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Opening a childrenswear shop may seem like the ideal business venture for a mother looking to combine a business with raising children. For most, the dream does not become reality, but quite a few do actually take the plunge each year. It is not the easiest of businesses however, and many such shops close within a year. This article examines some of the advantages and disadvantages of the independent childrenswear retail business.

If you are an “ideas person” then you will relish the challenge of building up the business from scratch and this is probably where most satisfaction is derived, whether things go well or badly. You can customize your environment, employ whom you want, set the rules, and sell products that you like and wish to sell.
It is the perfect business if you like people as you will have customers to deal with on a regular basis as well as suppliers and professional advisers. So if you do not enjoy meeting new people, particularly children, then you should reconsider at this point.

Any skills you can bring with you from a previous career will be of use as you will need to become multi skilled having to tackle issues ranging from your lease, statutory obligations, selling, buying, marketing, advertising, design and display and in this internet age, computer skills are vital.
You will need an interest in both children and fashion. The highlight for many independent childrenswear retailers is attending the trade shows, chatting to suppliers and other retailers, watching fashion shows, attending seminars and seeing the latest trends as well as buying merchandise for resale.
If things go well, you will enjoy the compliments made about your shop. At peak times such as Christmas, the sales figures will be exciting and you will derive much satisfaction from seeing the enterprise you have personally created blossoming.

These are the positive points about your experience. There are also many negative points which in many cases will outweigh the positive ones and force early closure of your business.
The quiet times of the year, such as February and March, may have a profound effect on your overall figures and you may have cash flow difficulties through those quiet times. You will have to work long hours for little or no financial gain; at the beginning you will have to work in the shop yourself, first to establish a good rapport with customers and crucially to see what they buy, what they do not buy and what comments they make so that you can streamline your business accordingly. It is hard to gauge what is going on if you are not there and even the best employees will never go that extra mile for their customers, all important for a new business.

However well you do, the margins on quality clothing are not good and you will find that much of it has to be marked down and sold at sale prices, reducing your poor margins still further. It may be a long time before you see any financial benefits and many childrenswear shops never get to the stage of being profitable at all. One New York childrenswear owner reports that she has never once made a decent profit in 20 years of trading but she loves what she does, can’t imagine doing anything else and that keeps her going.

Your biggest hurdle is to establish a loyal customer base and to keep attracting fresh customers as children grow up and new babies are born. You will face fierce competition from chain stores, discount stores, supermarkets, and mail order companies. All of whom have much greater buying power, or in the case of internet only shops, much lower overheads. You will have to battle with customers’ perceptions that an independent shop is an expensive shop. Parking will be critical as parents do not seem to walk anymore but want to park directly outside your shop if you are not in a shopping center.

From a personal point of view, you will reach the point where you have to go to trade shows, see suppliers, spend some time with your family or go on holiday and you will need back up. The person you employ will need to be trained in the running of your shop and completely reliable and trustworthy. You will have lots of paperwork to complete for tax and national insurance which will seem disproportionate to the business you are running.

Customers may not be easy to deal with. There are always difficult and complaining customers and those who prefer not to pay for the goods they take from your shop. You will never be able to satisfy everyone and there will always be people asking for things that you do not stock.

Ordering is usually done in advance and typically in January to April for July to September deliveries and in September to October for January to April deliveries. Fashion trends have to be predicted for the coming seasons and if you find yourself in season and having missed a particular fashion style; it is not easy to find them. There are some wholesalers but not many; their numbers are rapidly dwindling as large chains and supermarkets take over the High Street.

Suppliers may not be willing to supply you with the brands that you wish to stock as most operate an area of exclusivity which can vary from one to 30 miles. Some will try to prohibit you from selling their goods online. You may not even be able to find a supplier who has the particular product you wish to sell.

Another problem is that you will not have much control over deliveries. Some companies will send your goods very early so that you receive summer clothes in December (before winter has even properly started thus tying up your money in goods you cannot begin to sell) and some will only send them to you in April when you will have missed the Easter sales opportunities. When your garments do arrive they may be the wrong size, wrong color, faulty, items may be missing or the manufacturer may choose not to fulfill your order at all; this can happen where they operate a system of insurance against unpaid accounts for overseas orders and you do not meet their criteria for insurance or simply where the supplier gives your goods to a preferred customer.

The weather is a major factor which you cannot control. If it is too wet, too hot, too cold or too windy, this will stop people from shopping (although you can hedge your bets by selling online where people buy if they are confined indoors).

Left over stock is a major issue. You are bound to get it wrong to start with because no-one can predict how much or what kind of stock they are likely to sell in the first year. The important thing is to order small quantities to start with (often you can “repeat” and reorder at the beginning of a season) as it is better to have too little than too much. Left over stock is difficult to slot in to next year’s ranges as colors and styles will have changed although it is easier than with ladies wear where fashion trends change very quickly. You will need to mark it down and reinvest your money in fresh stock; this is quite hard to do psychologically.

Even if you are successful, most shops will be owned on a leasehold basis making you, as tenant, vulnerable to rent raises (typically every three or five years). So you could be doing well and then suddenly hit with a doubling or tripling of your rent making your business unviable overnight. Couple this with rising overhead, ever increasing utility costs, and new legislation which you need to comply with (recent examples include disabled access, new fire regulations, asbestos surveys) and you get the picture?

The bad points probably outweigh the good ones which is why there are so few independent childrenswear retailers left but if you really enjoy what you do and are willing to work hard then you can derive a lot of satisfaction from this business, even if the financial rewards elude you. If making money is your prime objective then this is probably not the business for you.

The author of this article, Daisy M, has been the owner of a small independent childrenswear shop in England for the last four years, which she will be closing shortly to concentrate on the opening of a larger shop in a town centre position. She also runs an online dress shop at www.justdresses.co.uk and writes articles on childrenswear retailing and the frustrations associated with independent retail on her blog at www.daisymaisy.wordpress.com.