Baby Trading Co - advice required

[BabyTradingco]

Hi,

I'd like to introduce Baby Trading Co Ltd, based in Edinburgh and trading nearly-new baby items locally. We have a web-site (Baby Trading Co Ltd) that displays most, but not all, items that are in the shop and people come and buy or drop-off goods to sell at the shop.

I'm also an IT Consultant by day so the shop is only open 8 hours a week in my spare time. The growth has been fantastic since it opened on 31st January this year and I've really noticed a change in word of mouth and have a targeted advertising plan that has been streamlined from my original scatter-gun approach, though that was useful for starting.

I need some advice on what to do next:
1. Sell the business to someone who can take it to the next stage and open it 6 days a week.
2. Handover the business to someone who is looking to run a business and just help with the back-ground strategy (yes, I do have a growth plan).
3. Do nothing and stay working from the house
4. Find a business angel to finance a start-up at a premises and a full-time staff member. This would mean to salary to myself but I could do this with the plans I have ready to go.

If anyone has any ideas I'd be keen to hear them.

Many thanks
Jess
Baby Trading Co

[AdamW]

Hi Jess welcome to the forum.

Do you have a shop at the moment? You mention people dropping things off at the shop and then about staying working at home?

If I had plans for it and saw a future in it I would try and find the money to employ someone to run it - even if at first it was only open another two days a week.

Is there any way you can do your IT work from it?

[BabyTradingco]

Hi Adam,

Thanks for you reply.

I have a 22m2 cellar that is attached to my property and I've shelved that to use. I would need a premises of 100m2.

For my IT company - I have to sometimes travel for work, just London, nothing overseas yet, and my current contract means I need to be in the office as this company doesn't encourage (yet) remote access. In my last contract I could use the IT office in our flat and mobility and flexibility was encouraged. So I can't get away with being closer to it during this contract and each job could differ so I've taken the stance of the worst case scenario.

Thanks
Jess

[Mark CP]

Tough call Jess, on one hand if you've done the hard work setting up selling the business en masse would be a bit of a kick in the teeth, on the other 8 hours a week’s opening is obviously going to impact your potential for trade, growth, expansion etc.

Have you considered the viability of employing someone as a manager with incentives to continue expansion i.e. commission basis?

Hope you find the forum usefull

Mark

[NikkiPilkington]

No advice I'm afraid, but a big welcome

[BabyTradingco]

Hi,

Thanks for the help - I'm going to look into Business Angels (when I opened my bank account the bank did say 'You're not looking for money are you?') and I'll see how I go with that.

Jess