He used to get a manufacturer who used to make something
Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2025 6:35 am
Imagine the disappointment when years later the council said “That’s an unsafe building.” And he had to demolish half of it.
Andrew Reynolds: My dad, he couldn’t afford to go in the high street. You can see on the chart here, the big red area in Winchester there where he had his shop, that’s the high street area, that’s where the public are, that’s where the people are congregating, that’s where the shoppers are.
My dad had his shop in a secondary location. which was kind of okay because it was a DIY shop, people would be prepared to travel a bit. People used to take their cars and they would pull up outside and they would load up their bags of cement and all this sort of stuff. Until the powers of darkness from the council decided to put down some yellow lines. Screwed. Because my dad had pitched his business there, he’d got his shop, he couldn’t move the shop, I’m buying that, I’ve got a bank loan out for it, I’ve got to keep it going.
But the business dried up because somebody phone number data else took a decision which impacted on his business.
The business we are teaching you this weekend, the lesson I learnt was to be flexible. If something happens in a particular part of my business like for example if there is a big postal strike and it stops the direct mail side of my business, no problem because we go onto the internet side of the business.
You have to be flexible enough so that if something interferes you can move on.
Andrew Reynolds: My dad used to have huge stocks; he used to have 16,000 items of stock in his shop. He’d stock the shop and then hope that somebody would wander by and wander in and that he would have the right size screws to sell them.
I learnt from my dad about wholesale and retail. he would sell it to a wholesaler, my dad would buy from the wholesaler. So there was a middle man. My dad’s margin was about one third. So if he’s got something selling for 99p he is paying 66p for it and out of the 33p left he has got to pay his rent and his rates and his light and heat and everything else. It wasn’t a business model that worked.
He also, he was in the market where the B&Q’s and these sort of people were just coming to the fore and he tried desperately to battle against the B&Q’s. He couldn’t compete because he is buying from a wholesaler, B&Q are buying straight from the manufacturer and getting everything cheaper so B&Q can afford to sell cheaper than me dad. So his margins disappeared.
The note you want to make there is that you don’t want to have a product which is going to compete with the big boys.
We’re not going after Microsoft or something here, we are going to compete in little niche markets.
Andrew Reynolds: My dad, he couldn’t afford to go in the high street. You can see on the chart here, the big red area in Winchester there where he had his shop, that’s the high street area, that’s where the public are, that’s where the people are congregating, that’s where the shoppers are.
My dad had his shop in a secondary location. which was kind of okay because it was a DIY shop, people would be prepared to travel a bit. People used to take their cars and they would pull up outside and they would load up their bags of cement and all this sort of stuff. Until the powers of darkness from the council decided to put down some yellow lines. Screwed. Because my dad had pitched his business there, he’d got his shop, he couldn’t move the shop, I’m buying that, I’ve got a bank loan out for it, I’ve got to keep it going.
But the business dried up because somebody phone number data else took a decision which impacted on his business.
The business we are teaching you this weekend, the lesson I learnt was to be flexible. If something happens in a particular part of my business like for example if there is a big postal strike and it stops the direct mail side of my business, no problem because we go onto the internet side of the business.
You have to be flexible enough so that if something interferes you can move on.
Andrew Reynolds: My dad used to have huge stocks; he used to have 16,000 items of stock in his shop. He’d stock the shop and then hope that somebody would wander by and wander in and that he would have the right size screws to sell them.
I learnt from my dad about wholesale and retail. he would sell it to a wholesaler, my dad would buy from the wholesaler. So there was a middle man. My dad’s margin was about one third. So if he’s got something selling for 99p he is paying 66p for it and out of the 33p left he has got to pay his rent and his rates and his light and heat and everything else. It wasn’t a business model that worked.
He also, he was in the market where the B&Q’s and these sort of people were just coming to the fore and he tried desperately to battle against the B&Q’s. He couldn’t compete because he is buying from a wholesaler, B&Q are buying straight from the manufacturer and getting everything cheaper so B&Q can afford to sell cheaper than me dad. So his margins disappeared.
The note you want to make there is that you don’t want to have a product which is going to compete with the big boys.
We’re not going after Microsoft or something here, we are going to compete in little niche markets.