This is part three of a 3 part blog on one airbrush studios process of transitioning from a Brick and Mortar store to doing Online sales and Events. We will talk about what it was like closing our Retail location after almost 30 years of Brick and Mortar stores and the challenges that came along with learning how to navigate the world of having an online business and combining it with an events business…neither of which require an actual public location.
In this post we will cover the problems we faced with not having a physical location after almost 30 years in the same city. We will also go through the steps we took and the different avenues we explored in searching for a new Physical Location.
So you might ask….”If this series of Blog Posts is about Transitioning from a brick and mortar store to not having a brick and mortar location….then why is this section called “Location, Location, Location.” ?
The answer follows….
Once we closed in February(2019) we were lucky that we only had a few months before our Waterpark location would be open again. In the meantime we had quite a few things to keep us busy such as sporting events, High School After Proms, as well as other events that popped up. All of these kept us busy, along with working on bettering the website and the challenges that come with an online operation.
The biggest adjustment and one that threw us completely of guard was learning(quite by happenstance) how ingrained in the Cincinnati area we had become. The Mall we were in still to this day has the signs we hung in our windows telling people that we had closed and how they can get ahold of us…( this is one year later)…We are very fortunate that they are still up but I believe its more from laziness on the Malls part then it is doing us any kind of favor. If the mall was full and active those signs would have been down within a day or two. Anyway…we received so many calls and still receive calls from people who are standing right in front of the closed store, reading the sign and asking how they can get a shirt.
I say “ingrained in the Cincinnati area” because people had become so used to there being an airbrush shop in Cincinnati that they got used to just being able to come in and get a shirt made right away. The thing that caught us off guard was how those phone calls went….
Customer: “Hi, I’m standing in front of your store in Tri-County Mall, Where is your new location?”
Artist: Thanks for calling, sorry you came up to the mall and we are no longer there. We do everything online and through the mail now…..how can we help you?
Customer: “CLICK”
Yep….thats right…they don’t even give us a chance to help them….they immediately Hang Up!
This is the problem we had to learn how to deal with. People didn’t want to do anything online….even if that meant getting it later that day or the next day….they wanted to come into a store and get their shirt done right away like they had been doing for 28 years.
This is the reason why Part 3 of this blog is called Location, Location, Location. We discovered that a year was not a long enough time to develop a large enough online following to replace 30 years of a brick and mortar location. The Events business was coming along nicely and we had added more events than we had anticipated, however it did not replace the number of customers we were losing by not having a physical location.
So what follows are some of the steps we took to help with not having a physical location.
The first thing we tried was the idea of being the airbrush industries equivalent to UBER or Door Dash or any other online quick delivery service. Call us up, place an order and we will meet you at ANY public location in the I275 belt loop (the highway that surrounds Cincinnati).
What a fantastic, ingenious, out of the box thinking idea right??…”The UBER of Airbrush”….WRONG!!…lol…within the first 2 weeks of doing this we were driving all over the place. It quickly became apparent that this was not going to work. So we adjusted our thinking and instead of us going to them we decided to keep the business coming to us….even to the Tri-County Mall that we had just left (sort of speaking)…we decided we would do all pick up and delivery at the main entrance of the same mall we had just left. Our thinking was that they would have had to come to that mall anyway(or are used to coming to that mall) so why not just keep it that way. It was close to where most of the artists live so any one of us could do an order and deliver it.
Now let me switch directions real quick here and tie in another problem we experienced that went hand in hand with this one. That problem was the number of people who wanted the airbrush done on their own items…. jeans, shoes, jackets 8X T-shirts…lol…
In our blog on the “Service Charge” we discuss how much money a shop loses by not charging a service charge on customers bringing in their own items. This really hit home when we realized just how many people over the years have been getting it on their own items. Up until now the amount of “own items” was just a dollar amount in our books at the end of the year (the amount of money we made in service charges)…this was thousands of dollars. But you just don’t realize the actual physical number of customer items that dollar amount represents until you actually have to deal with the physical part of someone wanting you to paint on their own items when you don’t have a physical location for them to walk in.…this was dozens and dozens of people wanting stuff done on their own items…and we had only been closed for a couple months. I would say 50%-60% of the calls we get are people wanting their own items painted. Dealing with the logistics of having to figure out how to get these items and how to get it back to these people once it was painted was our next challenge. People were just not going to pay the added expense of mailing their items to us and paying for return shipping.
Some of you might say….why bother…just do it on your own items and forget about letting people do it on their items. Well, that would be 50%-60% of the customers calling….and lets face it… part of the appeal of airbrushing is that we can do it on anything. So saying no would be saying goodbye to 50%-60% of our customers.
We had to figure out the whole aspect of doing custom work and getting it to people as fast as possible. especially people who want their own items painted. So we came up with these forms of “shipping”
1.) USPS Priority Mail(2day)….(Cincinnati Local 1 day) this is $6.00 plus $1.00 for each item. Now, the reason we have it this way is because the standard price for the Post Office Flat rate envelope Priority Mail is $7.35 but it has weight and size limits. So technically when a customer orders just one shirt we are losing ¢.35 because the shipping comes up to $6.00+$1.00=$7.00 …however each shirt in the order over one shirt and we are making a little extra.
2.) The next option is “Personal Pickup”(call before selecting this option) This we charge a flat rate of $10.00. This entails us meeting the customers at a specific location at a specific time. In our case we chose to meet people at the main entrance of the old mall we used to be in. We usually do 10:30 am and a 3:00pm pick up and drop off time… if one of us is available….otherwise the customer will have to choose to have it mailed. If we set up a time to meet and they do not show up. We will not meet again, they will have to pay for shipping. This is explained to them in an email when they place the order.
3.) The Third option is “Own item pickup and delivery”(for people using their own items) This we charge $20.00 which just like it sounds …we have to set up a time to get the item from them and another time to get it back to them. This price is added into the price we quote them for what they want.
The second and third options were the ones we were hoping would help with the “same day” people. However the reality is that we have LOST a lot of orders because we can’t always do same day. So this seems to be one of the issues that will only be solved by still having a public location.
The third option is the one that helped solve the “own item” while still making it worth the extra effort of picking up and dropping off.
These are the best ways we have been able to work out the “same day” issue and the “own item” issue.
Keep in mind that when we left the mall we were not planning on ever doing a mall again. We were going to focus on Events, Online and Waterpark. Although we were going to look for other options outside of the mall, we were not going to do a mall again.
Which brings us to Location, Location, Location…
One aspect of how Anything Airbrushed plus has been in business for so long is the fact that I have always loved having a staff and more importantly hiring young high school and college students and introducing them to their first job where they make money using their talent. Without a year round location, that pool of artists will start to dry up over time as artists move on with their life and careers if there is no where for NEW artists to train and learn. You can’t very well invite high school students to your home studio in your basement to teach…lol…that’s just weird…lol… We discovered we still needed a location not only because we were losing business with everyday customers but also because we needed a place to train new artists for our Waterpark location as well as our Events business.
So, after almost a year of no location it was time to look at our options.
What follows are the steps we took to find a new “out of the mall” location.
Throughout 2018 and the Summer of 2019 we looked at every imaginable rental option. from Suburban “downtown business districts”, Artist Studio rentals” , Co-Op office space , actual office space in office buildings., strip malls, business parks etc… Below are some examples of what we looked at.
This is the Pendleton Artist studios which would be a dream location right in the middle of the Arts district of Downtown Cincinnati. Rent is fantastic…We could get a studio of about 1000sq ft for about $450 a month utilities included.
The two drawbacks are they have a waiting list and they are not “open to the public” except once a month on the Final Friday of each month. So basically no foot traffic and everything would have to be by appointment.
Another example of a suburban “downtown” business district.
Office Parks or industrial parks were another option we looked into. While rents seemed a little lower then mall rent, it was still more then what we wanted to spend. The advantage over a mall is that you can set your own hours.
This is an example of one of the Floors in the Pendleton Artists Studios. Each artist has their own private space and you can decorate your door space however you want. Its basically an office building for Artists.
Another option is a “downtown” area of the suburbs. Our old Cheviot Ohio location was in a place like this. Depending on the location you will get foot traffic and a lot of drive by traffic.
Small Strip Centers have the same advantages as Suburban “downtown” business districts….rents can be the same as malls.
One of the many office buildings we looked into. Rents were less expensive in office buildings but most of them were not receptive to having an “Airbrush Studio in them. Most of the offices came furnished with desks, carpet etc… so the thought of the possibility of having paint flying all over the place made most of them uncomfortable. Also….Most did not have windows that open. However we did find a few that were receptive but the lack of foot traffic was the downfall.
Essex Studios is the same as The Pendleton
Rents for Suburban “downtown areas will be in the same range as malls. Benefits will be you can set you own hours but you are also at risk for theft and vandalism.
Strip Centers have a variety of sizes and are located all over the place.
Co-Working spaces were another option. These are office spaces that all share a receptionist, conference rooms, break room yet are all completely different types businesses. You can rent these spaces as you need them. One day a week, 5 days a month, a whole month . They usually have different packages depending on the spaces.
Basically we wanted to find something that was less expensive than the mall but had just as much foot traffic.
Back in the 90’s and early 2000’s any of these other options would have been less expensive than the mall and only the “suburban downtown business district” would be able to offer traffic that was even close to an average mall. These days, Mall rents have dropped considerably because of how hard hit retail is suffering from the effects of online shopping. Hence the reason so many malls are struggling and many of them are going to the “lifestyle center” format where you have retail, office and residential all on the same property. There are just are not enough stores to fill retail spaces any longer so Malls are no longer the “most expensive option” like they used to be.
The option that we really liked was the Pendleton Art Center, which is a building made up of nothing but artist studios.…however nothing was available at the size we needed and hasn’t been in the year since we closed. They are also not open to the public which means customers can’t just walk in. It would all be done by appointment.
Regular office space would be nice, professional and the atmosphere would be enjoyable…. but foot traffic or drive by traffic would be nonexistent and the slightly lower rent just did not make up for it. It’s a good idea for running the Events Business and the online business….but why pay rent when you can do all that from a home studio for free?
Strip Malls or office parks are slightly lower rent but not enough to warrant the lack of traffic
Walmart locations are not an option in this area…or so “Corporate Walmart” keeps telling us.
Flea Markets are of no interest to us and to far north of the city that we would lose customers.
In hindsight, we discovered the best option for an airbrush shop/studio would be to purchase a “suburban downtown business district building and open a store front. The main reason is that if you are going to pay rent in a place like this, you might as well spend a little more and make it a mortgage. This way you are “investing” in your business at the same time you are paying “rent”. If business is bad or if you decide to retire…then just sell the building…better yet, you can sell the actual business.
What a lot of airbrush business owners and even other small business owners don’t realize is that if you are renting a space then you will never actually be able to sell ”The Business”…you can sell all the equipment fixtures, customer lists, supplier lists…basically everything that made your business work but not an actual “turn key” business. If you own the building then you are able to actually sell the business. Another airbrush artist can move right in and take over. Think about it, a landlord holding your lease for a rental property can simply decide not to rent to the person who is buying your “business”. Would you buy a business that could possibly lose its location as soon as you took over?…probably not.
If we had it to do all over again, buying a building like this is what we would have done a long time ago. As it stands we are not in the position to do so right now and there are no spaces available that I have seen that I would be interested in buying and more importantly, I don’t feel like being a landlord….lol
What it comes down to is this, prices are going to vary depending on where you are in the country. I would have to say however that the comparisons we gave above is probably similar all over the country, what will vary are the actual dollar amounts themselves.
The bottom line on what we have discovered in the year since we have been out of the Mall is that it is possible to survive without a “public retail location”….but a lot harder. At least a lot harder for our business model which is one of an “art studio” not just a t-shirt shop. One that caters more towards doing custom work than it does just basic designs.
Just out of sheer coincidence, in the beginning of December we were hired by one of the other malls in the area for an event. During the discussion of the event details, it came up that they could offer us a seasonal location if we were interested. After some discussion with a few of the artists we decided to give it a go.
While the Christmas season did not turn out as well as we had hoped, it did well enough for us to sign a year lease with a 30 day notice out clause(which means we can leave any time as long as we give them a 30 day notice) . We got this at a rate that I would NEVER be able to find in ANY of the above options. So a year later we now find ourselves back in a Mall ….but a MUCH, MUCH better mall. Not the best mall in the area but a very close second. The rate we got and the security of only being month to month(so basically no real commitment) was to good to pass up. This is all because of how hard it is for Malls to find tenants.
How long we stay will all depend on how well traffic translates into sales. As of the writing of this post (in January 2020) this is NOT happening fast enough. We also may be facing a problem with our Waterpark location closing as the park itself is for sale…So we may be starting all over again in a couple months…lol…however our events business will carry us through as we continue to work on our online sales.
For us and our business model, having a retail location works better. Without it there seems to be more work involved if we want to continue to do the variety of things that we do. For example, body painting and photoshoots, our Halloween makeup, airbrush classes etc… all these things are much easier to do at an established location rather than having to coordinate with other businesses to be able to do them, which we did this past Halloween season(2019) with a local photography studio. But finding that location is still a struggle.
In the meantime….we will settle in this new mall location and continue to expand our online and events as we still have hopes of not needing a retail location at some point and we will also continue to look for an out of mall location. So this isn’t the final chapter of this Airbrush studios quest for a perfect fit.
I hope that this series of posts helps those who are considering closing their brick and mortar stores and gives them a little insight of what they might expect. I believe most people will discover the same challenges we did but at least now you are armed with the knowledge of foresight with the experiences we went through.
This post should also give those that are looking to open a location some knowledge as to what they might expect.
As always, feel free to leave questions and comments. This can be a very good discussion if we can hear from other business owners. We will also continue to update this blog post on how things turn out for us.
UPDATE:…we have added a 4th post to round out this series about life during the Pandemic “The final location…or is it?
If you haven’t already, be sure to read the first two parts of this blog post…