Surrounding Businesses And Competitors
- When choosing business premises, it is usually preferable to avoid being surrounded by your direct competitors
- Ideally, yours should be the only business in the vicinity providing a unique type of product or service
- However, there are exceptions:
- if you are operating a small business with an unknown product or service, you may wish to operate near an established competitor to take advantage of the high traffic flow
- if your product or service is not location-dependent, that means your customers do not have to travel to your premises, you may want to be in a specialised business zone or cluster to enjoy shared facilities and ideas
back to top
Type Of Business
The premises you choose should be directly related to your business activity. It should reach as many of your target customers as possible.
- Running An Eatery
Your outlet should be located in a heavy human traffic area such as housing estates, shopping malls or near office crowds.
- Setting Up A Convenience Store
You should be located in a housing estate or residential area.
- Selling Specialised Products (e.g. musical instruments)
It is likely that your customer will be willing to travel a distance to come to your shop. So you can be located in a building with less human traffic.
- Starting An IT Consulting Firm
Distance is less of an issue as corporate clients are usually willing to travel for good service. The physical image of your business is more important and the office where you receive customers should look professional.
- Running A Very Small Business
You can explore working from your home.
back to top
Accessibility Of Site
- Accessibility to your customers is another consideration in selecting business premises.
- If your business is highly dependent on customers being able to reach your premises, it should be easily reached from main roads and accessible to public transport such as buses and MRT.
- For example, if you are running a restaurant, ample parking space is an important factor. If you are renting retail space in a shopping mall, your outlet should be located near the entrance or near escalators where it is easily visible to shoppers.
- Some businesses need to be located near their suppliers of raw materials. This may be due to the difficulty of transporting the raw materials to your business premises for production.
- Some businesses (e.g. freight forwarding companies) need to be located near airports or the harbour to facilitate their business operations.
back to top
Rental Rates
- Often, you may be able to find the ideal business premises but only at a high cost.
- You need to balance your financial resources, expected revenue and profit margin with rental rates.
- If your rental rate is too high, your business may not be profitable.
- The guiding principle is to choose the lowest possible rental rate for the type of premises that is needed for operating your business.
back to top
