Commercial space readiness guide.
Before you sign for a storefront, make sure the business is ready for one. This outline follows ICSC’s Setting Up Shop guide, from business plan to opening day.
The outline.
Five phases, start to launch
Business strategy
- Choose an entity type
- Form the legal entity
- Write a business plan and build the team
- Plan how you’ll sell in store and online
- Plan your exit
Capital and costs
- Calculate rent
- Estimate startup costs
- Draft profit and loss projections
- Line up funding and financing
- Look for incentives and partners
Finding the space
- Set your site criteria
- Engage a broker
- Do your due diligence
- Sign the lease
- Leave room to grow
Design and build
- Understand the process
- Design the customer experience
- Get the city’s approvals
Opening
- Build and keep an online presence
- Market to win and keep customers
Where a broker helps.
The questions a good broker asks
Who your customer is, what your cash flow looks like, how you’ll attract customers and what build-out the space needs.
Then we tour listed and unlisted spaces and bring the numbers for each: demographics, traffic counts, nearby anchor sales, rent, triple net expenses, build-out costs, zoning, use restrictions and signage.
Foot-traffic tools such as Placer.ai can show where customers come from and when they shop.
The guide is a starting point. It doesn’t replace an attorney, an accountant or a broker.
Write to us.
Ready to look at space?
Tell us about the business and what you need. A broker will follow up.