800: FAQ's About Mobile Retail

Boost Your Boutique with Emily Benson

1:33.0 The thing about having a brick and mortar is you have automatic traffic If you pick a good location, so All the clients that I've ever had open a brick and mortar business, I'm always like pay for traffic, pay for good location, because that's something that you don't automatically get in a mobile business.

1:56.1 If you're in a location that's really rural or has really specific zones where people go to shop, you want to exist in those places as a mobile shop.

2:10.2 I find that when people open mobile boutiques in the middle of nowhere, it's just really hard to find customers.

2:16.1 If you're online now, I think the best way to think about whether or not it's more economical or not is what the traffic situation is.

2:32.9 If you live in a place that's heavily dependent on brick and mortars and you could find a good location in a prime spot, honestly, opening a brick and mortar might be for you.

2:47.2 Now I talked about mine being a 30 foot step van and that was huge. If I were to redo it, I would absolutely make it smaller.

3:31.3 Trailer boutiques are like an elevated version of doing pop ups.

3:37.4 So it's halfway between doing a pop up show, like where you go to a market or you go to an indoor market and set up a booth. And then it's kind of like a brick and mortar too, because obviously it's a more permanent space.

3:55.7 You have to worry about how big this is, especially if you know you're going to do events where the parking lots aren't that huge or like it is a tight spot.

5:09.8 We saw people in New York that had trucks get fully arrested and like taken away and their trucks get towed. So with a grain of salt, I say yes, you do need permission sometimes.

5:20.4 Okay, so most places when we talk about permission, you're going to need permission from the state or local authorities with some kind of hawker or peddler's license.

6:07.0 You will have to provide that insurance at some point and you should have it anyway.

6:14.0 So like don't skimp on insurance, get the best of the best, even if it's a little more expensive.

7:06.7 So no matter what you do, your truck is always your billboard.

7:54.4 The insurance you need, two kinds, collision and comprehensive, and then you need business liability insurance.

8:20.0 I never covered what was in my truck in terms of Merchandise.

8:39.9 I was protected with that liability insurance for my business, for anyone like getting hurt or injured around when it was parked inside and outside that covered me for events. It covered me for shopping. I never had to use it.

10:45.8 So just remember, you can put anything in a truck. I've seen people put shoe stores in trucks, kids stores in trucks, uh, soap shops, flower shops, like we've seen all over the place

11:50.9 I stopped for a couple of reasons. One, I got really sick of driving. I was physically very sore. I did like 200 and something events a year. Sometimes like 245 events a year.

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