Owning a Pet Shop can be a dream of many pets lovers. Would not it be wonderful if you can work with pets and earn money at the same time? There are two parts to this wonderful idea. One is the wonderful part whereby you gets to have all the pets while you work on them. The other part is the hard truth of earning money to sustain the business. Let talk about the wonderful part first.
Wonder Work Life with Pets
Pet lovers will love to be with their own pets and other pets. I am also a pet lover and it will be great to cast all the stupid work stuff aside and play with all the pets everyday. These innocent looking pets are the best boss or customers you can get. They will not scold at you, they will not pick the minor errors that you have committed. Pets will not set targets or daily jobs you need to complete by the end of the day or week. Of course there are poo and pee to clear at the end of the day. Easy job i will say. Nice job that one loves to have facing cute pets all day long.
Sustainable Pet Shop
To sustain your pet shop, you need to consider many running and fixed cost. One major fixed cost is to have the big budget to buy over a shop or rent a shop with renovation. Renting a shop may need 2 months rental which can be about $10k depending on the location and size. Renovation of the shop and if it is an empty shop, you need to buy all the necessary furniture, grooming equipment, getting the first load of pet food and accessories. Maybe that will be another $20k of fixed cost. Do i mentioned about 30k of fixed cost? Other fixed cost are company registration cost, a good website for your company, a vehicle to transport the pets. If the vehicle is by installments, you might be looking at another $5k with deposits etc. If you have sufficient savings, this can be achieved easily and you need some excess funds in your company bank accounts for buying and adding funds. All in all, i guess a minimum of $35k fixed investment.
Running cost is the main headache and i think in Singapore, this is a headache for many people. First money sucker is the shop rental. Singapore shop rental can range from $2k to $10k per month depending on location and size. How many grooming do you need to do to cover this let say $3k of rental? Per dog grooming maybe $50 and you need to clear 60 dogs per month and that means 2 dogs per day. Do you have that number of dogs coming for grooming? Another running cost is the utilities bills which can easily hit a $500 per month. I guess min running cost of a shop is $4k excluding staff income and own income. If you add your income say $2k and staff income of $1k, that means $7k running cost and means 140 dogs per month, 5 dogs per day. Of course there are other means of income like pet food and services. Of course pet sales is a good revenue business but i do not encourage that as it push pet mills... Sad place for the pets..
You also need to recover the fixed cost invested into this company. Let's say 2 years time to recover the cost. Earlier i mentioned about $35k of fixed investment, this means monthly of extra revenue $1.5k. Adding to your running cost of $7k, we are looking at close to $9k revenue minimum. Interesting figure to balance every month. It can be a cruel fact of life that one need to work hard even at a happy place.
