Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hello folks

I am thinking about setting up a couple of mall kiosk businesses. Does any one have any experience with these. If you do please share.

Awaiting your replies.


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Subscribe to my Small Business Blog: http://screwloosebusiness.com

Hi-

My business partner and I had a number of mall kiosks a few years ago (11 at one time). A couple of them did very well, some did good and a few just stunk (and drained a lot of the profits). Here are a couple of mistakes that we made:
1. Growing too fast
2. Believing the mall owners about traffic (not doing enough of our own homework)
3. Succumbing to developers` pressure to sign multiple leases (even though we might have only wanted to sign one or two--they implied that if we didn`t take go with more locations we might lose out on the prime one(s) we wanted)
4. Spreading out too far (geographically). This was a real nightmare when employees just didn`t show up for work due to a drunken binge the night before (or whatever). Nothing like hopping in the car for a four-hour drive at a moment`s notice.
5. Going back into the malls during off times (Father`s Day, summer, etc.) when the traffic just wasn`t there.
6. Settling for a crap location off the beaten path (only made that mistake once).

Those are the major mistakes that we made over the course of the years of having the kiosks. Done right they can be money makers if you can get into a good mall. If you have any other questions I`d be happy to help out if I can.

Thanks,
Ron

Hey thanks for the reply Ron, helpful info there. What businesses did you do?

 i was thinking about starting a cell phone stand (service + accessories) and a couple of others.

One I came across on entrepreneur.com is http://www.kustomcards.com/
I was thinking that can work out in other ways too since perhaps i can also sell Business cards etc over the net.

Another one I was thinking of was screen printing like this http://www.screenaprint.com/about-screen-a-print.html

Im going to be looking into the kiosks in nearby malls to see if i have competetion and a good demograph.


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Subscribe to my Small Business Blog: http://screwloosebusiness.com

Sure-

Happy to help out. We did a number of different kinds. Small leather goods (in the 80s) then we moved on to high school/college student trendy tees and trinkets, a bit later pewter gifts (those ones didn`t do so well--bad call), then nature gifts. We kept the high school/college student ones the longest-they did well until like I said, we just grew too fast and horked everything up.

I`ve kind of lost touch with the mall retail world so I don`t really have any ideas about what`s hot. Just be wary in dealing with the malls (they can get real pushy sometimes) and my only other bit of advice is to have an attorney review everything before you sign.

Anything else I can offer, happy to oblige.

Good luck,
Ron

Hey thanks Ron

I did have a couple of more things i wanted to know more about. Personally I was hoping to start a couple of kiosks at once. This would obviously require me to hire trustable and dependable people to take care of the locations.  I had a friend who`s father owned a As-Seen-On-TV Kiosk, and it used to do pretty well, but he had his sons taking care of his different businesses. I understand that many kiosk owners employ friends and family, though i wont be able to do that unfortunatly. How would you approach this issue?

Also how can one keep accountablity at the kiosks since most transactions are cash based?

Awaiting your reply.


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Subscribe to my Small Business Blog: http://screwloosebusiness.com

I love your questions sraza. I am awaiting answers on this subject too.

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Vincent Wilcox (a.k.a. KRAKR)
Drummer
My band: Letters Make Words

Hi-

Those were two of our biggest problems.  We were able to get trustworthy friends/relatives to cover some of the shifts but not all. The problems got worse the further away from home we got.  To tell you the truth, it`s a problem that we were never really able to solve. Sometimes we were lucky and got some decent people (luckily, we were able to count on a few of them to work for us whenever we needed them because most of our kiosks were seasonal not year-round), but unfortunately, the bad ones were really bad. Sorry to say but I don`t have a real good answer for you about employees.

As far as accountability--we did the best we could by maintaining accurate inventory records and cross-referencing everything with sales transaction receipts.

Again, it was easier with the locations that were close to home. It was real tought to keep a handle on our locations that were a few hours away.

Anything else, let me know.

Good luck,
Ron

I had a stint will mall kiosks and most of them hardly made money after 12 months. It has got to do with trends of products. It changes too fast.

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