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Oct 27, 2023

30 Things You'll Need When Opening Your First Retail Store

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Thinking of opening your first retail store? No matter what you intend to sell, you’ll need a lot of different supplies to make your store look professional and welcoming to your customers. Below is a checklist of items that can get you started on building a retail store that customers will love.

People aren't likely to visit your shop if they don't know where it is and what you sell. When opening your first retail store, you’ll need at least one outdoor sign with your store name and logo. And you should also have some indoor signs indicating different items and categories so customers can easily find their way around.

Shelves are a pretty standard display solution for a variety of products. Certain types of clothes, books, music and plenty of other products can fit on them, giving customers an easy way to search for the products they’re looking for.

If you’re going sell pretty much any type of clothing when opening your first retail store, racks offer another display solution. They allow customers to more easily sift through certain types of clothing items that don't lend themselves to sitting folded on a shelf.

If you’re going to have clothes hanging on racks, you’ll also need hangers to go with them.

In order to process payments after opening your first retail store, you’ll need a good point of sale solution. Some low cost options that process credit cards for small businesses include Square and Breadcrumb.

You’ll also need an actual cash register or at least a secure drawer to store money from cash transactions. Some POS systems come with these already. But if you’ve chosen a lower cost option for processing cards, you might need to buy this separately.

Unless you want to go through and individually write price tags for every single item in your store, a price gun is a must. Price guns allow you to input prices and easily print out tags for individual items.

Whether you prefer paper or plastic, you’ll need some kind of bag to offer customers upon completing their purchases. You can purchase generic shopping bags or order some with your store name and logo on them.

For expensive items or things you just want to show off to customers, glass display cases offer a great solution. They protect and display your items and can even serve double duty as a checkout area.

Smaller items like key chains, jewelry or even small books and CDs could be a good fit for spinning racks, those relatively small displays that customers can rotate to see different items.

Selling any sort of apparel or accessories when opening your first retail store means that you’ll need at least a few mirrors around so that customers can see the items they’re considering purchasing. Full-length mirrors should be mainly located near clothing items and smaller mirrors can go by accessories.

Clothing items that you really want to show off can really grab people's attention if you place them on mannequins rather than shelves or racks. You can even place them in windows to draw new customers into the store.

Certain types of items will also require specialty displays. For example, there are plenty of different displays for necklaces and other jewelry items. Or you may need racks that are specific to DVDs or similar media.

You can use simple stickers in a variety of different ways in retail stores. If you’re having a sale, for instance, you can use different colored dots to indicate different discount levels or prices, rather than printing out all new price tags.

Customers that visit your store to buy gifts for others will appreciate if you offer gift bags or a simple box and wrapping paper complementary with their purchase.

You’ll also need to offer receipts with each purchase after opening your first retail store. A receipt printer might be part of your all-purpose POS system. But some smaller retail stores instead choose simple receipt pads that they can use to manually write out purchases.

Your shoppers will need a way to carry their purchases through the store if they plan on buying multiple items. If you offer large items, you might need to offer shopping carts. But for smaller items, shopping baskets should do the trick.

If you’re having a sale, grand opening or other event, you’ll need decorations that will grab people's attention. Pennants, flags or banners are popular solutions to hang outside of retail stores or as part of your displays.

Many stores offer seating areas near the entrance or in fitting room areas. And of course, you’ll also need a place for you and your employees to sit during down times.

If you’re going to offer a fitting room area, which can be beneficial if you sell any kind of clothing, you’ll need curtains or room dividers to close off the area.

Movable line posts can help you keep the line at your register organized and under control. You might only need them for special events or busy seasons, but you should keep them around just in case.

Pretty much every store has more inventory than what's being displayed at any given moment. So you’ll also need some kind of shelving or organizing system to hold your extra items in a back room or behind your counter.

No customer wants to shop in a dirty environment. So you’ll need at least some basic cleaning supplies to keep your floors, shelves and items sparkling clean when opening your first retail store.

Even stores that do most of their selling in-person need a website so that people can actually find the store and learn a bit about the items for sale.

Social media has become essential for businesses to reach out to target customers. For local retail stores, social media gives you an outlet for updating nearby customers about new items, sales and other promotions.

Selling items online, in addition to in your store, can really expand your customer base. Aside from making your items available to people outside your immediate geographical location, having an eCommerce site can also allow you to offer a wider variety of items and satisfy customers that just prefer to shop online.

Offering products online means that you’ll need to be able to ship them. So you’ll need boxes, envelopes, protective wrapping and any other supplies that will allow you to safely ship whatever items you sell.

To make the shipping process easier, you should also set up an account with a shipping provider. UPS, FedEx and USPS all offer solutions for businesses that ship packages on a regular basis. Having an existing account can save you time and even money on the shipping process.

After your store closes for the day, you’ll need a place to deposit all of the money you brought in that day. Set up an account with a bank that's close to your store and offers after-hours deposit services so that you won't have to keep that money secure overnight.

Once you’ve built up your inventory and purchased all of these supplies, the last thing you’d want is for anything to happen to them. A security system with cameras and alarms can help protect your items from theft and more.

Storefront, Point-of-Sale, Mannequins, Shopping Carts, Shopping Carts, Cleaning Supplies, Security Camera Photos via Shutterstock