Find the Right Location For Your Showroom

For any business, location is key. A business must be located in a place that consumers want to visit.

Specialty electronics businesses, just like restaurant entrepreneurs, are dependent upon finding a suitable location that provides a measure of visibility, accessibility and, of course, affordability.

Those elements are essential for tapping into daily business commerce, as well as local community nightlife activities.

The elements are also vital in the success formula of specialty electronics businesses that seek to attract walk-up retail clients and short-drive consumers from neighboring communities.

Having a famous name or being able to claim dealers' rights to popular brands is not enough to attract customers on a consistent basis.

Whether your company is new or a long-standing member of a local community, the quality of a location could make or break your business.

Finding the Ideal Locale

Finding a business location involves equal parts patience, luck and diligence.

According to Don Calley, founder of Las Vegas-based Image Sound & Control, finding the right location also involves a lot of time and understanding the many variables of the market.

"I am always looking for better locations," he says. "We are a high-end systems integrator with a limited clientele. The best location for traffic at an affordable price is always changing due to growth of the city and economic conditions."

Calley explains that the ever-changing homeowning trends of Las Vegas dictate different consumer traffic patterns. He adds that his company has to balance the awareness of where the affluent residents are with locations that provide piece-of-mind to foster long-term client relations.

On the other side of the country, Mark Komanecky, president of SimpleHome, doubled his trouble when he sought multiple store locations. SimpleHome's storefronts are located in two business environments in the Northeast.

"Suburban Boston was somewhat challenging as we were looking for office space that was unique and 'warm' so that visitors would feel comfortable," he recalls.

"The space also had to be practical to meet our day-to-day business needs. We were thrilled to find a renovated mill [in Westborough, Mass.] that had the right combination of features we were looking for," he says.

"In Vermont, it was simpler in that we decided to leverage our vacation home as a design center and office. It is fully equipped with a whole home automation system, including lighting control, climate control, security and video surveillance, phone messaging, plus wholehouse music and two media rooms.

"It is a very nice, casual environment, where we can effectively demonstrate our solutions in an actual home environment."

Doing the Research

Specialty businesses interested in researching general information on the topic of location can visit the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and the non-profit Score organization, "Counselors to America's Small Business."

Score offers tips for small businesses looking to find a location that enables them to prosper, including:

• Find out if local zoning laws permit your kind of business at the site that you desire.


• Make sure the site has adequate public services, such as water and sewer services, trash collection, adequate drainage and police and fire protection.


• Determine if there's adequate, affordable transportation. Can your employees get to work? If you're a manufacturer, are trucking services available?


• Consider the surrounding community. If you're a high-end retailer, for example, are there sufficient high-income households nearby to support your business?

Score advises business owners to look at the other businesses in the area as a means to help decide whether having direct competitors will be helpful.

A Big or Bigger Investment

In an ideal world, once a business finds a location that is suitable to its needs, everything else would fall in line and take care of itself.

In the real world, however, finding a location is just one step in a multi-faceted process that can dramatically affect the financial well being of your company.

One of the biggest decisions is whether to lease or own a property. This decision has implications that affect nearly every aspect of your finances, your business plan, equipment expenditure plan and sales and marketing strategies.