How to Scale a Retail Business in 7 Steps

It is excellent that you are considering how to scale your retail business. Only two things matter – the portion of the market you control and how much revenue you make. All that comes together when you have figured out how to grow your SME into an empire.

We will give it to you directly – if you desire to scale a retail business, there are three things you must do. First, you must understand your business’s current appeal and explore how to scale it. Second, you must outsource the little aspects of the business so you can focus on the things that matter. And third, you need to structure the company, i.e., grow it into an LLC.

All those take time, and it cannot be apparent for some entrepreneurs. Therefore, read this article to the end to learn the step-by-step process of scaling your brand.

Step #1: Market Definition is Important

Before you launch the small-scale business, feasibility studies must have been done. At the time, you must have developed a concrete business plan and defined your target market.

Now that you are looking to retail up, it is imperative to go back to the drawing board and see how far you have fared.

Is your target market appreciative of the services rendered so far?

Do you still have the same passion you had when starting the business?

What are some of the current challenges faced currently?

By considering all these factors, you will be able to find loopholes and devise strategic ways to fill them.

The goal is to ensure that your business objectives have been fulfilled. Also, you want to reoptimize your brand concept to fit into the more significant business you are looking to build.

Step #2: Outsource Some Work

Take or leave it – building a great company takes time, money, and strategy. You may have doubled as the CEO and marketer of your brand, but that doesn’t fit into the futuristic brand you are looking to scale up to.

You want to hire more professionals to handle essential tasks while focusing on relationship-building in your industry. Hiring a brand manager may also help you remove your mind from the daily running of the business – of course, in the hands of a professional manager.

Step #3: Scaling a Retail Business Could mean Taking in more Funds

It takes more money to scale an existing business than to build one from scratch. By being in the market for a couple of months or years, you have understood how the market flows and the “big guys.”

Now that you are looking for how to grow your retail business, it may be time to inject more funding into the business. Bootstrapping is perfectly okay if you have the funds to spare. But if you want to spread the risks and get more funding without risking all your own, taking external investors is your best bet.

Consider partnering with:

• Private equity companies
• Angel investors
• Colleagues

Collaborating early can be essential depending on how fast you want to scale. Partnering with any of these investors could mean sharing your retail business ownership.

Step #4: Add a New Product Line & Produce More Variants

You are not just looking to scale a retail business. You also want to expand into a bigger market where established brands are already holding sway.

What can make your retail business outstanding to gain a considerable market share?

Launching a new product line can be the go-to strategy for penetrating the latest market, and we will tell you why. Launching a new product line gives the new market a “different taste of your business.” It is no longer the same type of product they know your brand for.

Doing this makes them curious, and that is what you need – attention. You want the new and existing market to stop and listen for a minute to what you have to offer this time.

But we must warn you; launching a new product line. Here are the tips to ace it:

• Create a new product in the same line. For example, if you have been manufacturing car speakers, it may the time to test how the market will react to home speakers.
• Subsidize your new product, which doesn’t mean selling at a loss. You can create larger and smaller product variations for the wealthy and the low-end consumers. That way, you balance the market’s needs while promoting your product.

Step #5: Invest in Marketing

What is there to see in a scaling retail business if nobody knows about it? Although your existing customers see the brand offhand, you want the same to happen when new customers come across your products.

It requires money, and you want to be strategic with how you spend the marketing budget. Find out where your target market hangs out the most – offline and offline. Use both print and digital media channels, including social media platforms.

Step #6: Don’t Blur out the Bigger Picture

The excitement of scaling a small retail business into an empire in the next few years can be out of this world. One minute, you manage a team of 10 persons with 200 customers; the next day, you are 100-team strong and have thousands of customers in the pipeline.

Nevertheless, you want to keep in mind that scaling a retail business is for the long term. Build something that will be here for many decades, not a “touch and go” kind of business that crashes like a pack of cards when the excitement is over.

Step #7: Invest in Technology

Besides automating your business, using the right tools can help you retail faster. From a Point of Sale (POS) system to accounting software, your retail business needs to invest in technology to scale more quickly.

You also want to look at logistics, Human Resources (HR), marketing systems, and servers (printers and computers inclusive). These technology tools go a long way to simplify how fast your retail business can grow.

Conclusion

The steps involved in scaling a retail business and growing it into a world-class brand are:

• Defining the new market and consolidating on the existing one.
• Outsourcing some essential tasks, especially those that don’t require much of your input.
• Taking in new investments, especially from friends, family, and external investors.
• Adding a new product line.
• Invest more money in marketing and promoting the retail business.
• Being focused on building a brand with a global presence.
• Invest in technology tools to automate the retail business.

With the above steps, you are good to go to move from a small retail business owner to the owner of a globally-present retail brand.

Are there other ideas you have to scale a retail business? Please share them with us in the comment section.