I thought I'd start a thread on buying an existing business from somebody else - seeing as that's what a friend and I are contemplating right now! Just thought I'd detail some of the things we're having to look at and consider, and see if others have anything they'd like to share.

Cheers,
Nicky

Post edited by: nicky, at: 2007/11/26 14:04

Well, just to get started, it went like this:

Nicky & Shaz, having a chat: We should do something together - kids are getting older and between the 2 of us we could juggle our time and cover a lot more.
S: What about xxx type of business?
N: Can't, I have a client who's already in that business.

One week later...

Client: How's it going - I'm getting out of my business.
N: Oooh! I may be interested!
N: Hey Shaz, guess what?!

One week after that...

N's husband: Sounds interesting - see if you can get some numbers from Client....

So that's where we're currently at...

Things we've started to consider:

Where will we run this thing from? (Client currently lives about 40 miles away from either N or S and does a lot of work from home)
Should we buy all of Client's stock and customers, or just parts of it?
Will we follow the same business model as Client?
What other things could we do in addition to what Client has been doing?
What location(s) should we focus on?
What kind of advertising should we use?

Stay tuned! :-)

Post edited by: nicky, at: 2007/11/26 14:06

Gosh has it been that long! I'm Sharryn, Nickys business partner, and its August already.. time has really flown.

Kidz Brandz has been a grand adventure for both of us.

We've spent the first 8 months trying and refining all sorts of ideas, letting some ideas go, finding some ideas that really work - and all the time, trying to deliver the best clothes, for the best prices, with the best service. We know what its like to NOT get that so we work hard to make everyone happy.

I think you need to allow yourself the time to find your own feet in a business, allocate tasks based on your strengths and give everything a go (at least once).

And learn to grit your teeth sometimes when you encounter *ahem* "difficult" customers (something Shaz is much better at than me!). :-)

I've been contemplating buying an existing business in a regional city like Ballarat. I'm a new mum (3 month old baby) and just now trying to get my home business going. But being in Melbourne the mortgage is expensive and I was thinking of the move to Ballarat so I could afford to stay at home with bubs, with a smaller mortgage.

Of course there isn't as much work opportunity for my husband in a city like Ballarat so that is why I thought of buying an existing business. Don't know much about it though and what would be involved.

Post edited by: starjayde, at: 2008/09/25 15:06

One of the things that Shaz & I have found is that running an online business lets you not only work from home, but work your own hours and also deal with people all over Australia (or the world), rather than just your own neighbourhood. Is there any way that you could run your business from home and be "location neutral"?

I can do a lot of things online for my business, but it is hard to attract traffic to my website, being in such a competitive field. What sort of business do you run online and how did you go about setting it up?

We run an online kids clothing business - we made it onto "A Current Affair" last Monday night!!

The best way to get your business seen online is to set up a Google Adwords account - just go to Google and type in "Adwords" and they've got a whole section on it. It allows you to create paid ads, that show up on the right-hand side of any Google page, and it's good because you can set your own budget. So for instance, if you said "I only want to spend $30/month", that's what it will use - the downside is that if your ads get a lot of clicks then your $1/day may run out by 11am every morning, and then your ads won't show in the afternoon or evening (that's what happened to us when I first set it up, I couldn't figure out what was going on, I could see the ads but everytime Shaz tried to see them she couldn't, it turned out she was looking later in the day than me!!).

When using Adwords, it's really important to read as much as you can - they have a lot of tutorials etc. and if you read it then you'll get it right. You have to define Keywords, and each Keyword will have a value on it, so the key is to pick the best Keywords possible. If you put, for instance, "Graphic Design", then you'll be competing against every other business in the world that has "Graphic Design" as their Keyword, so the cost of that Keyword may be $1.50. But if you chose "Graphic Design Ballarat", then the cost of that Keyword may only be $0.25. Like I said - you'll need to do a fair bit of reading and tweaking to get it right, but once it's set up then it should keep working.

As an example - go and type "osh kosh" into a Google site, and look at the paid ads on the right - see if there's a URL for Kidz Brandz. Hopefully it will appear on the front page, but it might be on the 2nd page. If it's not there at all then I've got some re-tweaking to do!!!