Business online… do i need a physical space for ….

“I have an online business. Why do i need a physical address for my customers? They won’t come over.”

As business methods evolve there are many preferences and requirements. Some are driven by your needs, some by your customers and in environment where there is confusion, then comes driven by legal compliance. What ever the drivers, what ever your choosen medium for conducting your business there are a few minimum expectations, even if they are rarely used.

In the current online business environment, as it is becoming one of the prevalent methods of conducting business, as it evolves more expectations arise coming from a hybrid of business styles of conducting business.

One of them is that even though you may be online hence “virtual”, is a physical address location that you can be located. Preferably at this location you have a set frame of business hours and someone to help you attend to your customers. No longer is it the expectation that you have a full blown setup, but at least a setup that is functional.

So you could use light lease options for your space such as that provided by Serviced Facility providers, you can also use loose labour (such as temp staff or remote working staff or even outsourced attendants) to meet your live people interaction requirements. But you do need to up your setup in todays environment.

So just a frame of expectations that we have collected via responses and enquiries online, human interaction daily etc are these: –

  1. Yes i will buy online. But i want to be able to walk up to the merchants and have a direct live discussion.
  2. I do like the reach online businesses have by them using couriers and such. But would be better if i could just call them up to do the return pick up even if i have to pay for the return cost, but not the replacement cost.
  3. It is ok that i can go to a multi tenanted or hosted location to find them. Even a kiosk will do as long as i can find them there. Even if it is limited days in a week. Hence even a serviced facility location, a mall, even a bazaar or an office address will do. If i get a house address i will drop by anytime.
  4. As many communication mediums need to be available to me. Phone, Skype, Messenger, SMS, Email and more. Even fax.

Leaving you with the above in mind. Look out at any serviced office facility for a Internet Entrepreneur package that should provide you a business address, a mail box, virtual assistant and possible share meeting space. Shared storage would be a nice plus so that you could actually put your stock there instead of your homes. Ask if they could help you secure some insurance service too. This is to limit your losses in event of break in or fire. These facilities do not provide you that kind of protection else your price will be much higher.

Our Business in Shared Serviced Offices

It is almost a year since we have started conceptualizing our Shared Serviced Office Business. Years before when it became a seed of an idea.

We had finally opened since June 2009 after much haggling with sellers, Lawyers, Contractors. Much money, time, and also loss of revenue went into the building of this business.

The same and most common question is why shared serviced offices? Well over the years we have had many small businesses that we had started. Working on the concept of either a home office or even sharing of some friends office and even going with similar complementing business office premise sharing.

The common denominator we found that drove us to those mechanisms or options was when you start you have many issues behind your business. Positive mindset people would refer to this as opportunities. People whom love to be challenged say hurdles to overcome.

What ever the answer is, the practical reason is that you need to keep cost down or constant. And the only way is to share it. To keep it efficient get the specialist in the fields to deliver it. This happens everyday even with established businesses. The concept of out sourcing spoken very highly for many years has come up over the years in many forms. Some say outsourcing, some say managed, Some just say rental.

It is just simplistically said when building a business keep to your core. So if you are into importing\exporting keep to importing\exporting. Things like formating, IT, security and communication facilities buy in a manner that fits your needs. Capacity is where it is going. Reason? Things change, skill set require retraining, people behave differently according to many different reasons. What is in your skill area or business area is easier to identify with, and with that you have a better chance of addressing. If it is in an area you are unfamiliar with this is where it can take more out of you, thus distracting you from your core business. That is more of the many pitfalls fledgling businesses fall into.

So with those experiences personally and also as spoken through the many people that we have interacted with through the years. We had come to this. Shared Serviced Offices or what we rather categories in a broader sense the Managed\Unmanaged Facilities and skills providing business.

Over the next few weeks we will go through many aspects of setting up a business and also staying afloat.