Starting, and Growing, a Business

Retail Business Kit for Dummies by Rick Segel is now in its second edition, and includes advice tailored for today’s economy, including how to keep your credit good, overhaul your inventory, ramp up online marketing, improve your signage and energize sales staff. Plus evergreens like visual merchandising, hiring and making a business plan. In addition to the book, readers get a CD of forms and templates.

The Specialty Shop: How to Create Your Own Unique and Profitable Retail Business, by Dorothy Finell, offers advice from 32 successful retail entrepreneurs, including gift shops but also toy stores, book stores, clothing boutiques, etc. Advice covers picking product and location, hiring and training, props, displays and shelving, advertising and PR,  gift shows, throwing a good Grand Opening, and ecommerce, as well as the inevitable business plan.

You Can Compete: Double Sales Without Discounting by Bob Phibbs, second edition, offers advice for independent retailers competing against chain stores. He covers basic store design and display, hiring, training, managing and marketing and outlines a five part selling method. 

The Accidental Entrepreneur: 50 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Starting a Business by Susan Urquhart-Brown covers the different reasons people start businesses and what traits are needed; corporate structures, naming the company, marketing and sales. Full of exercises, this is as much a workbook as a text.

Author Jerry Robertson offers two titles: Shocking Truth to Retail Success and Profits That Lie Hidden In Your Store Revealed. While you may not find his principles as shocking as all that — customer service, time management, stress management, goal setting, inventory control, merchandising and advertising are not exactly unheard of — his books do offer much hands-on advice.

The tales of successful entrepreneurs often sound the same: starting out from the kitchen table, garage or the trunk of the car, and today a multinational organization. But how they got there when thousands didn’t isn’t
always so clear. Built For Growth: Expanding Your Business Around the Corner or Across the Globe, by Arthur Rubinfeld and Collins Hemmingway, sets out to clear that up. Rubinfeld, one of the architects of Starbucks’ success, covers planning big from the beginning; keeping ahead of competitors; claiming high-visiblity locations and building brand visibility; and continuing innovation.