First Steps To Make Your Small Business A Chain

If you are considering expanding your business to a chain, don’t expect to simply repeat your current business in an additional location. A number of important steps will ensure that you have created the right financial and marketing foundation that will allow you to succeed in your new venture.

Understand Your Business

One of the first steps you should take is to sit down and analyze your business and your customer base. Understand why they come to you and what it is about your business they like. If possible, compile data about the demographics of your customers, such as age, income level and cultural backgrounds. This information can help you to find the right locations to expand your business.

Standardize Your Operations

When your business expands to multiple locations, you will need to ensure that the quality and service remain uniform in all these places. Consider ways to standardize your vendors, products, service, staff training and other areas so that you can ensure that the quality remains the same and that you can move employees seamlessly from one establishment to another.

Negotiate Rock-Bottom Deals with Vendors

Without going into too much detail about your plans for the future, feel out your vendors to learn if they will be able to give you better prices on larger quantities. Expanding your business to other locations will mean increased costs until the new location becomes known. Provide a cushion for this transitional period with lower expenses for supplies, inventory and other critical items, if possible.

Secure Financing For Expansion

Hopefully, you have established a good relationship with your banker in your current business. Sit down for a talk with the banker to discuss your plans. Have realistic financial projections on hand and do your research on possible locations for your future expansion. If your banker feels you have done the preliminary planning, he or she is more likely to look favorably on money to back your future expansion.

Expand Marketing of Your Brand

Review your marketing efforts in advance of the expansion into a chain to determine areas of weakness. If you need a more prominent online presence, consider re-designing your website, expanding your presence on social media and re-aligning your print marketing. These efforts will be important when you announce the opening of your new location and will help to notify current customers of new opportunities to do business with you.

Secure Your Transportation Needs

Ensure that your products arrive on time to your new facility. Consider a company that provides guaranteed service and warehouse services to provide a reliable inventory for the items you use on a continuing basis. Whether you choose Meyers Transport Inc. in Montreal or a trucking company in your particular locale, work with your transportation company’s logistics department to ensure that better prices and more comprehensive reporting.
These steps will help position you for a new start with an expanded business model. You can then concentrate on the details that will carry your business from a single entity into a chain enterprise.