Starting your own retail business can be daunting, but nevertheless exciting. Electrical items are a good choice of commodity to sell because most people require electrical goods at some point in their life.
Homes in the UK are full of electrical appliances, meaning this can be a very lucrative business if you get it right.
Firstly, you will need to find an electrical wholesale supplier. Electrical wholesale suppliers sell their products to retailers without charging any sales tax, and so items from a wholesaler are cheaper than you would find in a retail store.
Prices may vary from one electrical wholesale vendor to another, and so do your research to find the best business to buy from in terms of both price and service. Thanks to the internet, research of this kind is only as much effort as a few clicks of a mouse.
Next, you need to decide whether you wish to retail on the high street in a bricks and mortar store, online, or both. Many businesses which began on the high street now retail online too, and this is known colloquially as ‘click and mortar’, although the amount of independent electrical retailers on the high street has diminished considerably in recent years, partly because they do not have the huge buying power of the big chains of stores, and also because the savvy consumer is now likely to check out prices online before making a purchase.
Beginning your retail business online is a sensible way to start; the overheads are low (rent on a bricks and mortar premises in a shopping area can be very high) and so there is less financial risk involved.
You’ll need to invest money if you want to have a successful transactional website, but in the meantime, a good way to go about things is to set up as a shop on eBay. Here, you are on an equal platform to other sellers, and if your prices are right, customers will click through and buy from you.
As a seller of electrical goods, there are regulations that you must follow, namely the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment regulations (WEE) which came into place in 2006. These put responsibility on producers, distributors and users of electrical equipment, and so apply to you, your electrical wholesale suppliers and your customers, and so be sure to adhere to the advice of these rules.