Growth represents success, but also more responsibility. Read on to see if you are ready. 

It’s easy to get comfortable in your current location despite some hurdles you had to conquer. Your customers access your current location with some difficulty by trekking long, traffic-filled journeys. The rent has been inching its way up toward your budget limit, but you’ve been getting by. Your company’s growth has seen your staff working elbow to elbow as space becomes scarce. But don’t worry, your company is growing and that’s the direction that you want to be going. The obvious next step is to relocate your business, whether you’re outgrowing your current location, want to offset costs, or want to be more accessible to your customers. 

However, it’s no secret that relocation is a big step – figuratively, literally, and financially. In order to make the best-informed decision, as the business owner, it is important to take the time to consider the risks and advantages of relocating and the reasons why you want to relocate. Consider what parts of your business operations would be affected and the logistics behind executing the move. 

Reasons to Relocate Your Business

Choosing your new location should amend any shortfalls your current location has. 

To Move to a Better Location

Loyal customers who make the journey to a restaurant, for example, show that the restaurant can retain current customers and has the potential to attract and gain new customers in a newer, convenient area. You may have had to choose your current location based on affordability, but had your eye on a better location with a better market reach. An easily accessible business can have better customer traffic with drop-ins alongside recommendations from current customers. Plazas near new neighbourhoods can be accessed by the saturated residential area. Take advantage of these new markets and get ahead of the game by looking into prime locations to open your business.

Your Rent Has Gone Up

You chose your current location based on what you could afford at the time – somewhere close enough to the city centre, but far enough that customers still have to go a little out of their way to get to you. Based on this inaccessibility, your rent was affordable. As time passed, rent may have kept rising to a point where it is not worth staying. And now that your business has grown out of your current location, you have no choice but to move because you need more space to accommodate more staff and customers. Since your business continues to succeed, you can relocate to a bigger location that you can afford with your budget that is denser, more expensive area. 

It Meets Your Expansion Goals

From your business’s inception, you had a dream of expanding it to certain areas. Following your dream growth plan as well as finding a location that suits your lifestyle can also be included in your considerations. Getting to a point where you’re ready to take the step to relocate just pushes you forward to your next big goal, perhaps opening secondary locations.

All Set To Relocate Your Business? Be Aware of The Risks

Any big business decision comes with risks that you must evaluate. Your detailed retail planning can rush you preemptively into moving when in reality, moving might not go according to your plan with many things you can’t control and haven’t considered. You can succeed in your goal of cutting costs, but your new location can be inaccessible to customers. Saving money on your location is only important if the profits outweigh the savings. Without this, your growth can recede. 

Moving an entire business can’t be done in a day and may take weeks, months. If your goal was to cut costs, the longer the moving process takes, the more it will cost, nullifying the decision to move for better profits. A move is also a business interruption that can affect productivity and quality of service. The wrong location can make you lose your loyal customers even if they had previously travelled far to your business. A new location further out of the way means changing the habits of your customers, which may not be possible.

The Risks Can Be Worth It

There will always be outside factors that can make the move worse or better. But first starting your business was also a risk and it resulted in you having to consider relocation for growth. In the same way, your relocation can help your business succeed in so many new ways – new markets, new talent pools, new opportunities. In the short-term, a move can be a financial and physical headache, but in the long-term, you can be building a strong foundation for your business to continue to grow.