File: how to set up a men's fashion store? #1

When we decided to set up our men's fashion store , I realized that there were very few really relevant resources on the subject.

There are a few reference books on "retail sales" in general, but ultimately few books and resources that are really applicable for men's fashion (and especially for a UFO like BonneGueule...).

We were even told, “ Guys, this is where the trouble starts .”

Ultimately, what saved us was having solid people around us , to advise us and introduce us to the right people (real estate agent, lawyer, decorator, contractors).

And now, I'm going to reveal to you the secrets of a project like that of our store !

Why set up a store? Well yes, why? (D - 1 year)

Well before the crazy decision to open a store, the first question to ask yourself is “ why open a store? ”

The answer may seem obvious to 99% of people: “sell”.

However, this is a very incomplete answer , because we can have very varied objectives, and not all of them directly linked to turnover...

Especially since in-store sales are a very specific profession...

Different types of shops...

Transit stores and destination stores

“Set up a shop to sell to passers-by.”

This is indeed the simplest case... and the most common: put yourself in a high-traffic area, where people who may be interested in your products pass. These are called passing shops .

As a result, all products, merchandising (way of presenting products), customer relations, etc. will be focused on one thing: “transforming a prospect into a customer”.

Translation : simple products, favorite purchases, low prices.

Examples : souvenir shops, Starbucks, Relay press outlets, florists. Typically the shops that you will find in a large station or a shopping center (= local shops).

And in fashion: fancy t-shirt boutiques, Zara, H&M, or brands like The Kooples or IKKS in the more affluent thoroughfares, which are both sales channels and advertising channels for these brands.

“Set up a store to sell to people who already know the brand.”

Other brands rely on more isolated points of sale, sometimes to create an image of exclusivity by standing out from the pack, and more often to benefit from cheaper points of sale (a store can easily cost 3x less between a busy street and one of its more discreet arteries). The extreme case being the showroom or sale in an apartment. We call these destination stores.

Translation : reassuring space, added value in service and advice, loyalty, proximity.

Examples : an upscale restaurant, a tailor, a specialized bookstore, etc. Generally this concerns "new concepts" or companies for which people are willing to travel because they are specialized.

And in fashion: ACNE or L'Eclaireur which are almost hidden, or Size Factory (which dresses men with strong physiques and who therefore come spontaneously to them).

Other secondary reasons exist

“Set up a store to gain visibility and brand image.”

Often young brands, generally those that have raised money, choose to set up in a high traffic area for reasons of visibility. Or among the masses, by placing yourself in the lower part of the Marais or on the Champs-Elysées.

Others plan to begin international expansion, and place themselves in a thoroughfare frequented by foreign buyers and journalists, in order to gain some initial notoriety among them.

Rue Vielle du Temple in Paris is a very good place for that. The same goes for Haut-Marais (with its numerous commercial showrooms), the surroundings of the famous Merci or Colette concept stores , very well known internationally.

“Set up a store to secure real estate assets and add value to them.”

Other brands also choose to position themselves in an expanding neighborhood. They will then buy a store or its doorstep, in order to resell it with a capital gain a few years later.

“Set up a store to extend the experience with the brand”.

The latter case is increasingly in vogue, particularly with the arrival in the physical world of brands and concepts from the Web (we sometimes speak of a 360° experience). Even Amazon is getting involved in New York !

This allows you to physically meet the brand and its products, to convince people who are reluctant about e-commerce, and to better understand the expectations of your customers.

But also to develop innovative services (possibility of checking in-store stocks on the Web, or ordering online to collect your purchases in store the same day).

And it's also a less risky investment when you benefit from almost guaranteed traffic from the Web.

BonneGueule's goal: to help men feel good in their clothes

Our goal was to extend the Web experience to fulfill our corporate mission .

In our plan for the store, we wrote at the end of 2014: " Extension of the BG experience. With customers who come to the store for the same reasons they come to the site: to chat in a friendly way with enthusiasts, without pressure to purchase, while learning useful things. If sale, it comes naturally afterwards, in a logical and rational way .

Basically, the store naturally imposed itself on us as the obvious next step in the development of our ecosystem of products and services .

And several secondary objectives...

We then wrote:

• Expanding the readership : introducing BonneGueule to men who don’t read guy blogs,

• Distribute directly at controlled costs : now that the line and the e-shop are operational, rely on BonneGueule's capacity to attract people to extend the physical mission,

• E-commerce purchase facilitator : by allowing you to try it in person and then purchase online,

• Image : With the press and our partners (brands, but also suppliers or bankers),

• Introduce virality : people only talk about their favorite services after many repeated uses. Premium customer experience + strong quality/price ratio + loyalty = BonneGueule ambassador,

• Taking a position in retail : fighting against hyper-business-oriented concepts which take up our corporate mission after having raised several million euros. The solution: further amplify the values ​​of proximity, expertise and passion that set us apart.

The 3 rules of retail: location, location, and location (D - 9 months)

Now that we have all these elements in mind, we identify the most appropriate neighborhoods. And the real countdown begins!

We had chosen in order of priority:

• 1 - Haut-Marais : the benchmark shopping destination for quality fashion in Paris, still in development (arrivals of AMI, MELINDAGLOSS, Maison Plisson, etc.).

• 2 - Bas-Marais : more commercial and more expensive, but you never know... (we were offered a boutique on Rue Vieille du Temple but the prices seemed disproportionate to us: €350,000 for a cupboard!),

• 3 - the République / Canal Saint-Martin district : a new fashionable destination and extension of Haut-Marais, but more a place for strolling than shopping for the moment.

The Batignolles district (which I love to go to in summer) didn't seem busy enough for the moment from a "fashion" point of view.

And the left bank (rue Madame, Bonaparte, du Vieux Colombier) is a little too institutional, therefore a bit removed from the dynamic and innovative dimension of BonneGueule.

All that remained was to find the right location...

How to find available premises?

There is the “old-fashioned” method: walk around the neighborhoods, and ask merchants, then negotiate directly . It's economical (a real estate agent is very expensive) but really laborious, and without a very wide choice.

And there is the more serious (but a little more expensive) method: the real estate agent. We therefore chose to go through Clément , a real estate agent known in the neighborhood for having placed many brands there, and who presented us with numerous locations.

That said, you must always put into perspective what the real estate agent who wants to sell his property tells you (even if you have always felt Clément sincere and realistic), and do not hesitate to seek advice from other professionals in the sector that you know. (thank you Mathieu and Rémi from MELINDAGLOSS, Lucas and Séverin from Cuisse de Grenouille, Vincent Louis Voinchet, and Gilles Masson).

But in the end, the only decision maker is YOU.

Get away from the competition? Or do everything to get closer?

If you are setting up a bakery or souvenir shop, it is always better not to have a competitor on the street corner, who captures some of the passers-by who could have become your customers.

But in men's fashion (and all destination stores), it's different!

At BonneGueule, we love competition : it energizes a street, enhances a neighborhood, and ultimately, creates traffic on our street.

Ultimately, the pretty boutiques of Haut-Marais create a real center of gravity for men looking for quality clothing.

We must therefore develop a real ecosystem strategy .

How to analyze the quality of a location?

Now that we have clearly defined the objectives of this store, we can now analyze the different free locations with the right criteria (a location that is good for another brand is not necessarily good for you).

To find the ideal location, you must realize... that it does not exist .

But you can get as close as possible, provided you have patience and good shoes. Then follow numerous visits over the months, where we do not hesitate to:

• walk the different streets that lead to the store,

• see if other fashion stores on the street are likely to bring traffic to yours,
• estimate the health and attendance of other businesses on the street,

• chat with the salespeople from other stores (you can't imagine how much we learn!),

• sit on the terrace at different times of the day to observe the people passing by, their looks, who they are, whether they cross the street headlong or stroll a little and go into the other shops...

Beyond that, it’s important to “feel” a location. If your gut tells you it's not the right one, don't insist... But don't lie to yourself.

We then weigh the "pros" and "cons" of each location, and we give them scores... which we compare to their prices (= rent + price of the commercial lease).

Setting up a store is not a science, but rather an alchemy of reason and feeling.

A good men's store is first and foremost a good product offering (D - 6 months)

Now that we've found the perfect store, we need to make our purchases quickly (surprisingly, empty stores don't interest anyone).

And 6 months is really very little in the purchasing cycle! However, you have to be 100% sure that the store will open before buying a single sock. So it was... sporty! ( but thank you Pitti !).

But there is no question of deviating from our DNA in a hurry...

Good products at the right price

It seems silly, and yet it's a concept that most brands forget in fashion. We therefore decided to develop a few more products in 2015 (hence a slightly broader BonneGueule IV Line), supplemented by expert brands in creative or technical know-how that we do not master. .

• The BonneGueule Line : this is the heart of our offer, where our best quality/price ratios are concentrated because we do everything ourselves, from production to distribution. All with economies of scale and a logic of timeless products that cuts development costs.

• A multi-brand selection : to complete our basic offering, either with more “creative” products (which allows for more cutting-edge looks: Marchand Drapier, Naked & Famous), or with complicated skills to master such as shoes high-end clothing (National Standard, Atelier Voisin) or rain clothing (Bastong, Norwegian Rain, Mida Firrenze) or cold weather clothing (Cadot).

• Small series collaborations : to offer the best of both worlds (Hast, Six & Seven, Septième Largeur, MELINDAGLOSS).

• Accessories to spice it up (Howard's ties, Archiduchesse socks, Anderson's belts).

Finally, we must not forget to regularly renovate the offer to always maintain a climate of novelty... and repeat visits!

Stocks, a complicated but little-known subject

But that's not all !

We must remain rational and prudent enough not to order too many products! We then base ourselves on the analysis of the sales of previous products, we do calculations on Excel, and we also establish forecast scenarios worthy of a Black Thursday in case several products are shunned...

Because there is nothing worse than stock for tying up a store's cash flow, and thus freezing its stock rotation, or in other words: preventing the arrival of new products . Especially in a small business like ours.

Plan your logistics carefully

And of course, these clothes must be stored, but not just anyhow.

It is very important to have generous storage space so that the seller can organize receipts of goods calmly, and respond quickly to a large request from a customer .

All while respecting the product : blazers and coats must be hung even in stock, shirts perfectly folded, nothing on the ground, etc.

Upstairs in our store, there is exactly the same space just for stock!

The real countdown begins!

4 or 5 months from the planned launch date, the location is signed, financing is secured, and the bulk of inventory is ordered.

So, it's all right ?

NO !

The real stress begins!

Because a deadly countdown then begins to start and finish the work as quickly as possible : each month lost will be a month of paying rent, a salary, with stock gathering dust. Not to mention the lost sales which will further delay the project's break-even point.

And in our case, we even added pressure because we wanted to open our store before the June sales, to take advantage of this prosperous period for businesses in Haut-Marais.

That's less than 3 months ... (yes, we like to hurt ourselves).

And you never know what can happen after the first blow of the work!

• What will we find behind the old tapestry? A magnificent raw stone or humidity defects?

• Will a property association or an administration put obstacles in our way because of a PX-78C form?

• Will a critical supplier be late?

• Will stocks arrive on time?

Answers to the next episode! (and tomorrow evening, it's night time for an evening course on costume and fittings until 10:30 p.m. ).