Let's build a business.

[Chaostracize]

We are under contract now. Time to find that designer/architect and crew.

[nakedcrayon2]

What kind of business entity will you construct? Please dont tell me you will operate as Sole Proprietor, as all debt you have outstanding will fall upon you, and although I am not afriad to take chances, I would not jump out of an airplane without a parachute. Have you thought about using first two floors for business and upper two floors for YOUR residence until you can get an idea of long term market conditions? I think, as many other have stated, you are undercapitailized, with building cost and permits, furniture and general start up necessitites. I work for a small tutoring company in a college town, and the costs of running a basic business with little flairs is about 18-20K per month for just under 8K in square footage.

[ThaHero]

So would the first floor be a residence? I dunno... would anyone really want to live below a lounge?

[James282]

not much to add except this is all very interesting and please keep us updated on how things progress!

James

[Taylor Caby]

sorry i haven't been able to help more yet but i am going to think about things a bit. you should contact stinger885 because he knows the area and is going to be a soph at cornell (and is a balla).

tc

[gergery]

My advice

Do a ton of market research first on the cheap. Talk to people at other schools to see if people have done this sort of thing and how its worked (join facebook). Find similar type ideas in other cities – there’s a bar called Excaliber in Chicago that has 4 levels which has games, lounge, dancing and sit-n-listen to artists -- Call up the manager and ask a [censored] of questions. Dave &Busters has similar type idea of multiple areas to participate in. See if a market research class could help flesh out the idea as a project for you. Figure out numerically which is better market --- count the number of cornell bars vs. Ithaca bars, find out number of students at both schools, find median family income or starting job avgs on exit, look at prices of beers in different local bars, etc.

Figure out who your lead and heavy users (best customers) and make sure you are meeting their needs. Frat guys drink a lot and hang out in groups – maybe that’s your best market. What do they want most—women. So make sure your place appeals to women – what do they want? Maybe lots of bathrooms, maybe a safe lighted area outside of the bar, maybe near a bus line – don’t guess, do some in depth interviews with them to figure out what they like and don’t like about current options.

Do some benchmarking on costs and revenues. Cornell has best restaurant mgt school in country. Go talk to professors. They can help get you line item benchmarks for insurance, costs per employee, labor needed per sq ft, turnover, avg revenue per patron, and so on. Walk into other bars in town and see what their staff/square foot ratios are.

Learn the business first. Go work at a bar. Make friends with people, and recruit them later. Quit after a month and go work at another one. Find out who the suppliers are. Learn nuances of the business, discover if the day-in-day-out reality of this is what you want – learn on someone else’s dime. Study how good managers manage and motivate employees.

Find key people to advise you. Get a cornell prof to help, get owner/manager in another city of big bar to advise you. go look thru resumes of the MBA students at Cornell and see if any of them have experience as entrepreneurs. You will need a lawyer and an accountant

Don’t approach this as a learning experience as main driver. Starting successful businesses is way too hard and expensive, and there are much cheaper ways to learn. You will live and breathe this for months and months so only do this if you really think and believe it will succeed.

Budget costs to be about double what you think they will be, and for things to take about twice as long as you think they will.

Good luck. Entrepreneurship is [censored] awesome.

-g

[Chaostracize]

[ QUOTE ]
My advice

Do a ton of market research first on the cheap. Talk to people at other schools to see if people have done this sort of thing and how its worked (join facebook). Find similar type ideas in other cities – there’s a bar called Excaliber in Chicago that has 4 levels which has games, lounge, dancing and sit-n-listen to artists -- Call up the manager and ask a [censored] of questions. Dave &Busters has similar type idea of multiple areas to participate in. See if a market research class could help flesh out the idea as a project for you. Figure out numerically which is better market --- count the number of cornell bars vs. Ithaca bars, find out number of students at both schools, find median family income or starting job avgs on exit, look at prices of beers in different local bars, etc.

Figure out who your lead and heavy users (best customers) and make sure you are meeting their needs. Frat guys drink a lot and hang out in groups – maybe that’s your best market. What do they want most—women. So make sure your place appeals to women – what do they want? Maybe lots of bathrooms, maybe a safe lighted area outside of the bar, maybe near a bus line – don’t guess, do some in depth interviews with them to figure out what they like and don’t like about current options.

Do some benchmarking on costs and revenues. Cornell has best restaurant mgt school in country. Go talk to professors. They can help get you line item benchmarks for insurance, costs per employee, labor needed per sq ft, turnover, avg revenue per patron, and so on. Walk into other bars in town and see what their staff/square foot ratios are.

Learn the business first. Go work at a bar. Make friends with people, and recruit them later. Quit after a month and go work at another one. Find out who the suppliers are. Learn nuances of the business, discover if the day-in-day-out reality of this is what you want – learn on someone else’s dime. Study how good managers manage and motivate employees.

Find key people to advise you. Get a cornell prof to help, get owner/manager in another city of big bar to advise you. go look thru resumes of the MBA students at Cornell and see if any of them have experience as entrepreneurs. You will need a lawyer and an accountant

Don’t approach this as a learning experience as main driver. Starting successful businesses is way too hard and expensive, and there are much cheaper ways to learn. You will live and breathe this for months and months so only do this if you really think and believe it will succeed.

Budget costs to be about double what you think they will be, and for things to take about twice as long as you think they will.

Good luck. Entrepreneurship is [censored] awesome.

-g

[/ QUOTE ]

Great post, gergery, sorry I didn't get to it sooner.

Regarding market research, the people who go out are primarily college students, and on top of that, those who go out in the commons are primarily IC students. My plan is to market heavily to both groups, with online advertising (ala Facebook), outgoing students with fliers (hello, dino's...a large part of their success within the IC community was due to the fact that it was highly advertised there, whereas IC students go to literally no other CTown bar), and minor promotions (I plan on getting a deal together with the taxi company where I pay for the fare to get CU students to the club...or maybe a free shot to anyone who shows a Cornell ID?)

I'm definitely entertaining the idea of pitching my business plan to other bar owners in the area. I figure if I can pitch it as myself doing the grunt work and putting in the money, then all I'm missing is experience. Not sure how viable it would be since I'd essentially be competition, so perhaps I should talk it over with CTown bar owners first (Ruloff's and Palms are both trying to sell of their business, so they're no-goes).

I definitely want to appeal to the 18+ market as well, since there is nothing for Freshman and Sophomores to do, other than drink at home. Actually, I'm going to write a separate post about where I'm going with this project. But you have some sweet ideas about talking to some CU professors, for sure.

[Chaostracize]

I believe I am finally nearing completion of my idea for a business. I've wanted to open up a nightclub in the area after having been to Europe and noticing a discrepency in quality of nightlife. Every bar in Ithaca is a "College Bar" but there is no night club. I have no machinations about making this place enormous. I just measured out the square footage and both floors are 16' x 80'. So, just about 1300 sq feet per floor. I think this is just enough space for the place I'm envisioning.

My plan is now to have a staircase in the front that goes to the third floor which will eventually be turned into a 3 bedroom loft. This is a project I'm not going to throw money at yet, but I will in the future. The first floor will be an 18+ dance area. The entrance will be on the right and coat check to your left when you enter. As odd as it sounds, not a single place in Ithaca has a coat check, and this has been a major gripe from everyone I've ever gone out with. $2 at the door, $1 coat check.

First floor will be the basic, smoke machines, black lights, strobe lights, effervescent colors on the walls, maybe a plasma or two up on the walls (near the ceilings), DJ booth in the back near the stairs. Almost totally open space.

The back staircase will remain intact (I'm trying to keep as much of the current architectural design the same as to limit costs...initially we had planned a major overhaul of staircases, but the more we can keep, the better). The staircase will lead to the second floor, but more importantly the bathrooms. The bathrooms will be situated so the 18+ crowd can reach them without entering the 21+ bar area on the second floor. There will be another ID checker/bouncer there (fortunately the staircase is wide enough to host lines for both the bathrooms and the bar entrance).

I'm visualizing the bar area as more loungey. Have a few couches, maybe a few video games (although, I'm not sold it will fit in with the atmosphere), definitely music, but not at the same volume as the first floor. I want this to be more of the quieter getaway to get drunk until you go back downstairs and rock out again.

That's the idea I have for the space now...as for what is going on in terms of getting this together.

The building is currently under contract and is set to close on September 7th. I plan on trying to open mid January, when school lets back in. This will allow for about 4.5 months of getting a construction crew in plus whatever electrical, plumbing and other random work that needs to be done.

I am meeting with an architect today in a few hours and tomorrow in the afternoon as well. There is one other architect who I still have not heard back from that I plan on meeting with as well. I have no idea what the costs of an architect are, but I will find out soon.

When I get my business plan finished I will post it here for critiques if anyone's willing.

For right now that's all I can think of. I will let you all know how it goes with the architect.

[rutang]

I should have mentioned this earlier. buy a copy of "guerrilla marketing" and read it soon. you want to stew over ideas for a long time.

keep a list of every marketing idea you come up with, and sort them by when you have to start doing them in relation to when you open. find out now about what the signage laws are in the area, so you don't get caught with your pants down (my store had to wait for 3 months to get approval for the sign... and I opened my store 1 month after I started looking at this stuff)

also, as soon as you have your business name, start looking into getting into phone books & yellow pages so that when you open, you are already in there.

you could start getting people involved now, if you wanted. buy some random website like mybar.com or whatever (i haven't looked to see if it's available) and start putting flyers out that are something like:

--------------------------------------
www.mychilloutspot.com

New chill out bar opening 01/10/08

help make it the kind of place
you want!

------------------------------------

obviously you'd have to put more thought into it than i have here, but you get the idea. get people talking about it now, and make them feel like they are a part of it when it opens.

this idea, if successful, might also give you a head start on employees, people who might become a part of the project early, who you will get a chance to know well before you are interviewing.

if you are going to be a part of the electronic music scene, register for accounts on big message boards that cater to these crowds, and solicit advice from locals that are a part of that scene, or people in general.

for example, if you are going to cater to the drum & bass crowd, go to dogsonacid.com, and troll for some ithaca people on there. (i'm sure I rememeber a few were regular posters)

good luck.

[Chaostracize]

Was waiting to make responses, until I had an update.

[ QUOTE ]
I should have mentioned this earlier. buy a copy of "guerrilla marketing" and read it soon. you want to stew over ideas for a long time.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've heard of this book, and just ordered it on Amazon. Thanks for the recommendation(/reminder?).

[ QUOTE ]
keep a list of every marketing idea you come up with, and sort them by when you have to start doing them in relation to when you open. find out now about what the signage laws are in the area, so you don't get caught with your pants down (my store had to wait for 3 months to get approval for the sign... and I opened my store 1 month after I started looking at this stuff)

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm starting to realize that this won't materialize nearly as quickly as I'd hoped. There are so many intermediary steps here. I remember someone once said to me "There are so many people who could have been really, really rich if they'd just had a notepad on hand." Time to invest in a pocket sized notepad I think, cause all too often these days I'll have an idea that really excites me and by the end of the day I've completely forgotten what it was.

[ QUOTE ]
also, as soon as you have your business name, start looking into getting into phone books & yellow pages so that when you open, you are already in there.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good idea. I'll give the heads up about the business name, to see what people think, in my update.

[ QUOTE ]
you could start getting people involved now, if you wanted. buy some random website like mybar.com or whatever (i haven't looked to see if it's available) and start putting flyers out that are something like:

--------------------------------------
www.mychilloutspot.com

New chill out bar opening 01/10/08

help make it the kind of place
you want!

------------------------------------

obviously you'd have to put more thought into it than i have here, but you get the idea. get people talking about it now, and make them feel like they are a part of it when it opens.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is really a cornerstone of what I want this business to be. A for us, by us, type feel.

[ QUOTE ]
this idea, if successful, might also give you a head start on employees, people who might become a part of the project early, who you will get a chance to know well before you are interviewing.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm going to address this in the update as well.

[ QUOTE ]
if you are going to be a part of the electronic music scene, register for accounts on big message boards that cater to these crowds, and solicit advice from locals that are a part of that scene, or people in general.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hadn't thought of this.

[ QUOTE ]
for example, if you are going to cater to the drum & bass crowd, go to dogsonacid.com, and troll for some ithaca people on there. (i'm sure I rememeber a few were regular posters)

good luck.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks. Good post.