Me and a friend of mine have a small business idea about making a local video game shop in our town but I don't know where to start.
Just to start this off I wanna say that the town in question has around 25,000 people in it. There isn't really much going on here in terms of actual businesses for the local youth. Growing up it felt as if there was nothing in my town worth doing and you would have to go close to 15 or 20 miles out to even do or see anything worth your time. Our town host events that draw in a decent crowd every once in awhile but other than that there's nothing much in terms of leisure. That's not to say the town doesn't have a population for a business to thrive. Businesses like a record shop or a shoe repair shop reside within my town and get decent foot traffic due to their downtown location. (Sorry about the long exposition so let me get straight to the point). We want to start this shop in our town so the local youth and others who have a genuine interest in video games, card collection, or merchandise can have a place they can call their own. With little knowledge that I do have about business I know that you want to establish yourself first so people know who you are and trust in the product that you're selling. We were thinking about possibly starting our own small flea market stall first after we gain enough inventory and we are financially stable enough to support it. Luckily for us we have a flea market in our area that is popular and has constant foot traffic going through it. We wanted to at least gain a customer base from a local community first and worry about all the big league stuff later.
Overall, our general concern is that we don't want to jump into something we know nothing about and have no experience with which is the part we're most afraid of. We don't want to start something that's not worth our time, effort, or money and be disappointed that something that we genuinely care about went nowhere.