PPB April 2019

make a decision and wasted about two hours of my time. I decided then and there that it was the last time I’d have a potential customer or customers come to me. Retail office space is expensive and if one does that, they need to capitalize that cost into lease term projections. In many cases, smaller businesses are working for the landlord. In hindsight, what I needed was flex space. Non-retail business space that you can buy and triple-net lease to your company is an excellent idea. I still have my office condo and it’s been paid for years. Now the rent flows to me as unearned income. My only thought for someone contemplating this is to really think it through, fully, and consider your strengths and weaknesses. Work your strengths. ALLEN HAWKINS Calibre Sales & Marketing Raleigh, North Carolina I used to work for a uniform company that had a retail location in Manhattan. My former boss can’t wait until the lease is up, because once it is, he’s closing the store once and for all. Mind you, they’ve been in business since 1938, but the retail market sucks. The best way to go, in my opinion, is some warehouse attached to an office that you can use for a showroom. DAVID ADDI Fired Up Promotions Baltimore, Maryland It’s not just tire kickers who will waste your time, it’s local organizations who are looking for product donations. (Some of them have great causes that are hard to say “no” to.) It’s salespeople who are selling paper, printers, advertising space—you name it. Sometimes it’s the other tenants who stop by “just to chat” when business is slow for them. If you need space, a back office in an industrial type of building may be better. I had one and there were fewer time-wasters. You can still divide the space to create a small office for client meetings that you schedule. JENNIFER KATUS Promomento Avon, Connecticut We’ve done small office spaces and large retail spaces and my feedback is as follows: the question you ask yourself is whether you are prepared to do one-offs and small-quantity orders, and how much it costs you to do business with one-offs as a result of foot traffic. This is a key metric you need to know. It costs my company a lot more to do one-offs and small orders than it does to do large orders. The ratio of cost per square foot for office space for small orders versus large orders becomes very apparent, very quickly. I, too, had a retail space, but after a few months, we installed a doorbell to keep the foot traffic out. I have a specific type of client and they don’t come to see us unless it’s a social call. We were in downtown Los Angeles in a commercial district and constantly had questionable people walk through the door, and I didn’t want my employees to feel unsafe. In hindsight, I wouldn’t have leased the retail space. I would have kept our original smaller office space, reconfigured it to keep up with our growth and I would have retained a more profitable bottom line. My ultimate advice? Keep your expenses low, because our industry is tied to the current economy and you never know when stuff happens. Remember 2011? It’s tempting to grow your office space because times are good, but if you can be innovative about your growth without increasing expenses, you, my friend, will have hit the jackpot. P.S. That’s not to say you shouldn’t move out of your home office. By all means, move to a space that makes sense for your company—just make sure you can forecast for the term of the lease what your profitability will be and whether your company can sustain the expense, even if your revenue decreases. AMY WILLIAMS AB Unlimited Worldwide Las Vegas, Nevada I can only advise you of my experience in my 60 years in the industry. Once you have a street operation, you will find that you get a lot of foot traffic, which will take away from your main promotional product sales. Remember where your real business comes from. Don’t lose sight of that. Build your business with your own sales. It’s more profitable. MARVIN BAIDA, MAS Promotional Generation Chatsworth, California Do YouHave An Answer? A Distributor Asks: I recently worked with a vendor who printed my client’s logo in the wrong location on a bag. The bags had been shipped to this vendor for printing. The vendor admitted to their mistake and will not charge us for their time or printing, but the client can’t use the bags and we are on the hook for paying for them. Who should be responsible for paying for the bags? What’s Your Answer? Email answers along with your name, title and company name by April 15 to Question@ppai.org for possible inclusion in an upcoming issue of PPB magazine. Danielle Renda is associate editor of PPB. | APRIL 2019 | 13 INNOVATE