Category: SEO

Building a successful business starts from before you begin trading. Having thorough and comprehensive planning and budgeting can make the difference between a company that treads water, and a business that is truly successful. 

Failure to plan properly will only set you up for a fall. And if you have not managed to get a workable business plan and budget together, then you will find that your business will suffer as a result. 

Budget High

There is no value in setting yourself a starting budget that is too low. This is especially true if you are looking for outside investment to be able to start your business. When you take your business proposition along with your financial forecasts and budgets into an investment meeting, you will be talking with people who look at business plans daily. They will be able to tell from looking at numbers on paper whether a business is likely to be a success, or if there are gaps in your planning that will cost you everything that you will have put into the company. 

If you have not accounted for everything that you may need, then you will also find that if you do not budget high enough, then you will run out of money before you even get yourself off the ground. 

Include Everything

Your business may have very diverse setup needs. These may include everything from the rental of your premises to fitting costs such as getting warehouse flooring from Impact Floors. You will most likely need to get computers to work from, and office furniture. 

You’ll need to include marketing costs such as setting up your website, paying your domain registering fees, as well as web-hosting, and social media expenses. 

Recruitment can be a costly affair, and you need to think about where you are going to get your employees from, and how you will recruit them. This should be included in your budget, along with the actual wage costs for the opening period that you are budgeting for.

There will be lots of administration related fees that you will need to pay too such as registering your company, as well as any business and liability insurance policies that you need to take out. 

Added to this, you will then need to factor in the cost of any stock or supplies that your business may use, as well as any packaging. 

Plan For Things To Go Wrong

When you start a new business you will inevitably come to a situation that you had not, or could not have planned for. The unforeseen circumstances can often end up being costly, so including a contingency buffer within your budget will ensure that you are able to handle these unplanned expenses as they arise. Think about including an additional five to ten percent to cover anything that you cannot account for. If you are prepared for the worst to happen, you will save yourself a lot of headaches later on down the line. 

Revolutions in business occur all of the time, it’s often just hard to keep track of them all. This is also due to the fact that a revolution does not necessarily have to completely override everything that came before it, but build on the echoes of what works to make something new and special. This is why we are seeing a true renaissance in pop up stores and street food trucks as of late.

You may be tempted to run your own pop-up store, be that to sell artwork, clothing, limited edition products, or something else entirely. But where does the power of a pop-up store lie, and also, how can you best curate your efforts for the best result? It’s worth asking these questions, because if you’re not careful, you may lose the incredible opportunity to make the most of this.

Thankfully, if you’re willing to be courageous and put all of your effort into making this a success, it can launch your small store to fame in the local community, and perhaps even further than that. In the following advice, we hope to lead you towards that result:

Spreading The Word

The exclusivity of a pop-up store makes them very special, and their temporary nature will often mean that people spend time coming to you instead of other, more permanent stores. For example, if you are a somewhat famous online influencer with a new fashion line, offering these items within a pop-up store designed by your branding in a popular city can help you spread the word through social media, and word of mouth and sharing capacities will do the work from there. All of a sudden, finding and appreciating your offering will help people feel they are part of something, and that limitation can often increase the value of said items you may be selling. Carefully managed, this may even give you the chance to offer your output in a much more streamlined manner. This in itself can be powerful.

Great Design

Remember, the limitation of a pop-up store can mean that you have a chance to make a statement. It’s important to go all in when designing this experience. Sure this may seem like an exclusive thing to offer, but if you fail to provide quality behind that, interest will dry up quickly. Pop up stores can be the rental of a space for a week or so, the use of container conversions can allow for a more mobile and streamlined experience, or showing up at business expo’s can help you benefit from the surrounding potential of the businesses around you.

No matter what you choose, curate your best intentions. Use graphic designs, lighting, the presentation of said product, a streamlined sales experience, the entertainment of the queue, and perhaps the privacy of the store itself (through blackout windows or a separate exit) to help the space feel active and interesting. This is a great place to show your creative flair.

Not only this, but these efforts can also help spread the word. Ensuring that your pop-up store is Instagram or Twitter worthy can help news of your presence spread like wildfire, and not only that, but serve as amazing marketing material for the next time you choose to develop something like this. 

Business Messaging

Messaging can also be a great thing to consider. We have already spoken of the power social media has in allowing these popup stores to gain a sense of limitation and exclusivity, but the messaging you apply, such as in temporary branding, curating this experience as part of a movement and not just a product sale will help reflect back onto your products sold as something even more valuable than they might be. Even if you’re selling simple fashion accessories, all of a sudden those products not only represent what they are, but the movement they were part of. Thoroughly applied and considered, this can raise the desire for whatever you offer, and you’ll learn a great deal about business messaging.

To Conclude

It’s quite clear to see that pop-up stores can offer something that more fixed or online offerings cannot, and that’s a sense of premium exclusivity. However, it’s important that you justify that in every way you can, to become more substantial than simply becoming a business that serves as a fashion accessory.

With the previous advice, we hope you can achieve that through and through.

HR departments are busy places; looking after employees from the moment they apply for a role in the company, to organising their final day is a long and complex process, and you will be completing it multiple times for lots of employees during your career. So, it’s important to streamline your operations as much as possible to make sure that there is time to cover everything effectively. Here are some ideas on how you could do this.

Digitalisation

Most industries are now taking the leap into digitalisation, as it has such a big impact on efficiency. When it comes to HR, this can help in many different areas of practice. For example, you can now get software that keeps track of various statistics such as sales numbers, client feedback, and the progression of projects so that you can easily access the information you need to carry out staff performance reviews. You can digitalise your internal communications too, so that you can send important information out in bulk, which saves a lot of time, as well as being able to merge statistics into emails rather than having to take the time to gather and compile them yourself.

Furthermore, you can now carry out interviews via video calling, which is a far more efficient way of doing it as it enables you to fit more candidates into a shorter space of time. It also means you can have a record of your conversations to refer back to if you need to remind yourself of their credentials.

Mentoring and Training

Training doesn’t have to be delivered one by one and face to face, which would be a very time-consuming process. You can make the most of things like PowerPoint presentations to educate large groups of people at once, and software that lets them practice without supervision, so that they can learn the majority of what they need to learn before needing any intervention from HR staff.

Mentoring software is another option, which acts as a social learning platform so that employees can go to each other for help and guidance, rather than always going to the HR department. For example, if they’re struggling with an aspect of their role, they can ask a member of staff who has previously filled the role for guidance.

Predict Problems

Something that not many HR departments make the most of is its employee feedback. Asking employees for their thoughts in an anonymous capacity can give you a lot of insight into what is and isn’t working when it comes to the operational processes that are in place. This also helps when it comes to keeping grievances at bay, as you can find out when potential problems look like they might arise, allowing you to nip them in the bud rather than letting them escalate to a point where they may take a lot of time to solve.

Streamlining your HR operations is possible with the help of new technology that allows you to digitalise many of your processes, such as training, keeping track of staff progression, and internal communications.

You can also integrate mentoring into the workplace so that employees can help one another, and you can keep a constant line of communication open between you and them so that you can get feedback and insight that allows you to make positive changes quickly. Take a look at vikingwanderer.com for more helpful business tools, such as a list of contacts and services that could benefit any company.