Business talk with the acupuncturist
One would not expect to have such a long conversation with your acuupuncturist but that was what happen to me earlier in the week.
This is the 3rd time i have seen him and his wife and him makes you feel right at home with their very personal customer service. This day was no different, except the wifey isn’t around. The conversation that we normally had drifted to setting up your own business as compared to being a salaried employee.
He said that some pitfalls about setting up your own business sometimes isn’t considered until you are in it. Such things include finding time to go out meeting friends, having a small social circle. There is also a reluctance to close the shop to have leisure time as it means you are paying rental but not earning an income for that day. It turns out that his rental is almost 2000 bucks per month. On calculation, if you work for 25 days per month,� you will need to make 80 bucks to break even on that.
I don’t know why we talked for so long, probably because there ain’t any customers and i wasn’t very busy that day to rush off somewhere. He began to tell me about the importance of having products that work well.
One pitfall when choosing a product is one that has an expiry date. If you are a supplier supplying that and if they dun sell and expire, you will have to dispose them off. In the case of a retailer like himself, it does not pay to have too much inventory from the supplier as
- his business is mainly selling his acupuncturist skills
- they act more as advertisment
- minimise the above mentioned problems on expiring stocks. Of course he can change with suppliers but that does do the relationship good in the long run
He went on to tell me that having a ROI of 25-35%on you product is very good already. He had a friend who imports clothings manufactured in Vietnam for 1 buck and sells it at Robinson at 50 bucks. Such high ROI is hard to come by unless you have your ways well.
Towards the end, he talked more on selling to large retailers like NTUC, suppliers are the ones giving the discounts for those $1 off selling price rather than NTUC and how it is difficult to work with them when they put such expectations to you.
I guess somethings are better heard from one in the business rather than from books and stuff. That was a good acupuncturist trip.
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