How to Start a Souvenir Shop
The article is written to provide a guide on how to start a souvenir shop. People like to keep items that remind them of places they have been to or things that have an emotional attachment to them. These unique and lovely items can also be given as gifts to friends and families. These gift items or souvenirs can be gotten from souvenir shops around local tourists locations or in the market.
With the increasing craving for gifts, souvenirs and antics, opening a souvenir shop can be a good startup business idea. And the souvenir business was estimated to rake in over $16 billion in 2002, according to the United States of America census bureau, which makes it a lucrative business prospect. The increasing sales of these items shows the need to create more of such shops. And it is one of the easiest businesses to start, with no need to acquire any special skills, nor does it require a certificate.
As you would have observed, it may not cost much to open a souvenir shop compared to businesses. However, there are specific requirements or considerations you should make to become successful in the industry. Your main objective of opening a souvenir shop is to make money. And to achieve that aim, you have to provide what the customers desire.
Now, we are going to assist you with the necessary considerations you will make in opening your souvenir shop. You should pay attention to the guidelines that will be discussed and follow the steps appropriately.
Guidelines to Start Your Souvenir Shop
You will need to carry out due diligence about the souvenir industry to fully understand the scope of the business. You have seen that the industry is a lucrative one, and if you take strategic steps, you can make a considerable profit from the investment. The guidelines listed below will be discussed in detail to help you start your souvenir business as soon as possible. Follow the steps accordingly:
- Research the market
- Find a suitablelocality to set up your souvenir shop.
- Get a permit to operate a souvenir shop.
- Find suitable suppliers for your shop.
- Define your brand.
- Determine ways of making revenue from the shop.
- Determine how to target interested customers.
- Create a platform for feedback and online reviews
We are going to analyze the points stated above for an in-depth understanding of how to start your souvenir business. It is advisable to follow each step as for you to succeed in the industry.
Research the market
Opening a souvenir shop will offer you the opportunity to sell a wide range of products. You can sell antics, locally crafted products, clothes, books, antics, and wristwatches and so on. However, you have to understand the demand of the market in your region to decide what to sell in your shop. For example, if you are in an area that attracts tourists, it will best for you to sell antics that these tourists will find appealing. You will likely make more profit selling products the tourists can take home, to keep memories of the time they spent in that region. You will consider selling local antiques and other local products that will attract these tourists to boost your profit-making potential.
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Knowing the market and the type of customers you are likely to attract will help you determine how to plan the business. In a nutshell, know your customers before you decide the kind of products you want to sell in your souvenir shop. What you will sell in a family dominated area will be different from the type of items you will put up for display in a tourist dominated area. Novels, household items, decorations and toys will sell faster in a family dominated area than in a tourist dominated area.
You must carry out a feasibility study on the business, to know your likely targeted customers, and the best products to promote to these customers. This is the first aspect of the business you have to understand before you proceed to the next step. Another consideration in researching about the business is that you should learn more about the industry from other souvenir store owners.
Get acquainted with people in the business to learn the operations that will help you set up your store. You should get enlightened about how they get their souvenirs, get to know people who can supply you the tokens you will put up for your shops and other parts of the business. You can learn more about the business from these stores owners with their wealth of experience than what you can learn in most business schools.
Find a suitable locality to set up your souvenir shop
Location is vital for your business, and at this stage; you should be looking for a suitable place for your souvenir shop. There are specific considerations you have to make about the location for you to be successful in this business, and they include:
- A location with an open space, where you can display your products outward towards the street or an open area. It will be best if people can easily see the goods displayed inside and outside the shop. Sales potential will increase when they are properly placed to attract customers.
- There should be hightraffic flow in the locality, possibly in an area close to a tourist attraction. Also, you can get a shop close to the market, the cinemas, kid’s playground, theatres and other famous places with high traffic flow.
- You should consider an area with affordable rent. This is not an exotic business, and you do not want to spend much of the money you make on huge rent.
Get a permit to operate the souvenir shop.
You cannot set up a souvenir shop without paying the necessary permits to operate in that locality. These permits are usually paid to the government, giving you permission to shop in public places. You should visit any of the government officials close to you to demand what you have to pay and the permit you will need to operate your souvenir shop in any particular area.
Pay these permits so you can operate freely in the region and get any support that may come for being a member in any of the associations.
Find suitable suppliers for your shop.
The souvenirs you have on display is essential to open your souvenir shop. Now that you know the kind of things you will consider for your shop, it is necessary that you find suitable suppliers of products for your business. You need suppliers that can provide you with the specific kind of item you need for your shop so you should not derail your plans. In your research, you may have encountered people who own souvenir shops and can get contacts from suppliers from these store owners.
Some local craftsmen can make some of these antics or local items that tourists will love to buy. Get contacts of these people that can create such items and look for the trendy style of crafts popular with tourist or targeted customers. For other items, you can get them in bulk from recommended suppliers, who will supply you with quality products.
One advantage of this business is that you can sort for your souvenirs locally. And this will reduce the capital of starting the company, and be able to make considerable profits from the items sold. In such a business, it is advisable to buy products in bulk, as they will be cheaper and you can make profits by selling them at your retail shop.
Define your brand
There will probably be other souvenir shops around, so you have to find ways to make your shop unique and attractive to customers. Of course, there will be other souvenir shops in that vicinity, especially if it is a prime location for tourists and prospective customers. So you should have plans on how to make your shop stand out among the other shops in the vicinity.
What then can you do to make your shop attractive to other shops? What kind of structure and arrangement should you put in place? Now, you should understand that you may have the best product, but may find yourself not attracting people to your shop. At this stage, you have to be strategic with your brand, which is your business.
You can make your brand appealing to customers in several ways that will make your shop noticeable. One of the ways you can achieve this is to make your shop appealing, and using attractive features to get more people to visit the shop. It’s a souvenir shop, and you should design it in a way that passerby can view what is inside the shop, use a transparent or glass-like barrier so people can see inside. You can also design your shop in a way where you can display your goods outside, using extended shelves.
Branding the souvenir shop also involves naming the company, and preparing a corresponding logo that will represent the shop anywhere. In your store, you should have adequately designed posters which people can observe from some distance. This poster should be catchy and noticeable across the street, and it should give an idea of what you have inside the shop.
One thing you can do is to brand your package with your business name and logo. When people visit your shop, wrap up the items they buy with your brand on it. This is a very effective way of advertising your shop for people will know where they purchased these items with the package displaying your brand. This method is useful for places filled with tourists, where they can take your packages abroad, thus advertising your brand overseas.
Brand your business effectively and promote it for others to get to know your business. Remember that we are in a world where you can take your souvenir business global, and we will deal with this aspect of promoting your business subsequently.
Determine ways of increasing revenues from your shop
Mind you that you may find other ways of attracting customers and increasing revenue with your souvenir shops. Now, understand that you will be dealing with tourists and different kinds of customers. You will want these people to spend more time in your shops, which will increase the chances that they will spend money. If you have space, you may add other items in your shop that will further attract customers.
You should add other services such as selling drinks such as coffee, tea, and other refreshing drinks to these customers. The customers will feel comfortable and find a place to relax from the hot sun or cold while they browse around what you have to offer in your shop. This is a way you can take advantage of the souvenir shop in a busy location and increase your revenue. When these tourists are in the area, they will hang out and take refreshment in your shop while browsing through your items.
Another angle you may use to attract customers to your shop is to offer giveaways and free stuff when they shop on your platform. As you have determined your targeted audiences from your research about the business, you will have an idea of what will interest these customers. Arrange your shop with items you know will entice these customers. And if the store is big enough, provide some sort of entertainment to your customers.
Determine how to target interested audiences
With the internet, you can reach more customers, and not necessarily wait for them to come to you. With the internet, you can go global with your souvenir shop. . You should open an online store to display your souvenir to your targeted customers. Take advantage of the possibilities the internet has to offer to grow your revenues by reaching out to millions of people.
There are different ways you can grow your souvenir shop online, which is discussed below:
- Creating an online store
You can build an eCommerce platform where you can sell your products to customers online. It has become easy to create these online stores and place up your items for display to customers. Creating an online store will help you increase revenue and give you an edge over your competition.
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With the online store, you can promote your souvenir to people outside your vicinity. And you can take your products to a global audience which will increase sales and awareness. With the online souvenir store, you can market your product anywhere in the world. It takes your business to the international level.
- Promoting your souvenir shop on a social media platform
Another way of branding your business and promoting it online is to create your presence on social media platforms. The popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are tools you can use effectively to target the right audience. And this is why these platforms are useful as marketing tools for any business.
You can handle the promotion of your souvenir business on these platforms, or get a social media manager to run this service. for you. But I will advise you to do this yourself as it is not rocket science and you will be saving money when you do this task on your own.
Create a profile with your brand and not your profile. Place images of the products on your shop using relevant hashtags to ensure the right people see them. If you do not have the resources or technical ability to create an online store, you can do one effectively on any of the social media platforms. Facebook and Instagram are especially suitable for creating online stores and promote your items effectively. So it will be best if you focus much on promoting your best products on these platforms. You can run paid adverts on these online platforms, to promote your shops to interested people. Using paid adverts will increase the awareness of your shop, for they will target the right demographic, ages, using travel history and interest to ensure that the advert gets to people that will be interested in your shop online. When making your budget, you should include the fees for paid online advert to help as you start that souvenir shop.
As you start your souvenir business, you should also plan your online presence along with the process. You must research the availability of your chosen brand name online, to ensure they are available before you commit to it.
Create a platform for feedback and online reviews
As you start your souvenir business, you should place measures on how to get feedback and reviews from your customers. You must be aware of the props that customers love and how they feel about your products and services. This will help you to make certain decisions about your business, such as what customers like about the shop, the kind of products that sell fast and how you can improve on your services to the customer.
There are various measures you should set up in place to help you get the views of your customers. You can always ask them how they feel about the services delivered when they visit the shops, but you cannot get enough when you ask directly. And thus it is required that you set up some ways you can get customers opinions which will help improve your business. There are several methods you should set up to enable you to get customer reviews about your products and services:
- The most straightforward tools to set up for customer reviews are to set up social media platforms. On these platforms, customers can easily communicate with the customers and get to read what they say about your business. Using a social media platform is one of the easiest ways to know what people are saying about your shop online.
- On your website, you should make room forpages where customers can drop reviews about any of the products they have purchased on the platform. You should get your website designer to include a review page on the website in a manner to encourage customers to drop feedback and reviews.
- You can also register your souvenir business on any of the popular review platforms. People usually drop comments about companies they have patronized, and this is a way you can also check out what they say about your business. Registering on these popular review sites will help create awareness about your souvenir shop.
It may not require much capital to start a souvenir business, for you can start with as little resources you have while watching the business grow. It is an easy business to start, taking care of the essential things for a startup before moving on to the other part. With the increasing rate of people doing their shopping online, you can start your souvenir shop online before you open up a physical shop. Of course, in any of the ways you decide to start your souvenir shop, you should consider all that has been discussed.
In setting up such a business, you should be aware that it will take a while before you start making a profit. You should have a long term plan for the company and ensure you have proper record keeping. You can run simple bookkeeping with an appropriate inventory of your stocks and watch how the market develops as you start the business.
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This particular business is a business that you can run without employing any staff, depending on your budget. And this will help reduce the running cost of the company. Opening a souvenir shop is an easy business to manage, and the most challenging aspects should be getting the right products and promoting your souvenir shop. In order to make money, after setting up your business, you should focus on ways to promote your business. And to achieve this, you should be creative in approaching customers, with your online promotions and using pricing and discounts to attract customers. In conclusion, in this kind of business, the customer is king; you should focus on what the customers want in general and not what you find fancy to place in your shop.