How to Open a Retail Store: A Step-by-Step Checklist and Timeline

What are the steps to open a retail store?

Opening a store is a project with ten phases. They overlap, but each has a clear finish line, and a weekly opening meeting holds them together. Here they are in the order the decisions usually fall:

• 1. Site and lease: count footfall, score the site, test rent against sales, ask the lease questions, then sign or walk.
• 2. Money: build the opening budget and model the cash you need until break-even.
• 3. Plan: work backwards from the opening date, name owners and mark the critical path.
• 4. Design and permits: sign off the layout and apply for consents and registrations.
• 5. Fit-out: appoint contractors in writing, meet weekly and grade every snag.
• 6. Systems and suppliers: set up and test POS, payments, wifi, security and supplier accounts in the store.
• 7. Stock: plan opening stock by category and weeks of cover, then receive it calmly.
• 8. People: hire early, train on the shop floor and rehearse.
• 9. Soft opening and launch: test with invited guests, fix the top issues, then run launch day from a run sheet.
• 10. First 90 days: record daily numbers, review at day 30 and 90, and hand over to normal operations.

How long does it take to open a store?

A franchise kiosk with a standard fit-out can open in a few weeks. A shop that needs new electrics, a new shopfront, sign consent and a full fit-out often needs around four months from a signed lease, and longer if the building needs structural work or a change of use. Sixteen weeks is a sensible default to plan against, then adjust with the real lead times you are quoted.

The date is set by the critical path: the longest chain of tasks that depend on each other. Typically that is the lease, landlord consent, building works, electrics, flooring, fixtures, stock delivery, training on the shop floor, soft opening and launch. Tasks off that chain, such as press notes or a delivery-app listing, have slack. A delay on the chain moves the opening unless you recover the time elsewhere on it.

How do you choose a retail location?

Start with your customer, then go and count. Stand where a customer would see your door and count people passing on your side for thirty minutes, at a busy time and a quiet time, on a weekday and at the weekend. Count separately the people who look like your customer. A busy street full of commuters in a hurry can be worse for a gift shop than a quieter parade where people stroll between a bakery and a pharmacy.

Then score the site on nine points from 1 to 5: footfall, visibility, catchment fit, competition, co-tenancy, access and parking, rent affordability, the condition of the unit and the lease terms. Weight the ones that matter most for your store. Let a single score of 1 stop you: an average can hide a fatal weakness.

The US Small Business Administration's guidance on choosing a location makes two practical points worth repeating: costs such as rent, taxes, wages and licence fees vary by location, and zoning is set locally, so check with your city or county planning department before you commit. Whatever your country, confirm that the unit's permitted use covers everything you plan to sell, and have a lawyer review the lease before you sign.

How much cash do you need to open a store?

You need two numbers. The opening budget is everything you spend to open the doors: fit-out, fixtures, signage, systems, opening stock, deposits and legal fees, permits, wages during training, launch marketing, utilities during the works and a contingency. The cash you need until break-even is the opening budget plus the losses of the early months, while sales build towards their settled level. Many stores that run short of cash do so after opening, not before.

Break-even sales per day is the number to keep in your head. Add rent and other fixed costs for a month, divide by your gross margin, add any sales tax that sits inside your shelf prices, and divide by the days you trade. Here is a worked example for a small high-street bookshop with a coffee counter, using planning figures:

How do you plan the cash curve after opening?

Take the same bookshop. Suppose its owner expects sales to start at 75% of the settled level in month one and reach 86% by month four. With an opening budget of 160,000, the store covers its monthly costs from month four and its cumulative cash bottoms out at about minus 162,000. On a cautious ramp starting at 60%, monthly break-even arrives in month nine and the low point is about minus 175,500. The owner funds the cautious low point plus a buffer of a few months of fixed costs before signing the lease.

None of these figures is a forecast. They show what has to be true for the store to work, so you can judge whether your footfall counts and your experience make them believable. Agree the assumptions with your accountant, lender or franchisor.

What permits and registrations does a new store need?

Every country, city and store type has its own list, so ask your local authority to confirm it for your address. Common items are business and tax registration, a trade licence or shop registration, consent for signs, fire safety duties, landlord or centre consents, and separate registrations if you sell food, alcohol, medicines or tobacco. Apply in the first week of your plan, because some approvals need finished drawings and take weeks.

Two examples show how specific the rules can be. In England and Wales, GOV.UK guidance explains that the 'responsible person' for business premises must carry out and regularly review a fire risk assessment, tell staff about the risks, put fire safety measures in place, plan for an emergency and train staff. In the United States, the ADA Title III primer says existing stores must remove access barriers where that is readily achievable, that new construction and alterations follow the 2010 ADA Standards, and that accessible routes must be at least three feet wide and kept clear of merchandise.

• Franchise units add another layer. In the US, the FTC Franchise Rule requires the franchisor to give the disclosure document at least 14 calendar days before you sign or pay.
• In Australia, the ACCC explains that the disclosure document must be given at least 14 days before the franchise agreement is signed.
• Many countries have no franchise-specific law, so a franchise lawyer's review matters even more.

How do you train staff before a store opens?

Train in the store, on the real tills, with the real stock. Four paid days after the fixtures are in usually cover it: safety, opening and closing on day one; tills and payments with plenty of practice transactions on day two; the range and receiving a delivery on day three; and serving customers in role-plays on day four, followed by a rehearsal. Sign each person off on six modules: till and payments, product and range, opening and closing, safety and fire, customer service and stock receiving.

The rehearsal is the step most openings skip. Invite eight to fifteen helpers to act as customers, give each a card telling them what to do (return something, pay with a split payment, ask a question nobody can answer) and run an hour of trading with the real opening and closing routines. The problems you find that afternoon are the ones your first customers would have found.

What is a soft opening and how do you run one?

A soft opening is one or two sessions of trading with invited guests before the public launch. Its job is to find what your team can no longer see: signs that are too small, a till position that creates a queue, a corner nobody notices. Hand every guest a short feedback form, put one team member on an observation sheet, test the awkward transactions on purpose, and after each session choose three fixes with an owner and a date.

Use the soft opening to judge readiness too. Before you open to the public, check five things: tasks done, permits in hand, systems tested, stock received and people trained. Set a threshold for each gate, and never open with a safety issue outstanding.

What should you track in the first 90 days?

Record five numbers every evening: sales, footfall, transactions, staff hours and one issue or fix. From them you get conversion (transactions divided by footfall), average transaction value (sales divided by transactions) and sales per labour hour. When sales move, the parts tell you why: footfall points outward to awareness and the street, conversion points inward to queues, gaps and service, and average transaction value points to range and displays.

Review formally at day 30 and day 90. At day 90, close the project: snags closed or dated, contractor accounts settled, certificates filed, the budget reconciled, and the daily routines handed to normal operations. If you report on a retail calendar, decide before you open: the National Retail Federation's 4-5-4 calendar splits the year into months of four, five and four weeks so that comparable months contain the same number of weekends.

Common mistakes when opening a store

If you want every one of these steps as a ready-made file, The Store Opening Launch Kit from Bodhih Training includes the workbook, calculator, forms, templates and print pack described here. To check your own planning skills before a big opening, the AssessAll Task Prioritisation and Planning assessment is a useful starting point.

• Choosing the site by feel and setting the sales estimate to make the rent work.
• Signing the lease before a lawyer, or the franchisor, has reviewed it.
• Budgeting for the fit-out and forgetting the months until break-even.
• Treating the contingency as an upgrade fund.
• Applying for sign consent and registrations late.
• Running the project from a long task list with no critical path.
• Ordering opening stock by enthusiasm rather than weeks of cover.
• Training from a manual instead of on the shop floor, and skipping the rehearsal.
• Opening on the announced date when the store is not ready.
• Treating launch day as the finish line instead of the start of a 90-day review.