Opening New Stores

The creation of new stores is usually initiated by a District Manager, a Store Owner who is becoming a District Manager, or a Regional Manager who is creating a new district.

In the process of harvesting sources of books, a store will typically obtain twice as many retail-only books than can be sold in a store. These are ones that sell poorly on-line but reasonably well in retail stores and include any highly mass produced books that sell for very little when new such as pulp fiction and also ones that are expensive to ship such as large coffee table books. These may over supply by as many as 100 such books per day and within each 3 to 4 month period can accumulate an excess of 5,000 or more. As this happens it signals an incentive to open an additional store as a sales outlet.

An additional new retail location enables new retail sales as well as new intake for on-line sales. This sequence is the driver of the viral growth nature of our enterprise. However, for small entrepreneurs the workload of opening a new store is daunting so we put together a special team in each region dedicated to helping with all the chores necessary for a continuous process of new store creation.

It starts with a simple on-line form filled out by the District Manager which supplies one or more suggested locations and a few other details to the New Store Creation Team. The team contacts landlords, negotiates leases, contracts with the new store owner, purchases computer, phone, and other furnishings, gets a business license, sets up bookkeeping and inventory accounts, and schedules an opening date.

A day or so before opening, the Inventory Rack Builder/Installer picks up the inventory re-consigned to the new store and delivers it to the new store, meeting with the new store owner, store manager, and district manager to set up the store with display and archive racks. After some initial decoration and signage is installed the store is ready for a low-key opening and the new personnel begin a training period.