by Ronald Manalastas

Created on: January 20, 2011

When you start and run a retail business of your own , you have to perform multiple roles and wear different hats. From a general management perspective, you are the thinker, planner, doer, and problem-solver. On the store operation side, depending on the size of your organization, you might have to function as the buyer, warehouseman, receptionist, demonstrator, salesman, and supervisor.

To effectively perform your varying roles and significantly improve the chances of succeeding in the retail venture, you must have combined managerial and leadership skill, which skill set includes conceptual skill, interpersonal skill, and technical skill. Let us discuss each relevant skill.

A. Conceptual Skill

1. Discipline

This skill relates to your ability to think, analyze, and decide on abstract, finite, and complex issues and situations bearing on external and internal factors affecting your business. As owner and manager of the business, your conceptual skill requires that during the conception and prior to the start of the business, you can exercise and demonstrate, alone or in conjunction with consulting intervention, the capability to:

a. Determine your interest and passion to go into retailing business and know what it takes (i.e. pros and cons) to be an entrepreneur.

b. Acquire and build expert knowledge on the product you intend to promote and markets you wish to serve, establishing in the process a business rationale and a compelling differentiator for the venture.

c. Develop a business plan that embodies your vision and mission statements, and plans covering marketing (i.e. specific strategies on product, price, promotions, and place), supply and logistics, organization, management, processes, and finance. Your business plan must embrace both brick-and-mortar and online initiatives.

d. Complete a profitability and cash flow roadmap prescribing indicative standards and control policies on: purchasing, inventory, pricing, cost of goods sold, operating expenses, credit, account receivable, borrowings, consignment, and other merchandising guideposts.  

2. Success Implications

A winning exercise of your conceptual skill, which reflects the quality of your thinking, will produce business success-related advantages supporting your retail business even from its start-up stage, and these are:

a. A high level of personal commitment to the business after having been convinced that it is something you are most passionate about or keenly interested in going to, a business

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