Opening Record Store


Looking for advice from my fellow audiogoners...I have the potential to move into a store front that is already being operated as a record store (lps only) and become the new shop proprieter/owner. The owner has offered me the space (rediculously cheap rent) in a good area of town. He has had his store for about 5 years now and has a steady customer base. He will be taking all of his inventory and record storage bins that were in the store.He has a web site set up already and signs out front indicating the name of the shop...I plan on rebranding the shop with name change and interior upgrades. It is not a large space maybe 800-1000 square feet. I have a rather large inventory of my own so my up front investment of vinyl would be minimal. The owner wants me to buy him out..basically give cash in return for his customer base and the potential to get my hands on pretty good collections. I am trying to come up with a fair valuation of something like this and I am looking for advice..What do you think something like this is worth? Thank you in advance.
fromunda

Showing 1 response by mrklas

I’m unclear on what you are actually buying.

Rule of thumb is a business sale price is based on multiple of EBITA...

And often times the previous owner has ’a portion held’ back and a role to help the new owner(s) be successful.

In this case it seems you’re paying to take over a store front lease and ’buying’ a lead list since he’s already informed his customers of the web-business.

So if you are financially independent and looking for an opportunity to create business for your hobby in order to write-off some costs then I think you may have a good opportunity.

Retail is a challenging business and I would really view the 'store' as your personal listening room that can create some revenue.  Given the current state of the economy your demographics are limited in comparison to what they were 9 months ago.