Steve's shop as it looked back in 1989
From the moment you open up a shop there will be a day in the future where you no longer have ownership of it. You may pass it on to a family member or sell the business or perhaps simply close it.
When my wife and I bought our newsagents shop in West Chiltington in March 1989 we didn’t have any thought of selling. That thought came about ten years ago when my wife and I decided that we needed to understand how we could move on from our business once the time was right. None our children were interested in working with us in the business so we knew that we needed to prepare it for sale.
With a shop floor of 600 square feet we felt that the business would be seen as just another corner newsagents. Although we had added an off license and a reasonable convenience range we knew that we had work to do to improve its potential.
Looking around for possibilities we saw several opportunities, the nearby Sub Post Office was failing having changed hands several times in a relatively short period. We had not been interested in taking on a Post Office, but in a couple of periods when the branch had been closed we noticed a fall off in our trade. So we decided that we would look seriously at it if it came up for sale again.
With this thought we looked at how we could comfortably house a Post Office in our shop or alternatively could we move our business into the premises where the PO branch traded. We asked a local architect about extending our shop and he came up with a design scheme drawing for us to consider that would allow us to double the shop floor area. The extra space could be used to extend our convenience and local produce offering.
This of course would have needed a significant investment, but more on that in part two of this series.
