With the second fastest growing economy in the UK, Sheffield is the perfect place to consider starting a high street business.
Whether you’re passionate about hair styling, boutique clothing, or gifts, setting up your small business in the thriving and bustling city of Sheffield could be the ideal place to grow your brand from the ground up.
Here are five of our best tips for starting your own business in Sheffield.
1. Carry Out Market Research
Market research is incredibly important for identifying where your business fits in the market, and how you can identify a niche to fit into.
To do this, speak to business owners and customers, or create anonymous surveys to garner honest opinions about the high street. You can use tools like Smart Survey to create anonymous forms for customers or social media users to fill in that will give you valuable insight into your target market.
2. Find Well Located Premises
Your business premises location is essential for generating good foot traffic, and visibility. Both of these will set you up well for success on the high street.
You may also want to factor in disabled access, close proximity to public transport, and locality to markets, as this will help to bring additional footfall.
By placing your business in a well populated area, this also makes you easy to find, and makes it more likely that customers will pay you a visit whilst running into the city centre for their weekly shopping.
3. Study A Business Degree
To help you get an edge over your competitors, why not study for a business degree? Academic providers like Signum Magnum College offer a wide range of distance learning courses that are perfect for studying in your spare time around the day to day running of your business.
This way, you can expand your skill set and knowledge without compromising on your commitment to your company. It’s the ideal solution!
4. Hire Locally
Fortunately, Sheffield has a huge talent pool to dip into for your team of staff. If you’re looking for talented and hardworking staff members, the two universities in Sheffield churn out around 55,000 graduates each year, with many looking for graduate work, placements and internships.
Make the most of these enthusiastic budding professionals, and offer incentives like pay rises, career development and education to bring this fresh talent to your business.
5. Adopt Sustainable Policies
Sustainability is now on the agenda for most businesses in the UK. Not only will acting sustainably reduce your carbon footprint as a company, but it will also help to reduce your overhead costs.
Install energy efficient lighting and adopt a paperless policy as a minimum. You could even install a miniature turbine or solar panels from companies like RS to help you reduce your energy bills and even gain a profit from electricity sold to the national grid!
Highlighting your sustainable policies will also attract more eco conscious customers as they will be more willing to support a business that is actively attempting to promote a proactive attitude towards preventing climate change.
Do you have any tips for starting your own business in Sheffield? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!
