The question is a simple one: would you rent a house for your retail business? If you had a dry cleaning business, or an insurance agency, maybe a convenience store or a watch repair store, would you rent a house as the visible face of your business?
Most of you would say no immediately, right? How silly to do that, right? Residential means living spaces, and commercial means business spaces; pretty simple to follow that logic, wouldn’t you say? There are some rent a house problems to consider, right?
And yet many people, when starting a home-based business, choose to work from home and conduct business from their home. You know the people we are talking about; you may be one of them. You make a clever little product, and you sell it on ETSY and Craigslist and eBay, and you do it all from your living room or extra bedroom, and everything goes smashingly well until your business outgrows your home, and then you are faced with the commercial space dilemma. Your retail business is suddenly too big for your home.
Stop looking at home rentals! That’s the first thing we will tell you.
So what do you do? Well you certainly don’t go out and rent another house for your retail business. That would be plain stupid, and you are anything but stupid. When Mark Zuckerberg found success with Facebook, he didn’t keep his company in his college dorm room. He immediately went out and rented commercial property which met the needs of his rapidly-growing company.
And that’s what you should do as well!
And now you are facing a serious dilemma, because most commercial property is expensive and is not constructed with individual needs in mind. Most commercial property is institutional in nature, the equivalent of an endless supply of vanilla wafers . . . not much flavor, but better than nothing.
We have a solution for you! It is a radical solution, it is a funky solution, and it is an off-the-wall-quirky solution, but hear us out.
The shipping container revolution!
You start with one shipping container, 320 square feet of commercial/retail space, the perfect size for a growing business. Consider that container a blank piece of paper. You can draw any picture on it that you like. Make that container reflect your goals and visions. Make it an extension of you, the owner, and a reflection of your company.
As your business grows you simply add on another container. It’s easy to do; containers were built to stack, like children’s blocks. They are the perfect retail solution for minimalists who care about the environment, and they are the hottest thing in commercial real estate right now, as evidenced by places like Box Office Warehouse Suites in Fort Worth, Texas.
But don’t take our word for it. Take a look at Box Office Warehouse Suites and decide for yourself. Their first two anchor tenants are Happy Bank and Salon & Spa Galleria, two established businesses in the Fort Worth area, so there must be something about those containers that appeals to two successful businesses, right?
See for yourself! Check out Box Office Warehouse Suites online and be prepared to be impressed. There is no need to rent a house for your retail business, not as long as there are shipping containers around.
