for business the next day. You may also hire staff to serve customers and to open and close your formal clothing store for you. In this case you would oversee the general smooth running of your store, actively keeping an eye on the latest formal wear trends and updating your clothing line to ensure that your rental shop continues to offer the best and most up to date range of formal attire to your customers. You’ll also want to attend to your finances every day, being sure your books are balanced and the numbers are in the black.

About Your Customers:

Your customers will be people looking to hire formal clothes for a special occasion. Such occasions may include weddings, proms, formal garden parties, and so on.

What You Need to Start:

• A storefront
• Inventory (tuxedos, prom dresses, etc.)
• A business license
• A business plan
• Financial tracking software
• A good eye for detail so that you can help your clients look immaculate

The Good:

• Renting formal clothing is more cost effective and preferable to most people compared to buying formal attire.
• There are always going to be formal events for which people will need to hire formal clothes.
• If you’re reliable and you provide high quality customer service you can build up a solid and profitable base of repeat customers.
• It can be very rewarding–you will be helping people to look their absolute best on some of the most special and memorable occasions of their lives.
• Your customers are usually very happy to be coming into your shop since they’re preparing for a special day.

The Bad:

• Building a solid reputation and a reliable base of repeat customers is paramount to making this business profitable–so you must offer excellent customer service to stand out from competitors.
• It may take some time for you to see profits as building up a solid customer base can take time.

Resources:

• International Formalwear Association
• Bureau of Labor Statistics on Clothing, Accessory and General Merchandise Stores
• Wikipedia on Formal Wear

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