More money to be made setting up and keeping up customer tanks. Setting up a store not so much.
No truer words have ever been spoken...the odds of success are very much against you unless you got about 200-300K and a pretty good amount of luck and fortune to put on the line for the next year or two at least!
Start up is very costly, very labor intensive and it will likely be a while before you can get profitable enough to keep the business out of the red. Its a very competitive market and one that has a very tight profit margin. If you have never dealt with Distributors before, your gonna be in for a very rude awakening of just how things work.
Its possible and there are few things in life I like seeing more than someone chase their passion and dreams. There are new businesses breaking into the markets every day. Just make sure you know what your getting into and have a rock solid business model to follow or your very likely to be disappointed.
I honestly had no idea just how difficult an under taking this was until a Buddy of mine, Nathan went from being a garage week end retailer to a store front retailer in Seattle. I cant tell you how much money he spent, loans he took out, Hours I worked for free while he established himself in the market before he actually made enough to pay himself minimum wage by the Nations Standards much less met Washington States minimum wage standards. From what I saw your bread and butter was Tank Services and livestock, moving lots a live stock. There was precious little to be made on dry goods!!! Also there are some other hidden expenses...most distributors want a faxed copy of your business license, fax of your Tax exempt credentials, picture of your store front and a copy of your add in the yellow pages before they would even talk to us to prove he had a legit store front. Then there was all the red tape with Code enforcement, Building inspectors, Fire Marshall inspections, Osha....the list goes on...to deal with in the middle of all this just to get your front door open, legally!
That was just my 2 year experience into this line of work, hopefully your experience will be easier. But do believe me when I tell you there is more to it than meets the eye. I have mad respect for anyone who can open a mom and pop store, start from the ground up and break even much less succeed at it!
