Should I Do a Kiosk for My Start Up Business?

February 28, 2007

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Start Up Princess Abby Miller of Before Kids emailed me today and said I could share my reply with you as well…

Hi Kelly -
We have an opportunity to have a cart/kiosk at an area mall the 10 days before Mothers Day. It is a regional mall so it would be only $680. We are trying to figure out if it is worth the money and effort. Could you let us know what you thought… true life experiences. I loved reading about it on your blog but we need to know more of the business factors before we do this…

1) How many unique customers did you have? Unique customers at the mall? Tons!! Aren’t we all unique? Online shoppers are different…The question is how many repeat visitors? We had a few repeat customers. I have an email list of some of them, you should definitely ask for their emails!

2) How much inventory did you bring? Over the course of 1 month I purchased nearly $9k in product, and sold most of it, you will likely need this much to fill the cart, you don’t want it to look empty. Talk to a visual merchandiser from the mall staff to help you figure this out with your inventory mix.

3) Were people friendly - did they stop or did you have to hard-sell? If your product is fun, it will sell itself. I didnâ€™t hard sell anything, basically just tell them about our specials, etc.

4) I know it was Xmas, but how was the traffic flow? VERY BUSY could one person cover it? YES Were there particular times during the day or was it sporatic? Evenings/Saturdays were the most busy

Honestly, it is a HUGE time commitment, but with you and your partner, Kitty, I think you can do it. You need to each split it up and then hire 1-2 people at part time, so maybe you both share a part-time shift and then the part-timers fill in from that. Not sure what your mall policies are and all that, but find out what other kiosks are doing as far as sales goes, etc. That is a killer deal, unless the mall is dead. See if you can find out where the location of hte kiosk will be and if you will be around stores/kiosks that have child-related products or products for moms. The mall I want to be in charges $3k for off-season, $9k for Holiday!! We paid only $1000, but I only had 1/4 of the kiosk…so it was very small space (I shared the kiosk with other vendors).

Thank you so much. Any information would be great! We are having a hard time committing.
Abby Miller, Before Kids…Gifts for Moms

Feel free to ask me anything else.
Best of luck,
Kelly

Any of you want to comment and make suggestions for Abby?

Comments

2 Responses to “Should I Do a Kiosk for My Start Up Business?”

Carolynn Duncan on March 6th, 2007 1:14 pm

Hi Kelly,

Great post! Just to chime in on the matter–

Make sure you’re really, really, really clear on how much time & effort it will take, and give yourself the financial, personal, and time buffers you’ll need to make it happen.

Kiosks are really fun! And they’re a great way to get a hands-on involvement with your market. But, they’re also a huge undertaking– make sure to plan well for it, and ask current or past kiosk-operators about the realities of things to have and do.

(For example, how long you can work at a kiosk before you get tired of standing AND sitting and need another shift person to come on, what extras besides the cart lease you’ll need to budget– shelving, visuals, plastic bags, receipt paper, etc.)

Also, another thing to note– malls are open about 80 hours per week, whereas in another business, you’re only open 40. Make sure this is a commitment you are able and willing to be responsible for– at the end of the day, if something goes wrong with your product, employees, kiosk, or anything else, you need to be available to manage that.

And hop on over to the Hundred Dollar Business blog http://www.hundreddollarbusiness.com and read our archives from December/January, including financial projections, costs, and lessons learned.
startupprincess on March 6th, 2007 3:52 pm

Thanks Start Up Princess Carolynn for your response here. I thought of you when Abby emailed me her questions! What fun we had during Christmas and what compete burn-out! Especially you…aahh! You poor girl, I still think about how we pulled our all-nighter setting it up and then you opened at 7am, what sacrifice for entrepreneurship! You did a great job with the kiosk. Great comments, thanks for contributing!