I posted a few times about my experiences selling offline vs vs selling online. And I'll share my road and my tips. Use them as you will and feel free to ask any questions.After retiring in 2015 from the military with a masters degree and a dream. I was going to use what I learned my whole adult life to do something different. I wanted to start something that was completely mine, but I didn't want to do it online. I wanted something that would get me out of the house and keep me motivated.So I decided to start a business. A technology retail company. One that would provide popular technology items at cheap prices and provide those items you just can not buy at a regular store. How I was going to do it took me a while to work out.I knew I needed capital, at least $10,000. I didnt want to go into debt so I knew I would have to save money. Mine and my wife's finances are seperate so I knew that with exception of putting money into our household account monthly, the rest could be saved. I drastically cut back my expenses. I chose price over convenience and at the end of each month anything that was left, didn't matter of it was $1 or $1,000, went into a savings account. 6 months later I had my start up capital.Now I spent the next 4 months searching for items, talking to suppliers, researching and just generally getting to know everything. I didn't rush I, I didn't start before I was ready. When I was ready though, I was excited.Now the first place I set up a booth was a small car show. Now I would love to tell you that I made a fortune and everyone loved me, but I would by lying to you. I barely sold anything. Couldn't figure it out until an old friend stepped in. A business man in his own right he stood at my booth asking me questions like: what are you asking for this? What did you pay for it? How did you base your price?With that he helped me realize my error. It wasn't my pitch, it wasn't my products. It was my pricing. I was attempting to sell these items at close to, or exactly retail. He told me the best way is to move products by volume, not profits. If you buy it for $2 and it sells online for $10 then sell it for $5. I later came to learn that's how major retailers keep prices low, it isn't only what they paid for an item it's about how many and how fast they can sell them.A month later at a county fair I sold out of almost my complete inventory and then came the hard part. Finances. After every event I did the books. I use paper still. No software. Tallied up my expenses and profits. Now I keep track of items I sell and my costs for those items are immediately moved to the company account, as well as 6% on each sale for state taxes and an additional 5% of what was left so I could grow my reserve fund. By the end of the first year I had set up a LLC. Paying your taxes is important. Now I could have charged that 6% to my customers, but chose not to.So I kept going weekend after weekend to events. Re-ordering what I had sold right after the event. I made a lot of money that summer, but I wasn't finished. I took October and November off. And at the beginning of December I rented a kiosk at my local mall. I sold there too and did even better than I had in the summer. It wasn't easy. I was working 8am-11pm everyday but it was worth it.Then I had the capital to open my own shop. But where to open it was the question. I live on the border of 2 states, which one to chose. That answer was chosen for me. I bought a piece of property at a land auction. Not much. A paved parking area. Nice storage building came with it, but it is on a major road. Roughly 1 million cars a week. Now that doesn't mean that many unique cars. Most are daily repeats but that's the total number if even if someone drove it ten times a day for a week they were counted ten times.Now came time for the actually building. I purchased 3, premade, buildings. These are great. They bring them to you and the only thing you need to do is level them, connect them, hook them up to utilities and build the inside to your liking. So I had three parts. Part 1 was turned into the retail part and behind the counter I had my personal workbench. Part 2 was storage, bathroom, etc. Part 3 will surprise you. In part 3 I set up a conference table for 8, a projector and 6 little work benches. On those were all the tools you needed for electronics repair.That room was for my customers, free of charge, I taught classes on electronics repair. Preparations for the drone pilot's license test and even minor gunsmithing, which I also did. The benches were for people to come in to repair their electronic items like drones and planes and cars and they could use those free of charge. Sometimes people would just come in on a cold or rainy day and just hang out in there. I didn't mind, they all turned into loyal customers.Now your probably wondering about advertising. I spent very little on advertising. Why? I didn't need to. If I set up a booth at the car show the people would come for the car show. They advertised for me. My actual business was on a busy road and I had a huge sign. That road advertised for me. Every once in a while I'll pay for extra advertisement at an event. But that's normally for only one event. Same with the mall kiosk. I didn't have to advertise a penny because the mall was the advertisement. Make sense?Now, like many businesses, covid killed mine. My shop sits empty but because I spent the money on the land and building I'll never lose it and if I must I can sell it. I may never reopen that shop, I'm moving in different directions and making investments. I'll always set a up a booth at my favorite venues in the summer though.Now let's talk online. For six years I have heard "If you don't sell online you will fail" I have proved that to be false. But I am considering. I have a lot of product after Christmas. I was thinking of sending it all to Amazon's, posting it and letting it sell in is own time, but also still attempting to beat the competitor prices. It might explode, it might not, I'll just have to wait and see.So let's go over some finer points. To accomplish this you need discipline. Not only to save the funds needed, but to not use the profits as a personal piggy bank. Even if the vast majority of the sales go back into the company then so be it. Also advertising can be done more than by using the internet or local resources. It's all about putting yourself into a position where outside factors do it for you.Now that's the basics how I started a completely offline company through hard work. Sometimes we are seduced by things like: online marketing, passive income, keywords, SEO and such when sometimes we need to remember that e-commerce is still in its infancy and sometimes the old ways are the best. see hubwealthy.com/wealthy
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