What does it cost to open a small shop? The full list and the first 90 days

“What does it cost to open a shop?” has no single answer, and anyone who gives you one isn't talking about your shop. Rent differs street by street, the refit depends on the state of the unit, the price of a chiller depends on whether it is new or second-hand. One thing is the same everywhere though: the STRUCTURE of the costs.

That matters because most new shops don't fail from paying more for the shelving than planned. They fail because a whole group was missing from the calculation — and the gap shows up when there is nothing left to cover it with.

The four cost groups

The difference between them isn't accounting detail. The first hurts once, the second every month, the third keeps most of your money sitting on the shelf, and the fourth is the only one that shows up nowhere — yet it decides whether you get the time to learn your own shop.

1. One-off investment

This is the group everyone works through, because it is visible: concrete objects with concrete price tags. It has two traps.

• A deposit isn't a cost but tied-up money — yet at opening it is missing from your account exactly like a payment.
• With chillers the purchase price is the smaller item: over the years the electricity costs more than the machine.
• In any refit something only emerges once you start stripping out. That needs its own line, not optimism.
• Second-hand equipment can be a good deal, but delivery, installation and the lack of warranty are part of the price.
• Anything that isn't working on opening day is not an investment but lost turnover.

2. Monthly fixed costs

This is the figure you have to pay every month even if not one customer comes in. List it item by item, then multiply by twelve — the annual number tells you far more than the monthly one.

From it comes your single most important indicator: how much margin you have to earn each month to break even. Once you know your fixed costs and roughly what blended margin your shop works at, the turnover you need is one division away — and from then on it is a target, not a feeling.

3. The opening stock

The commonest opening mistake is letting the size of the shelf decide the order: “let it be full”. But a full shelf isn't the goal, it is a means — and your money sits in it until it sells.

The right question runs the other way: not how much fits, but how many days a product takes to sell out. If one sells a week, you don't need twelve. Those eleven units aren't stock but idle money — and the shelf life is working against them.

At opening you have no turnover data of your own — which is exactly why it is worth starting narrower than the space would allow. After two weeks you will have your own figures, and from then on you order by what your customers actually take, not by what the supplier suggests.

4. The working reserve — the one most people leave out

This group buys nothing, which is why it is easy to forget. Yet it is the only one that buys time: the few months in which the shop learns its own customers and the customers learn the shop.

A new shop doesn't reach its settled turnover in the first week. The opening curiosity fades, and a regular customer base builds over months. Between the two there is a stretch where the shop already works but doesn't yet cover its fixed costs. That stretch has to be paid for somehow — and if there is no money set aside, you will take it from the stock, which pushes down exactly the thing that should be building up.

The 90-day plan

The goal of the first three months isn't profit. The goal is that on day eighty you KNOW something you didn't know on opening day: what people buy from you, when they come, and what simply sits.

1. 1The weeks before opening: make the shop measurableEnter the fifty most important products with short codes, set up the daily close, and decide who records what. If this is left until after opening it will never happen — there is no time for it in the weeks that follow.
2. 2Days 1–30: write everything down, rearrange nothingThe first month is data collection. Don't rearrange the shelves, don't run a promotion, don't widen the range. Whatever changes now cannot be separated out later.
3. 3Days 31–60: look at what sells and what sitsBy now you have your own figures. Find the twenty products that bring most of the turnover, and the ones that haven't sold a single unit in a month. The latter is your most expensive shelf.
4. 4Days 61–90: change one thingNarrow the range that doesn't sell and give the freed-up space to where there is real demand. Change one thing, and leave it alone for two weeks — that is how you learn whether it worked.
5. 5After day 90: keep a recurring ten minutesOnce a month look at the same four numbers: turnover, profit, waste, and the best sellers. Those ten minutes are worth more than one big annual analysis.

What not to do when opening

• Don't order a wide range “just in case” — stock that sits is the most expensive opening mistake there is.
• Don't undercut the big shops. Their price comes from their volume, not their cleverness; that race can't be won.
• Don't put recording off until “when there is time”. The first month's data can't be recovered later.
• Don't forget waste and staff consumption: at opening both run higher than they ever will again.
• Don't post opening hours you can't keep. Reliability is the one thing you can win cheaply against a chain — and the easiest to lose.

So the cost of opening isn't one number but four — and most shops come unstuck because the fourth, the working reserve, was never counted. Any good adviser will go through the first three with you; nobody but you will ask what you live on while the shop learns its own customers.

The other thing decided at the moment of opening, without anyone noticing, is whether there will later be anything to work from. On day ninety the most important question will be what sells and what sits — and there is an answer to that only if it was written down from day one.