Tag Archives: Business

Australian Shopping Centre Landlords Hurt Small Business Retailers

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Some Australian shopping centre landlords are not taking notice of small business news agency sales data and are increasing base rent by as much as 75% without apparent justification. Add to this increased competition from other retailers in shopping centres today compared to a few years ago, supermarkets, Australia Post to name two, as well as trading terms from suppliers which do not reflect the difference between a shopping centre news agency and other stores and is it any wonder there are shopping centre news agencies which are struggling.

The industry average gross profit for a news agency is between 30% and 32%. The average occupancy cost for a shopping centre news agency is 15%, labour costs 12%, operating expenses are 5% and theft costs at least 2% and often more. The labour cost of 12% usually does not include owner’s wages.

A note on the 15% occupancy cost – this aspirational for some newsagents who have occupancy costs closer to 25%.

One way to address this the shopping centre challenge is to diversify. However, the permitted use clause of the lease and an inflexible landlord can often get in the way of this. I have seen situations where landlords have refused to allow newsagents to sell books, get into gifts or to offer homewares as part of a seasonal sale catalogue tied back to magazine themes such as food. At the same time landlords have permitted coffee shops to take on newspapers, Government owners post offices to expand into stationery and supermarkets to take on papers and magazines.

With sales in core categories over which newsagents have no price or supply control, magazines, newspapers, cards and lotteries, down year on year, it is hard to see the justification for a landlord increasing rent yet it happens – usually 5% a year regardless of trading conditions.

The challenge, of course, is that as long as a landlord can find someone prepared to take on a news agency at a higher than reasonable rent, they will sign them up and not renew the lease of a long term existing newsagent who will not accept an exorbitant (in their opinion) increase in base rent.

One only has to look at recent history in major shopping centres in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland so see that this is what has happened. A bullish negotiator talks up the landlord, says they can achieve a higher than industry average GP, the landlord believes this and signs them up for a nice premium. The lease is handed (sometimes maybe forced) to an operator who is pumped up by the promoter and sooner or later they close, sometimes losing the family home along the way as has happened recently. The ‘promoter’ walks away unscathed and does it all again.

Publishers, magazine distributors, industry associations and other stakeholders who want to see news agencies to continue to operate in shopping centres need to do more work educating landlords about fair rent. Too many newsagents of long standing lose their businesses at the end of their lease. Too many make barely minimum wage during their time of ownership of the business.

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Security Issues in Your Business: How Do You Know If You Have Them?

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Most business owners I talk to almost always say to me they have no security issues in their business, so I always ask them this question, How Do You Know? Then I usually get an “I am not sure,” or a “Nothing has happened so far,” answer from them. Most believe they have had nothing bad happen so they are safe and secure no matter what.

For whatever reason business owners seem to think that because they have an alarm system and maybe a camera system installed, they should have no security issues at all. This can be a dangerous assumption from these folks if they all of a sudden have some incident happen that they could have stopped before it occurred. They could be in for a costly lawsuit or a major loss of business because they thought they were protecting all their assets when they were not.

In 2009 the U.S. Labor department survey showed that 62% of small businesses were sued by one of their own employees. Of these lawsuits most were for of the discrimination, wrongful termination or just the policies and procedures that were used against the employee by the business owner. This should be a very large wake up call for business owners of all sizes, it can and will happen to you eventually if you don’t plan ahead to eliminate these security issues.

Business security issues are a lot more than alarms and cameras! They also include, just to name a few issues:

  • Company Information out in public domains
  • Hiring, Discipline, Retention and Termination Processes
  • Policy and Procedures in place or not implemented
  • Hiring Security Providers beyond just cost alone
  • Premises Liability Issues
  • Business Continuity Planning
  • Employee Security Training and Emergency Response Training

Above are just a few of the issues that security measures can help a business owner deal with, keeping them from losing money, wasting time and going to court over costly lawsuits that could have been eliminated with proper planning and advisement from a professional security consultant or security coach.

These professionals can assist you in identifying your risks and threats to your business and its assets. By using their unique sets of skills and knowledge, you the business owner can indeed reduce or even eliminate these issues before they occur into a costly court situation.

It has been a well known fact that being proactive in nature is always less costly than being reactive to a problem or situation, you never want to be caught playing catch up in the business world when you can plan ahead and have things you need covered before it costs you everything you worked so hard for.

Whether you decide to go with a security consultant and have them do all the work for you and give a report on the needed implementation to stop bad things from happening or by using a security coach to work in partnership with you on the issues you need to deal with, you need to look at this issue seriously before you lose money, time, reputations and your life’s work!

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Dealing With The Language Barrier In International Business

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More and more often in business we find that companies spread divisions of themselves across the planet and you may well find that as you go from talking to one English speaking part of a company you hit a Urdu speaking part of a German speaking part, it’s times like these that good quality translations in anything from user manuals to private documents can become incredibly useful.

My story began a long while ago, I was working as CEO of a medium sized IT repair company, taking orders from across the planet and trying to explain my company’s procedures to clients across the planet with the help of our good friend Google Translate. Not only did this produce emails with hideous typos but also game my entire company an air of unprofessionalism that I had fought hard to battle ever since taking over in a senior position in the company. So I set about hiring people for positions they weren’t qualified for just because I knew they could speak and translate documents into foreign language. Needless to say, this was a costly and time consuming error.

So I set about trying to find myself a translation company who could guarantee me complete transparency, and could inspire the confidence I needed to pass over many sensitive documents to be translated in a timely professional way. But after taking a lot of advance and reading around online I managed to find a company that fit my needs perfectly and they’ve been handling my business for the past 2 years now, it’s all about research in the end.

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Find Venture Capital – Checklist for Why You Need to Find Venture Capital

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Below we will set up a checklist to help you know why, how much and where to find venture capital.

Find Venture Capital Checklist:

  1. Why do you need money?-expansion, startup or financial crisis
  2. Is your need pressing?-do you have to have the money now or can you get by a little longer or is this for future project
  3. What are your future financial projections?-need to hire, more equipment or diversify products

Venture Capital Sources:

  • Local or state programs-check websites and local institutions for more options
  • Microloan-equipment or supplies-check requirements at your local bank
  • SBA-Small Business Association-check the website for more information
  • Private Investors -local papers adds, internet, or personal contact

What are Other Ways to Find Venture Capital?
Check all local and state government programs that are available in your area. Check around to see what types of businesses that investors are looking for. And most important, see if there is a government grant program for your type of business, and see what is required for you to get these grants.

To find venture capital can be somewhat confusing and take some research and time to get the right amount from the right source. Have your business plan proposal ready and complete when you enter an establishment to find needed capital. Be professional, accurate in you research and figures, and most of all be honest. These people are professionals in their field and will be able to see right through you if you are trying to pull something off on them.

The new entrepreneur will need capital to start their business venture and have the much needed funds for their business operations. To find capital, you can go to a bank, private wealthy investors or professionally managed investment funds. The first step to be considered for this or any form of  capital investment is your business plan. Your business plan must be professional, short but accurate and interesting to gain the attention of these funders to be further considered for financial assistance. If your business plan is weak, you will have no chance to even be considered for financing. It is my personal recommendation to hire a business consultant to assure you have a well presentable business plan.

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Business Failure and Getting Better Results

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In this Business Article we are going to talk about business failure. The reason business failure is so interesting to me is because of what my personal failures have meant to my life and because of the massive profits my failures in business have made. Here is the single reason why they have meant profit to me even though most have found that failure has meant some kind of loss to so many others.

The number one key in turning your business failure into profit is your ability to first mentally frame your failure as a lesson. The challenges we can face in business are truly infinite. You will only experience difference versions of a few of the same key challenges. So when you really learn from the experience, you have an asset that is unique to business success. That asset is the ability to spot the challenge before it becomes a failure so you can correct the course of what is about to happen.

The second most important part to turning business failure into profit is your ability to search out the opportunity that is found in failure. Sometimes failure takes place that creates an opportunity twice the benefits of the challenge that was put in front of you. But you won’t find those benefits if you don’t look for them.

So if you feel like you haven’t got the results you want or if you feel like your in the middle of a business failure, your first job is to find the lesson by asking yourself the right questions about what happened and how you can keep something like that from happening again. Then keep looking for the hidden opportunity because it is there. You might not see it right away but you will find it if you keep looking.

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