I agree with Jeff. I've before thought that they only realistic way to have a small brick and mortar sports memorabilia or Hollywood memorabilia or whatever store is if you are already successful online. Heck, maybe then you could add live in store auctions. It's possible (I said possible) having the multiple avenues to sell might prove good and even an advantage to just selling online.
Lastly, you start a business where you objectively think it will be successful beforehand and not because of your sentimental tastes or conceptions. Do you know why Amazon.com specializes in books? Because Jeff Bezos determined that books was the best product to sell in his business. Whether or not he personally loved books and reading was neither here nor there. If he had determined that selling oven mitts was the best product despte the fact that he hated cooking, Amazon would have specialized in oven mitts. If starting a baseball card store makes lots of money and you love baseball cards, that's great. But loving baseball cards and being sentimental about your local childhood store, won't make an unprofitable business model less unprofitable ... Now, if you already have a profitable online business selling sports cards, that would at least give you a buffer to test out a store for a short period to see how it works. If the store hears nothing but crickets, you at least know you can move your store inventory online. In fact, the store inventory may be stuff you would have sold online anyway if you hadn't started the business. Many small retail business owners are both a bust and stuck with inventory they can't unload except at a small fraction of what they paid-- and the loss on the inventory can tower over other costs, like the lease.
Last edited by drc; 09-26-2009 at 02:33 PM.
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09-26-2009, 01:50 PM
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