setting up business

[peter99]

Stef

As someone who is regularly in Leeds (my parents live there), lives and works in London and have spent half my life in both rural France and Paris over the last 10 years I would suggest the option you suggested in your 1st post is key - Paris.

As you know but others on the forum won't, It's a battle in France between the Parisians and the other French. The rest of France (generally) hate the Parisians as 'snobby and self important', you can see it when someone pulls up miles from Paris with a Parisian numberplate and hear the comments from people in cafes etc.
The Parisians have a saying ' there's Paris then there's the rest'. Same condescending attitude in reverse (again generally).
Incidentally I have French friends who live near Fontainbleu, 20 miles south of Paris. They say they are no bodies as the Parisians do not accept them as Parisians as they live outside but the rest of France assume they're Parisians so treat them as such.

At a guess, and I may be wrong, but are you falling into one of those camps? Paris is a beautiful place if you stay away from the tourist traps, like any great city.

I mention this because you are about to spend a massive amount of time, money and risk into a venture that can easily be over ridden by an established manufacturer / importer who would be doing it already if there was good profit in it, yet you say yourself there's an opportunity in Paris for you, even if only in the medium term.

I have had to work all over the UK in this recession to keep turnover up, I don't intend to do that for ever but needs must at certain times in life. Things can't be that bad if you turn your nose up just because it's in Paris.

I say this with best intentions - and please go ahead with your venture if you think it will succeed - but it seems you have an easier road in Paris to keep the wolf from the door just now I would have thought. In the end only you know the full situation and pitfalls / potentials.

Good luck with it all and if you really have seen an opportunity then you must go for it, just make sure it really exists first.

 

[wobblycogs]

Reading through this thread I think there is one aspect that hasn't been touched on properly: logistis. Controling the supply / storage of raw materials and the shipping / storage of finished goods could eaisly make the difference between sucess and failure.

Making 500 units a month is all well and good but once they have been made it becomes important that they get shipped out quickly due to the space they take up (assuming they aren't something tiny like wooden earings) and the money tied up in the items.

Personally, I would outsource the production. It would be nice to do it locally running your own "real" business but production is so cheap in the east and so expensive in the west that it's just not viable. The only way I could see it working is if you could make a market specifically for locally produced goods but that's just another barrier and unlikely to provide the volume required.

A final problem I see is with production volumes. Lets assume the business starts with three people, one of which is making the items to sell (sounds like my company). Assuming it takes an hour per piece and you work 8 hours a day you would need to work 62.5 days a month! Flipping that round and saying you will work any number of hours to meet the required production level means working 16 hours a day, every day, in a 31 day month. This says to me that you need to automate or hire more (probably 2 at least) people.

 

[peter99]

Exactly Wobblycogs, I didn't go into detail in my post because there seems to be so many problems with this business plan (not the product but the whole production / delivered to point of sale chain).

France is in the dark ages compared to the UK with delivery (or way ahead of us if you think global warming and logistics, filling delivery vehicles etc)

Next day delivery certainly isn't the norm there. Go to a plumbers merchants and order taps, rads etc. 3 weeks delivery isn't uncommon. So unless this plan includes own in house lorries for nationwide delivery then storage whilst waiting for carriers would be essential over there.
Peter

 

[RogerS]

.....
I have no particular target market (at least not on nationality)
.....

That phrase scares me, Stef. How do you think you can make a business when you don't know your market. Sorry to be blunt but that is the starting point. You can make the best widget in the world but if the world doesn't want your widget....

Good luck though.

Roger

 

[woodsworth]

I think another thing to look at is demand. How many beds do people go through? And of those how many's tastes will match your product? 2 thousand beds on month will be 4 thousand beds in two months and 6 thousand in three. The incredible volume of that many beds is mind boggling. What on earth do you do with them all? Much less 24,000 beds a year.

It soon becomes apparent that you cannot retail that many beds, so you have to become a wholesaler. Which means you need to make more because the sale price will become less so the retailer can make their cut. And of course there is transportation costs because there is no way that you can sell that many beds in your neighborhood.

Now it looks as though just beds is not the best idea so you need to expand into other things. Before you even start you have built a multimillion € business that needs a lot of investment which also means it needs a lot of backing which means it needs share holders that will also want a piece of the pie. Which by coincidence is how you got in this mess in the first place.

So I think that a unique idea of your own that is solely dependent on yourself is a better solution to your own problem.