I started a biz on november 2012. The best advise i would recommend to you is that please avoid biz with friends/relative and the most important part is B&W. Yes everything need B&W. Dont fall with janji janji manis. I sudah kena and now insaf already.

I started a biz on november 2012. The best advise i would recommend to you is that please avoid biz with friends/relative and the most important part is B&W. Yes everything need B&W. Dont fall with janji janji manis. I sudah kena and now insaf already.

I guess I seen this kind of story before from sifu sifu from this thread. Partnership, got to be very careful.

Btw, direct family like Father & Son is ok as we don't look at $$ too tightly 

Hi want to share something here for those who are very green and unfamiliar with business (like me). Here's what I learnt, the hard way, when trying to contact suppliers:

1. If your capital is small, and you are likely to make small orders when purchasing wholesale, a lot of suppliers will choose to ignore you cause you are simply not worth their time. Sad, harsh, but understandable... 

2. If you email them using a generic email (i.e. hotmail, gmail) they will ignore you as they don't think you are a serious businessman. Your email may even get caught in their spam filter.

3. The biggest thing: Finding out the price you need to pay for wholesale products. Now to us laymen, if you want to sell a product, surely you must have a price for it. The prices are like holy grails to suppliers, they keep it very close to their chests and would never reveal their wholesale prices easily. Most suppliers would like proof that you are a genuine businessman before revealing their wholesale prices, such as business registration.

So here is the conundrum, you are trying to do a business research, trying to determine if a particular business is profitable and worth investing in. So you would like to know the cost of goods to estimate potential profits. But suppliers would generally ignore you unless you are a registered business with a business email address aka serious customer. It doesn't make much sense for a person to register a business, only to find after obtaining price quotations that he/she doesn't find the profit attractive enough to pursue the business. So you end up caught in a Catch-22 situation. 

Solution? I'm not sure I have any.... How to avoid email being ignored? Perhaps phone calls to suppliers are harder to ignore. Or save up till you have a large capital, then wave it in front of the faces of those suppliers to show that you are a potential big customer, then maybe they will be more cooperative. 

For me, I'm going to give up trying to start a video games selling business for now. Perhaps I'll try looking into a business that requires lower capital, low value goods.... Or maybe services based business. Save up more money in the near future. So yea, a hard lesson I learnt which I want to share to those who are looking to enter into the business world. I wasted time, energy and also embarassed myself in the process of learning this lesson. But at least I didn't lose any money. 

Thanks Donphatz for sharing.

I agree that everything should be in B&W!

To your point about doing biz with friends and relative, I feel it really depends on your understanding and relationship with that person. There are plenty of people who advice against this but there are also plenty that succeeded by working with family or friends.

Regardless who you are partnering up with, i think it's important that the both of you are comfortable enough to share everything and be straight with one another. Cause in the end, a weak partnership could break your business.

Good luck to you and hope your biz well.

My partner are the kind of person that would not take any advise from anyone including me. Already talk to him about agreement but he refused and dont want to sign. Problem arise since our sales has been better and better. He said it is his idea and he should get more on the profit. He is the kind of person who say "A" today, then say "B" tomorrow and next week would say "C". Pening ooo. 

Partnership is some times necessary. The common reasons are insufficient funds, knowledge, experience, network etc etc. Basically you need a partner to cover up the gaps in your business plan.

So that's why the most important 1st step is to put every clearly in B&W, touch all the woods you want while writing & signing the B&W, it'll save you during time of crisis. Next step is you probably wanna make it a Sdn Bhd, just for the limited liability & higher compliance. This is to ensure that your partner don't accidentally put you or the business in some mess that you don't know head & tail. Ensure all the cheques requires at least 2 signatures before it can be processed.

Lastly if it's possible, buy out your partner's share whenever you're ready to be on your own.

Agree. But as im new in biz and my partner are 3-4years experience in biz he tend to push me around. For few months i can tolerate but as time past, i was not able to be patience. Im willing to let go the biz and wanted to sell my shares. Best part is my partner think that when i sell my share he should get 50% of the money i got. Although got no B&W saying that, he still thinks this is a norm in biz.

Direct Selling is cool, though there are some direct selling businesses that are not worth patronizing, especially direct selling products like clothes, shoes, etc. When a seller show you the flyers of their products, it's usually different on actual. I don't know with others but I experienced it myself and those flyers are really enticing. 

My partner are the kind of person that would not take any advise from anyone including me. Already talk to him about agreement but he refused and dont want to sign. Problem arise since our sales has been better and better. He said it is his idea and he should get more on the profit. He is the kind of person who say "A" today, then say "B" tomorrow and next week would say "C". Pening ooo. 

Partnership is some times necessary. The common reasons are insufficient funds, knowledge, experience, network etc etc. Basically you need a partner to cover up the gaps in your business plan.

So that's why the most important 1st step is to put every clearly in B&W, touch all the woods you want while writing & signing the B&W, it'll save you during time of crisis. Next step is you probably wanna make it a Sdn Bhd, just for the limited liability & higher compliance. This is to ensure that your partner don't accidentally put you or the business in some mess that you don't know head & tail. Ensure all the cheques requires at least 2 signatures before it can be processed.

Lastly if it's possible, buy out your partner's share whenever you're ready to be on your own.

Agree. But as im new in biz and my partner are 3-4years experience in biz he tend to push me around. For few months i can tolerate but as time past, i was not able to be patience. Im willing to let go the biz and wanted to sell my shares. Best part is my partner think that when i sell my share he should get 50% of the money i got. Although got no B&W saying that, he still thinks this is a norm in biz.

Hey brick and mortar biz owners... am planning to set up a website to show company services and profile... so far how useful has it been to you?

Doubled your sales?

depends on how well navigation your website is.

if it's simple efficient and visitors can find what they want in less than 3 clicks, then good.

max 5 clicks. if more than 5 clicks, then people won't bother to click further since your business is about services.

So for your biz after u put up website, how much increase in business?

Thx.

Hi all,

I am planning to open a Sports Shop in a shopping mall.

Any advice on this business?

Thinking for a 1000sq ft area to sell merchandize such as Adidas, Nike, Puma etc. sport products.

Worth to do ?

Any supplier can introduce?

Thanks.

So for your biz after u put up website, how much increase in business?

Thx.

Hi all,

I am planning to open a Sports Shop in a shopping mall.

Any advice on this business?

Thinking for a 1000sq ft area to sell merchandize such as Adidas, Nike, Puma etc. sport products.

Worth to do ?

Any supplier can introduce?

Thanks.

Worthy to do it or not it depends on your local market demand.
Does your town people active in sports? How many pontetial consumer in your market who need sports equipment? How many competitor in your town? If yes does the demand high enough to fit the supply? There are several question you have to answer it and conduct a market survey before you spend your money on it.

Supplier side...hmmm... there are seveal distributor in Malaysia for the sport equipment and some home-grown brand. You have to spend some times to do your homework, most of them you may find their contact number or email online.