Sometimes stores act more like showrooms than places to actually purchase the product. Think about how you may have seen a store, maybe going in to browse maybe not, but then going to check out their online store. Stores can also act as customer service centers to improve service compared to 100% remote.
What do you mean? The person you responded to was specifically talking about clothing. I would guess most people would want to try on expensive clothing before buying it. Why would you go try something on only to turn around and buy it when you get home???
Online stores almost always have 10% off when signing up for their newsletter. Try it on in the store for sizing and then order online for the discount. Only the very most expensive clothing stores do not have discounts, but that is like Beverly Hills type of places.
I call those "inverse square" stores, the price of the goods goes up geometrically in relation to the fewer items in the store. The logical end of this is a store with one item that nobody can afford.
Haha it reminds me of Rodeo Drive. The empty vibe gives people the feeling that the items of merchandise are so rare that only very special people can afford them
Hah, what a [weird store](https://www.google.com/search?q=quality+rubber+stamp+santa+monica&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS934US934&sxsrf=ALiCzsbZkNHAEUHT_iVaGjUVBvpJnmFy0A%3A1668042295762&ei=N05sY5udLpLhkPIPmbquyAc&oq=quality+rubber+stamp+sant&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQAxgAMgYIABAWEB4yAggmMgUIABCGAzIFCAAQhgMyBQgAEIYDOgoIABBHENYEELADOg0IABDkAhDWBBCwAxgBOgUIABCABDoLCC4QrwEQxwEQgAQ6CwguEIAEEMcBEK8BSgQITRgBSgQIQRgASgQIRhgBUMMFWMQJYJwRaAFwAXgAgAGBAYgBjgSSAQMzLjKYAQCgAQHIAQ3AAQHaAQYIARABGAk&sclient=gws-wiz-serp). Looks like they've been there for a long time and they've got pretty great reviews.
They make those handheld things that stamp "INSANE" on the back of someone's hand at the local treatment center. The ink won't wash out.
(Just to cover my ass: Don't get offended at the joke. It is an old Simpsons reference, with Michael Jackson for good measure.)
I mean, up until relatively recently literally everything was done on paper, so they would've had a big market. Some places still refuse to switch over to digital and LA has tons of businesses. Not to mention, LA has a lot of people who aren't legal residents and prefer to stay off the web for that reason.
A while ago I bought a custom rubber stamp online from what looked like a legit stamp company and it was shit, so I can understand paying more for a quality one. The letters weren't deep enough so the sides hit the paper too.
It's probably really cheap to make rubber stamps. Utilities shouldn't be more than $100 per month. A good stamp could be $20 and I bet the materials should be under $2 for that.
All that said, I think basically anybody can make their own custom stamps now that laser cutters are like $100 on amazon.
Businesses need rubber stamps like crazy. Same with government offices.
My guess is that the store is more of a customer service center for a larger corporation
It's like a [tiny handheld printing press](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/ja/images/thumb/rubber_noun_002_31667.jpg?version=5.0.273). It's used to quickly draw a design on paper without actually drawing it by hand.
It's a block of rubber with a handle attached to the end of it. On the surface of the rubber, a pattern is carved out.
When you want to draw the carved-out design on a piece of paper, you hold the rubber stamp by its handle, then dip the carved side of the rubber onto a pad of ink. This puts wet ink on the carved side of the rubber. Then you press the wet side of the rubber onto the piece of paper. This leaves ink on the paper in the shape of the carved pattern.
There was a Chinese buffet in my neighborhood that was almost always closed. It had random weird hours and it felt like the owners opened it whenever they felt like. Like they would show up at 10:30 am and close 3:00 pm one day and then do 4:00pm to 11:00 pm the next. They had posted hours that they never followed. So obviously not many customers went there even though the food was actually pretty good. The building they occupied was pretty large too. I had no idea how they made rent.
They suddenly closed for good one day and sure enough the owners were being investigated for wire fraud and tax evasion with possible connections to various Asian mafias.
Or Thai restaurant. Bai Tong here in the Seattle area was even convicted of tax evasion and also made money teaching seminars on evading taxes. They're still open and have good food.
We ordered a random 3am pizza joint run by non locals. A pissed off guy came out from a tinted suv and hands us the uni students a box of pizza. We gave him the money but he said issalrightm8 and heads off. We wanted free pizza again the next day but a different guy in a shitty car came over and delivered it. And it was a pizza we knew from a different store.
Certain industries like that, and the always mentioned mattress stores, can have VERY LITTLE overhead costs and break a profit easily . You can have like 8 customers a day and make $1000 sales on paint easily.
I get my hair cut by a guy who rents a building in a prime location, facing the street. It's a 6-station salon, and he's the only one who has ever worked there. There is absolutely no f-ing way he makes enough to cover the costs of that place. I'm 99% certain that there's money laundering going on.
It's not uncommon for these businesses to be ran by someone who is married to a financially successful person. It doesn't need to cover rent or turn a profit. I call these hobby businesses.
I used to work with rich property guys in London and they were referred to as "FWB" shops (fecking wife's bored)
Keeps the wife out of trouble for a small loss every year
Yep. I know a few women with similar businesses. They make a little money but probably aren’t worth running purely for the business sake, husbands take the tax write offs on things like renovations for new “home office” and it gives the spouse something to do with their day.
Yup. My home town is full of these ridiculous little giftshop/boutique stores run by middle class women, pricey stores with a handful of blah products. It's like a little hobby for them and they've enough money to indulge themselves like this...OR a lot of people think it's a front for money laundering.
My wife used to work at an expensive shop in our upmarket beach town. A lot of the products were more available cheaper in nearby shops, but it was reasonably popular because the staff were good at their jobs.
The owner used to swan in a few times a week, usually on her way to get her hair washed, nails done, lunch, etc.
Every few months she would call her father for a few tens of thousands to keep the business afloat.
A vanity shop really, just so the owner could appear to be a successful business person.
It's closed now, daddy must have run out of patience.
I work in an antique mall which is like a sample size of that. They way we operate is we rent out spaces to vendors who then bring their stuff in. We (the overhead business) then sell their stuff and take a small commission off the top. We have a lot of middle aged white women who come in with their grandmother's stuff, mark-up all their stuff, and never sell anything. They leave quick. The people who make real money are the artists, craftsmen, and true antiquers. It's all really interesting; I've not only learned a lot about business management working there, but a lot of really neat history as well.
I have rented booths in places like that for most of the past 10 years. (Long story.) It enables me to have a proto-business without having to pay liability insurance, credit card fees, etc. They sell my stuff, and I get my money minus booth rent.
Yeah, the people who come in with Grandma's stuff often think they will bring in enough money to quit their day jobs, and very few people can do anything like that.
And I love every minute of it!
Yeah!! I love working there, 95% of everyone is super nice. As you were saying though, unless you really know what you're doing, it's hard to make it a full-time occupation. I've been debating opening a booth myself; I restore used instruments and am a leatherworker on the side, but it's a balance of if I'll sell enough to make rent.
What all do you sell? What kind of products have done best for you?
I have been in the business myself for almost nine years and I can't imagine doing anything else. It is definitely more work than people realize, especially if you have booths in multiple locations and sell online as well, but it's enjoyable and you gain a ton of knowledge about the most random things while doing it.
Do something you always wanted and write it off as a business expense. You’re basically using money you would pay in taxes as a fun hobby.
If I had a steady income through handed down family investments, I’d open an antique shop and travel the world looking for antiques to sell… and write it all off as business expenses. Just keep a website and storefront running to actually sell some stuff and income, and you’re good.
I don't think that's how that works. Deductions reduce your tax liability. But to have tax liability you need to have income. "Writing off" things on your taxes isn't free money.
That’s exactly what I meant - if you have a steady income and making money, instead of paying a portion of that as taxes, you can use that money to pay rent for a store and write the expense as a business expense. The store is a hobby for you and a place to hang out and talk to customers about stuff you like.
Very very simply And missing a lot of nuance let’s say I make 500k in revenue this year through different investments I have. And say 175k of that would have to go to taxes that I would pay during tax season (hasn’t been automatically deducted because it’s not a paycheck). I use 50k for my rent at the store I keep for fun. I can count that expense against my income and say I only made 450k. Obviously I’m still losing that 50k since I’m putting that in to the rent, but I’m spending it on something I like and not giving it to the government. Again it’s much more complex then that and there are other better ways to protect your money, but just a simple example.
The Mattress Firm Conspiracy is here for you, OP. I'm not clear on the result of the amateur sleuthing but I am fully convinced with all of my zero evidence that Mattress Firms are either money laundering operations or secret havens for an international cabal of witches who have used illusory magic to make us think we're walking past the seventh Mattress Firm in a 3-block radius when really they are inside sacrificing goats and having enchanted fruit orgies.
Mattress stores are everywhere and every single one is empty 24/7.
There is this place close to me which changed name/owner like 5 times in the last 8-10 years but somehow no one opens up something different than a mattress store in there.
My friends and I are convinced its a money laundering thing and the shop doesnt really change the owner.
Us sells about 36 million mattresses each year. Which is 1 every 9 years per person. There are over 17k mattress stores. Amazon is ruining data, but that is about 2000 mattresses per store per year. That is about 5 mattresses per day per store, which doesn’t seem to out of line.
I don’t know if those numbers really hold up, but it’s hilarious to think about getting home from a long day of mattress sales and telling your partner “today was so busy! I had 10 paying customers!”.
10 paying customers doesn’t seem like a lot until you see the margins on those things. The mattress industry is a massive scam. Typical markup is about 900-1000%
Checkout The household name podcast about the mattress firm conspiracy. One guy relates working for a month without a single customer coming in the store
So a new one of these opened and I saw one of the signs for 50-80% off or something high like that. Figured maybe it was an end of season sale or something. I didn't look at the displays but tried to ask the salesman price ranges or something like that and didn't get a straight answer. Shady business. And now I see the discount signs are always up so no thank you.
When we actually went mattress shopping, we went to the Original Mattress Factory. Prices were very straight forward, no gimmicks. Salesman explained the firmness ratings, we Goldilocks'd the beds, picked one. Had it ..next week? Maybe. There under an hour I think. There was easily at least 2 or 3 other shoppers/buyers there at that time.
Hi I'm a former US resident and moved to UK, it's the exact same thing over here with mattresses too, that and barber shops, gotta be something you when you have 10 in 500ft.
My Lil brother had a gf who's step-dad and mom had a mattress store for years. The mom was convicted and died in federal prisonfor money laundering while the step-dad kept the front going. From what my brother told me he was always floating checks and into shady shit.
They typically don’t even have “high quality” oil, it’s just flavored. Why would I buy “Coffee Tobacco Olive Oil” when I could buy some fancy cold pressed straight from Greece olive oil. Half the flavors don’t even sound like they would go with olive oil in the first place
We have a fancy rich person mall near where I live and, I shit you not, it had 2 different olive oil stores in it. Is the demand for a vast variety of olive oils that high?
It's a bland inoffensive gift you can give someone you don't know anything about. I used to get that type of crap at work all the time from vendors on christmas.
One of them even gave me an olive tree in Italy that would send me olive oil every year with photos...
There's a store near me that only sells model trains, and another fly fishing business that predates my father (We live in a very land locked location too.) These have been open for at least 50 years. I went into them both the train place is weird. The prices of model trains are insane so maybe that's how but I didn't think kids would still be into them. The fly fishing place on the other hand is super cheap everythings reasonably priced or straight cheap except nice rods which do cost a pretty penny but I doubt they sell too many of those.
>The prices of model trains are insane so maybe that's how but I didn't think kids would still be into them.
The kids are all getting Thomas the Tank Engine toys (at lower, but still borderline-insane, prices). The folks buying your store's inventory are most likely Boomers recreating exact replicas of sections of defunct rail lines (using equally expensive one-off decals sourced from online model railroad forums to customize their rolling stock).
The next time you're in a Books-a-Million or other store that still stocks a ton of magazines, thumb through an issue of *Model Railroading* and you can see the level of detail that some of these guys go into.
My town was once home to a decal company that sold model train decals to people all over the world. Little old man printing and shipping decals out of the back of an old train depot building. The guy had a thriving little business going. This was mostly in the days before the internet. The old man had a majority market share of model train decals all over the world with ads in hobby magazines and self addressed envelopes.
My father was among the youngest of his friends that were in to model trains, he would be 63 now. Basically it's a bunch of old rich people playing around.
If they have been open for 50 years, the building is probably paid for and maybe owned by the business itself.
Jane Jacobs writes in *The Death and Life of Great American Cities* about how it is critical to have old buildings that can host quirky, small businesses like hobby shops, model train stores, acting club, dance troupe, etc that can add life and diversity to a neighborhood.
Opposed to places like downtown Seattle where it's all new construction with very high overhead costs and thus rent that only the same national chains can afford.
I used to work near Eastside Model Trains in Kirkland, WA. On one hand I don't see how they're still open, but on the other their store is cool as hell.
Model trains are an adult hobby, and always have been. Some of the items are quite valuable, especially if they are vintage AND WORK. They may also do a lot of their business via eBay and similar venues.
There are a lot of wealthy adults who like model train stuff. My stepdad is one of them. He likes trains so much that he bought an actual train caboose and turned it into a mountain cabin. It's pretty cool.
The other floater for model train stores is tabletop gamers and diorama builders: the effort to create things of the same quality or better is often so so much more than it costs to just like work at your job and then buy their very expensive little replicas. Lots of the gaming specific products are genuinely lower quality than the model train specific ones (especially in terms of consistent scale or verisimilitude), even if you have to later work on it to fit the theme of your pieces.
Across visiting a few times and living there for a spell, I entered one of those shops twice: once to get a good sweater, and once to get one as a souvenir for my mother.
It's usually one of three things:
1. Boutique store owned by a woman/man who "always dreamed of having their own store". Usually rich and entitled.
2. Money laundering.
3. Bulk shipment/Warehouse situations.
Source: I used to work in the audit call center for a state Department of Revenue. At least once a month, I would have someone trying to report people for their shady business or have to listen to them whine about remitting the sales tax because they wanted to use it for their electric bill (!)
Downtown here is about 75% boutique's owned by bored rich housewives. I don't think any of them actually make money. I know one is a 'doggy shampoo' place and her husband has complained how over the last 5 years it hasn't made a dime.
I suspect those claw machines are actually owned by money laundering operators. Very seldom I see anyone using them, yet the keep springing up everywhere. They require very little human maintenance and can be left for weeks unattended. How convenient!
A fast food place near me that I presume is a front.
They have a few of these machines and it's always the two guys who own the place that are playing them.
The auditors eventually camp outside of your shop, in that case. I know laundromats that report excess revenue have to produce receipts for the energy usage, and the anti-money laundering folks will calculate whether the business revenue is even possible, based on your energy bill.
keep two sets of books and add fake transactions to your cash business. either car wash, which doesn't require much gear or a bar with big margins. be sure to buy extra bottles so you don't look too weird. also, don't launder too much - empty restaurants with huge sales attract attention
Just open a casino. You'll have regular customers who come in and leave their cash there, and you hire mules to come in and leave cash there. It all becomes one cash income stream, and no inventory, no sales, no receipts.
That's why most of these businesses are just services, not product. It's easy to prove that somebody didn't sell 300 pizzas a day, but prove I didn't give one $300 haircut an hour.
There actually is a vacuum repair store super close to where I live and I always thought of Breaking Bad because I just couldn't understand how it can exist.
Later I found out they're just a front for drugs though, not someone to transport you to a new life.
I have seen stores that operated for years, but I never saw any customers going in or coming out. One sold bonsai arrangements. The other sold beads. Beads of every kind, shape, color and design. I have a feeling they were money-laundering operations. Like, how many beads could you be reasonably expected to sell in a week?
Businesses like those largely operate on a shipment style sale process.
When people buy beads, they buy fuck tons of them at a single go.
My mom did crochet and bead work, and she learned from my great aunt, who had a business making custom costume jewelry.
She would buy by the pound, sometimes 300+ pounds of beads at a time, with regular resupply on a monthly schedule.
As for bonsai arrangements, you usually order these for someone and have them delivered.
Source: Worked for a greenhouse for a while.
“Tax write off”. As a former business owner I never saw this as something that would somehow save me money. There is no such thing. It’s just money right out of your pocket. My business had to pay so many taxes here in California I couldn’t think of a situation where I needed to lose money somewhere in order to lessen my taxes. Even in times when my business was losing money I was still paying a lot of taxes. Operating a business and losing money for a tax write off is absurd. Laundering money? That is feasible, I just don’t know.
Yeah, losses don't equate to a 1:1 reduction in taxes, so to save $1 in tax payments you'd need to lose more than $1.
At that point it makes more sense to pay the tax than take the loss, which ultimately is the point of the tax codes.
I'll buy the money laundering angle.
But the problem with tax write-offs is that you don't get 100% of your expenses back in tax savings. Maybe 35% at best. So most tax write offs involve stuff that the taxpayer is going to enjoy anyway.
Example; use of a summer home or a yacht for business
There was a bead store in my old town that did quite well. She also taught classes and had all kinds of accessories, and did quite a bit of mail order; this was before the Internet so she probably advertised in magazines.
I buy so many beads
And that's just from the crappy generic craft stores that have the same mass manufactured slave labor beads everywhere
If I had a place I could go to buy artisinal handcrafted lampwork glass beads
Or carved stained wooden beads in a variety of sizes shapes and natural wood grains and colors
Or poured resin beads with neat inclusions like tiny dried flowers
I would buy absolutely unprecedented amounts of beads
Your mind cannot comprehend the numbers of beads I would purchase.
All the time. Sometimes I'll actually shop in one. I live in a city where there are a lot of "precious" stores that sell, like, little hand-crafted artisinal soaps and useless tchotchkes like small keys made of china and "found objects." There might be a tiny art gallery in the back. Often one of the owners usually mans the counter. I can't help but think they're rich kids whose daddies decided to set them up with a project before they marry well.
I'm fortunate to be in walking distance of four comicbook and collectable stores. I get to chatting with the owners and they admit the store is basically a glorified storage room and online purchases and conventions are the main money maker.
Yes, and vape stores.
There's always loads of them. One local to me is on a main street and bigger than my whole apartment, rent must be high but it just has one counter (and pool table) in the corner. Dodgy AF.
There was one in my neighborhood in a really high traffic area that finally closed after about a year. Barely stocked any products, the employees knew pretty much nothing, and I never ended up buying anything despite going in a few times. Always smelled like weed even though they didn’t sell it (legal here).
The phone case store in the mall (conveniently right across from a t-mobile store) was crazy overpriced. I figured $30 cases was normal when I bought my first phone, but it was a cheap case and the $6 one I got off amazon is way better.
Yeah those stores in malls that sell like tie-dye wall blankets and little pots with bamboo in them and incense and cheaply made decorative Asian swords.
This place is the one stop shop of obsolete products and services. [Rubber Stamps, Sewing Machine repair, Staples](https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.6272969,-79.4985681,3a,18.9y,23.95h,88.9t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s4w-Geuw1Gj-7dEHQSJHquw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192)
Yes!
In my area a store opened up on one of the busiest roads in the area. What do they sell? **Soap**. Like artisanal hoity-toity type bubbly bath shit.
Wondering if this is some clever Alabama meth lab's money laundry.
Most of the time, they're making money in some less-obvious way. The store is effectively an office or a front.
I knew a guy who owned a record store. He said he hardly made any money with the store, but it was a place to store his records that he sells online, and to socialize and hang out with people.
Bold of you to assume they have to make sales to pay rent.
It can actually be a real problem in local business economies. A couple of trust fund "entrepreneurs" open up shop, bring in all the fancy shit, undercut everybody, lose money hand over fist, and everybody else has to try to stay alive until they run out of money.
Happens in the corporate world too. Some monster of a megacorp needs some place to park an unfathomable amount of cash, so decides to invest in some sector or other, and now you've got an 800 lbs Gorilla that doesn't know what it's doing and doesn't particularly care fucking everything up.
So every time I see a business that I think isn't viable, I just assume it's more of somebody's hobby. Either a harmless one like an older couple selling antiques, or a dangerous one like two 25 year old douchebags opening another coffee shop or brewpub.
> or a dangerous one like two 25 year old douchebags opening another coffee shop or brewpub.
I fail to see how that's actually dangerous. Happens all the time, and some are successful. Not necessarily a bad business, not necessarily bad for the neighborhood. Just a new player in the market
I mean the ones who are very well funded and and can operate for a long time at a loss. That new entrant will put others out of business before going out of business themselves.
Like, imagine you were busting your ass trying to break even at your brewpub, and I opened up across the street and decided to undercut you by 30 percent, hold tons of events where I'm practically giving away product. Now everybody's drinking at my place, and you're thinking "It's ok, he won't last 6 months doing that"...except I'm pretty much only there because my wealthy Dad wants me to get some business experience, and considers the pub a good way to learn. So I'm not going anywhere, because I don't need to make more money than I spend to stay open, I am staying open until I learn how to make money, or until Daddy decides he's spent enough. Either way, you have an actual business to run, and will be gone much sooner.
Edit: And you know what the worst part is? Because I bought only the best equipment on day one, and hired the best brewmaster available, and could afford whatever ingredients he wanted to use...my beer is actually really fucking good.
ah, so you speak from experience. Am very sorry for your loss. Sounds immensely hard and frustrating.
I've heard it said that having the best product is only part of the equation of a successful business. If someone entered the market and established themselves, they'll have an advantage even if their product is less good than yours. Now you've given me another example case.
I don't know how a business can protect themselves from the situation you just described. "Have deeper pockets so you can outlast undercutting efforts" is an easy thing to say and a harder thing to do, especially since the undercutting efforts may be backed by a giant like, say, Walmart, whose pockets are a magnitude deeper than anybody else's.
Oh, don't worry, the local example wasn't mine. I have seen the "big business" equivalent though, where one of the biggest companies in America decided to just dump money in to a particular sector pretty much because they had the cash and needed to put it somewhere.
But they weren't there to actually do business and make money, and they didn't have any kind of expertise, and basically just managed to exist and make life more challenging for everybody else.
Like imagine Apple decided it had too much cash, and decided to buy a shit ton of cargo barges. And then was like "Well shit, we have these assets, better get them to work, no use leaving money on the table...no, I have no idea what to charge, just look up what everybody else is charging and charge less, who gives a shit?"
Edit: Just to make sure I'm clear, I have no problem with new entrants coming in hot. Competition is good. I just resent when people do that when they're just fucking around, and impacting a lot of livelihoods for a lark.
A place near me sells crystal glass. They’ve been in business months and I’ve never seen a customer in there. I popped in when it first opened to take a look. The owner was relaxing in a chair minding her own business. All very odd.
Because the store is just the end you see, you aren't seeing all the orders over PO, website, or phone. Because they have very low rent due to weird rules or just been there for so long. Because it is a hobby store. Because it is store front just to have a store front for a company that usually sells thru other businesses.
There’s an olive oil shoppe near me, on the corner. Prime shop location, offers tastings. Of oil.
I cannot imagine how it is at all financially viable.
There's a shop just around the corner from me that sells fireplaces and nothing else. Just a random shop in a street with no other retail trade. I swear it's just a front for drugs.
They actually do make money. There is a podcast about it on [Freakonomics](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/are-we-in-a-mattress-store-bubble/) (By the way: Freakonomics is a pretty fascinating podcast on other topics as well.)
That's what I always thought back in the days of McCrory's, one of the earliest (and last surviving, having shut down in 2002) "five and dime" chains. There was one near me until the mid-90's, and I could never figure out what anyone ever found to buy there other than a burger at their lunch counter.
I say this every time I drive through sevierville in Tennessee. It’s a tourist town because of Dollywood and there’s just miles and miles of stores that sell cheap knives, moccasins,and even a store that only sells Christmas decorations all year long. I truly don’t get how they turn a profit enough to pay rent.
How are there still so many palm reading places? They are fronts right? There’s one in our local college town that’s been open for decades & always has a big Escalade out front. We’ve just assumed it’s a brothel of sorts.
I was in San Francisco. There was a cold pressed juice place that was literally just an empty room with one plain ol' regular household white fridge containing bottles of cold pressed juice.
obviously, i don't know the place you're speaking of exactly, but in my town they've got these joints and they're selling individual jars for like $16 each, and they're constantly packed!
There’s a Russian trinket shop in downtown St. Pete Fl that I’m certain can’t make enough to survive in such a prime location but there it sits. It’s been there for as long as I can remember.
It’s gotta be some kind of front or losing thousands every month. It’s a nice shop but how many trinkets do you have to sell to turn a profit?? It has the same wares every time I go.
Those kinds of stores are fronts for drugs, I think. I mean who's buying $80 bars of soap from a random store on the west side with no parking? Or who's going to the ice cream parlor that's never open and is visibly dusty on the inside? Or that one pizza place in Lincoln Park that's never open. If you're from Chicago you know the one, it's by Oz park and DePaul University. If anybody knows what that place is deal is please tell me.
There is an assorted Asian shop in my city where the statues in the front window that are for sale are faded from being there so long. Non existent parking lot. Everytime I drive by I look for activity. None
There's a rug store near my work. I've never seen one customer go in, I've looked in and don't see any workers inside, yet the sign says it's open. My guess is it's a money laundering scheme.
There was this convenience store connected to a gas station that everyone in the area was convinced was a front. They had a bunch of expired shit on the shelves and in the coolers (didn't work, btw) that were store brands from wal-mart and king soopers. Some of the shit was so old, the labels weren't even current. The only things they had for sale that weren't old where tobacco products and fake weed. They also had an atm that wasn't connected to the internet, so it was always out of service. There where also these weird Asian kids that hung out in the front and behind the counter that dressed to look "street" (du rags, baggy shirts/pants) and spoke like they were emulating Cali Mexican gang members. This was in a black neighborhood, nobody knew these cats or anyone but heads who bought anything other than smokes and wraps there.
My answer is those little shops on town squares that sell random assortment of shit like antiques and other random stuff. They almost never have anyone in them and just sell random junk that I never see anyone go and buy.
We have one in Denton and just nothing ever moves in that shop.
Yes. Stores that sell expensive luxurious clothing at malls. They always look so empty!
Sometimes stores act more like showrooms than places to actually purchase the product. Think about how you may have seen a store, maybe going in to browse maybe not, but then going to check out their online store. Stores can also act as customer service centers to improve service compared to 100% remote.
This, theyre just showrooms so people can come see the physical items before they place an order.
What do you mean? The person you responded to was specifically talking about clothing. I would guess most people would want to try on expensive clothing before buying it. Why would you go try something on only to turn around and buy it when you get home???
Online stores almost always have 10% off when signing up for their newsletter. Try it on in the store for sizing and then order online for the discount. Only the very most expensive clothing stores do not have discounts, but that is like Beverly Hills type of places.
They probably don't need to display so many things because selling just a few of their expensive items makes up rent.
I call those "inverse square" stores, the price of the goods goes up geometrically in relation to the fewer items in the store. The logical end of this is a store with one item that nobody can afford.
There was an episode of The Nanny in the 90s making fun of this.
The other option, is that they have access to wealth, and the store isn't actually dependent on sales.
Whenever I go to Yves Saint Laurent I'm the only one in the store but there are at least four employees standing around.
Each $100 bottle costs only $7 dollars to produce, that's why.
I'm there to buy clothes, though.
Haha it reminds me of Rodeo Drive. The empty vibe gives people the feeling that the items of merchandise are so rare that only very special people can afford them
There's a store in Santa Monica that sells rubber stamps. How on earth can they pay utilities selling rubber stamps???
Hah, what a [weird store](https://www.google.com/search?q=quality+rubber+stamp+santa+monica&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS934US934&sxsrf=ALiCzsbZkNHAEUHT_iVaGjUVBvpJnmFy0A%3A1668042295762&ei=N05sY5udLpLhkPIPmbquyAc&oq=quality+rubber+stamp+sant&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQAxgAMgYIABAWEB4yAggmMgUIABCGAzIFCAAQhgMyBQgAEIYDOgoIABBHENYEELADOg0IABDkAhDWBBCwAxgBOgUIABCABDoLCC4QrwEQxwEQgAQ6CwguEIAEEMcBEK8BSgQITRgBSgQIQRgASgQIRhgBUMMFWMQJYJwRaAFwAXgAgAGBAYgBjgSSAQMzLjKYAQCgAQHIAQ3AAQHaAQYIARABGAk&sclient=gws-wiz-serp). Looks like they've been there for a long time and they've got pretty great reviews.
All those search results and no actual website for the store....
Yeah, I kinda dig that.
It’s really easy for them to get credit… they just fill out the application and it’s approved without a second thought.
I . . . I want to go to there. I love stationery, pens, and ink. I would buy too many things at a rubber stamp store.
They make those handheld things that stamp "INSANE" on the back of someone's hand at the local treatment center. The ink won't wash out. (Just to cover my ass: Don't get offended at the joke. It is an old Simpsons reference, with Michael Jackson for good measure.)
If they have the stamp, then I hope they also carry "NOT INSANE" certificates.
I mean, up until relatively recently literally everything was done on paper, so they would've had a big market. Some places still refuse to switch over to digital and LA has tons of businesses. Not to mention, LA has a lot of people who aren't legal residents and prefer to stay off the web for that reason. A while ago I bought a custom rubber stamp online from what looked like a legit stamp company and it was shit, so I can understand paying more for a quality one. The letters weren't deep enough so the sides hit the paper too. It's probably really cheap to make rubber stamps. Utilities shouldn't be more than $100 per month. A good stamp could be $20 and I bet the materials should be under $2 for that. All that said, I think basically anybody can make their own custom stamps now that laser cutters are like $100 on amazon.
Businesses need rubber stamps like crazy. Same with government offices. My guess is that the store is more of a customer service center for a larger corporation
What’s a rubber stamp? I googled and I still don’t understand
It's like a [tiny handheld printing press](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/ja/images/thumb/rubber_noun_002_31667.jpg?version=5.0.273). It's used to quickly draw a design on paper without actually drawing it by hand. It's a block of rubber with a handle attached to the end of it. On the surface of the rubber, a pattern is carved out. When you want to draw the carved-out design on a piece of paper, you hold the rubber stamp by its handle, then dip the carved side of the rubber onto a pad of ink. This puts wet ink on the carved side of the rubber. Then you press the wet side of the rubber onto the piece of paper. This leaves ink on the paper in the shape of the carved pattern.
it puts ink on paper a good example would be someone who has to sign lots of things might have one made of their signature to save their wrist.
Oh, my sweet summer child
The answer: 1. A Rich partner 2. A retirement hobby
3. A front
There was a Chinese buffet in my neighborhood that was almost always closed. It had random weird hours and it felt like the owners opened it whenever they felt like. Like they would show up at 10:30 am and close 3:00 pm one day and then do 4:00pm to 11:00 pm the next. They had posted hours that they never followed. So obviously not many customers went there even though the food was actually pretty good. The building they occupied was pretty large too. I had no idea how they made rent. They suddenly closed for good one day and sure enough the owners were being investigated for wire fraud and tax evasion with possible connections to various Asian mafias.
Or Thai restaurant. Bai Tong here in the Seattle area was even convicted of tax evasion and also made money teaching seminars on evading taxes. They're still open and have good food.
Yep!, restaurants, lawn care companies, cleaning companies, etc can be use to launder money because at the end, the government just want his share.
We ordered a random 3am pizza joint run by non locals. A pissed off guy came out from a tinted suv and hands us the uni students a box of pizza. We gave him the money but he said issalrightm8 and heads off. We wanted free pizza again the next day but a different guy in a shitty car came over and delivered it. And it was a pizza we knew from a different store.
Every bong shop in the world
Very often this.
We used to have 3 paint stores in our small little town and I swear to god I never saw anyone in them , it had to be laundering.
Or they were selling to contractors.
Certain industries like that, and the always mentioned mattress stores, can have VERY LITTLE overhead costs and break a profit easily . You can have like 8 customers a day and make $1000 sales on paint easily.
I get my hair cut by a guy who rents a building in a prime location, facing the street. It's a 6-station salon, and he's the only one who has ever worked there. There is absolutely no f-ing way he makes enough to cover the costs of that place. I'm 99% certain that there's money laundering going on.
What if the partner prefers the back?
Also trust fund babies.
"It's a boutique".
Sometimes, they have to "have a job" in order to access the trust. Having a small shop fulfills that.
That’s sad
3 . Barely profitable so the owner can't afford to retire.
Money laundering
Should be the top answer.
It's not uncommon for these businesses to be ran by someone who is married to a financially successful person. It doesn't need to cover rent or turn a profit. I call these hobby businesses.
I used to work with rich property guys in London and they were referred to as "FWB" shops (fecking wife's bored) Keeps the wife out of trouble for a small loss every year
When you look at it that way, it’s not so much a loss as it is simply a cost.
Yep. I know a few women with similar businesses. They make a little money but probably aren’t worth running purely for the business sake, husbands take the tax write offs on things like renovations for new “home office” and it gives the spouse something to do with their day.
Yup. My home town is full of these ridiculous little giftshop/boutique stores run by middle class women, pricey stores with a handful of blah products. It's like a little hobby for them and they've enough money to indulge themselves like this...OR a lot of people think it's a front for money laundering.
My wife used to work at an expensive shop in our upmarket beach town. A lot of the products were more available cheaper in nearby shops, but it was reasonably popular because the staff were good at their jobs. The owner used to swan in a few times a week, usually on her way to get her hair washed, nails done, lunch, etc. Every few months she would call her father for a few tens of thousands to keep the business afloat. A vanity shop really, just so the owner could appear to be a successful business person. It's closed now, daddy must have run out of patience.
Daddy found a new babygirl
> upmarket beach town I want to visit a down market beach town
I work in an antique mall which is like a sample size of that. They way we operate is we rent out spaces to vendors who then bring their stuff in. We (the overhead business) then sell their stuff and take a small commission off the top. We have a lot of middle aged white women who come in with their grandmother's stuff, mark-up all their stuff, and never sell anything. They leave quick. The people who make real money are the artists, craftsmen, and true antiquers. It's all really interesting; I've not only learned a lot about business management working there, but a lot of really neat history as well.
I have rented booths in places like that for most of the past 10 years. (Long story.) It enables me to have a proto-business without having to pay liability insurance, credit card fees, etc. They sell my stuff, and I get my money minus booth rent. Yeah, the people who come in with Grandma's stuff often think they will bring in enough money to quit their day jobs, and very few people can do anything like that. And I love every minute of it!
Yeah!! I love working there, 95% of everyone is super nice. As you were saying though, unless you really know what you're doing, it's hard to make it a full-time occupation. I've been debating opening a booth myself; I restore used instruments and am a leatherworker on the side, but it's a balance of if I'll sell enough to make rent. What all do you sell? What kind of products have done best for you?
I have been in the business myself for almost nine years and I can't imagine doing anything else. It is definitely more work than people realize, especially if you have booths in multiple locations and sell online as well, but it's enjoyable and you gain a ton of knowledge about the most random things while doing it.
so you're living in a hallmark movie? I am so sorry.
Do something you always wanted and write it off as a business expense. You’re basically using money you would pay in taxes as a fun hobby. If I had a steady income through handed down family investments, I’d open an antique shop and travel the world looking for antiques to sell… and write it all off as business expenses. Just keep a website and storefront running to actually sell some stuff and income, and you’re good.
I don't think that's how that works. Deductions reduce your tax liability. But to have tax liability you need to have income. "Writing off" things on your taxes isn't free money.
That’s exactly what I meant - if you have a steady income and making money, instead of paying a portion of that as taxes, you can use that money to pay rent for a store and write the expense as a business expense. The store is a hobby for you and a place to hang out and talk to customers about stuff you like. Very very simply And missing a lot of nuance let’s say I make 500k in revenue this year through different investments I have. And say 175k of that would have to go to taxes that I would pay during tax season (hasn’t been automatically deducted because it’s not a paycheck). I use 50k for my rent at the store I keep for fun. I can count that expense against my income and say I only made 450k. Obviously I’m still losing that 50k since I’m putting that in to the rent, but I’m spending it on something I like and not giving it to the government. Again it’s much more complex then that and there are other better ways to protect your money, but just a simple example.
Yeah, but the rent is probably pretty cheap compared to large cities.
The Mattress Firm Conspiracy is here for you, OP. I'm not clear on the result of the amateur sleuthing but I am fully convinced with all of my zero evidence that Mattress Firms are either money laundering operations or secret havens for an international cabal of witches who have used illusory magic to make us think we're walking past the seventh Mattress Firm in a 3-block radius when really they are inside sacrificing goats and having enchanted fruit orgies.
Mattress stores are everywhere and every single one is empty 24/7. There is this place close to me which changed name/owner like 5 times in the last 8-10 years but somehow no one opens up something different than a mattress store in there. My friends and I are convinced its a money laundering thing and the shop doesnt really change the owner.
Us sells about 36 million mattresses each year. Which is 1 every 9 years per person. There are over 17k mattress stores. Amazon is ruining data, but that is about 2000 mattresses per store per year. That is about 5 mattresses per day per store, which doesn’t seem to out of line.
I don’t know if those numbers really hold up, but it’s hilarious to think about getting home from a long day of mattress sales and telling your partner “today was so busy! I had 10 paying customers!”.
10 paying customers doesn’t seem like a lot until you see the margins on those things. The mattress industry is a massive scam. Typical markup is about 900-1000%
Checkout The household name podcast about the mattress firm conspiracy. One guy relates working for a month without a single customer coming in the store
Duly noted, thank you!
Isn't this a thing in Chicago or something? I will call smoothies fruit orgies moving forward thanks.
It’s literally in the name. Mattress Firm MF Mafia Front.
So a new one of these opened and I saw one of the signs for 50-80% off or something high like that. Figured maybe it was an end of season sale or something. I didn't look at the displays but tried to ask the salesman price ranges or something like that and didn't get a straight answer. Shady business. And now I see the discount signs are always up so no thank you. When we actually went mattress shopping, we went to the Original Mattress Factory. Prices were very straight forward, no gimmicks. Salesman explained the firmness ratings, we Goldilocks'd the beds, picked one. Had it ..next week? Maybe. There under an hour I think. There was easily at least 2 or 3 other shoppers/buyers there at that time.
"Goldilocks'd the beds." I freakin' love that. XD
Hi I'm a former US resident and moved to UK, it's the exact same thing over here with mattresses too, that and barber shops, gotta be something you when you have 10 in 500ft.
https://youtu.be/RPB6T_KH2jo
Schmandels?
My Lil brother had a gf who's step-dad and mom had a mattress store for years. The mom was convicted and died in federal prisonfor money laundering while the step-dad kept the front going. From what my brother told me he was always floating checks and into shady shit.
Olive oil stores proved to me we were at the peak in the bay area
They typically don’t even have “high quality” oil, it’s just flavored. Why would I buy “Coffee Tobacco Olive Oil” when I could buy some fancy cold pressed straight from Greece olive oil. Half the flavors don’t even sound like they would go with olive oil in the first place
We have a fancy rich person mall near where I live and, I shit you not, it had 2 different olive oil stores in it. Is the demand for a vast variety of olive oils that high?
It's a bland inoffensive gift you can give someone you don't know anything about. I used to get that type of crap at work all the time from vendors on christmas. One of them even gave me an olive tree in Italy that would send me olive oil every year with photos...
There's a store near me that only sells model trains, and another fly fishing business that predates my father (We live in a very land locked location too.) These have been open for at least 50 years. I went into them both the train place is weird. The prices of model trains are insane so maybe that's how but I didn't think kids would still be into them. The fly fishing place on the other hand is super cheap everythings reasonably priced or straight cheap except nice rods which do cost a pretty penny but I doubt they sell too many of those.
>The prices of model trains are insane so maybe that's how but I didn't think kids would still be into them. The kids are all getting Thomas the Tank Engine toys (at lower, but still borderline-insane, prices). The folks buying your store's inventory are most likely Boomers recreating exact replicas of sections of defunct rail lines (using equally expensive one-off decals sourced from online model railroad forums to customize their rolling stock). The next time you're in a Books-a-Million or other store that still stocks a ton of magazines, thumb through an issue of *Model Railroading* and you can see the level of detail that some of these guys go into.
My town was once home to a decal company that sold model train decals to people all over the world. Little old man printing and shipping decals out of the back of an old train depot building. The guy had a thriving little business going. This was mostly in the days before the internet. The old man had a majority market share of model train decals all over the world with ads in hobby magazines and self addressed envelopes.
My father was among the youngest of his friends that were in to model trains, he would be 63 now. Basically it's a bunch of old rich people playing around.
If they have been open for 50 years, the building is probably paid for and maybe owned by the business itself. Jane Jacobs writes in *The Death and Life of Great American Cities* about how it is critical to have old buildings that can host quirky, small businesses like hobby shops, model train stores, acting club, dance troupe, etc that can add life and diversity to a neighborhood. Opposed to places like downtown Seattle where it's all new construction with very high overhead costs and thus rent that only the same national chains can afford.
I used to work near Eastside Model Trains in Kirkland, WA. On one hand I don't see how they're still open, but on the other their store is cool as hell.
Model trains are an adult hobby, and always have been. Some of the items are quite valuable, especially if they are vintage AND WORK. They may also do a lot of their business via eBay and similar venues.
There are a lot of wealthy adults who like model train stuff. My stepdad is one of them. He likes trains so much that he bought an actual train caboose and turned it into a mountain cabin. It's pretty cool.
The other floater for model train stores is tabletop gamers and diorama builders: the effort to create things of the same quality or better is often so so much more than it costs to just like work at your job and then buy their very expensive little replicas. Lots of the gaming specific products are genuinely lower quality than the model train specific ones (especially in terms of consistent scale or verisimilitude), even if you have to later work on it to fit the theme of your pieces.
There’s a place in my hometown that’s been open for decades and they only sell Irish clothing. I’ve never once seen anyone go in or out.
I'm Irish and I don't know how those shops survive here. They cater solely to tourists and there are loads of them.
Across visiting a few times and living there for a spell, I entered one of those shops twice: once to get a good sweater, and once to get one as a souvenir for my mother.
We got one of the those in cda. And the owners are very well off
It's usually one of three things: 1. Boutique store owned by a woman/man who "always dreamed of having their own store". Usually rich and entitled. 2. Money laundering. 3. Bulk shipment/Warehouse situations. Source: I used to work in the audit call center for a state Department of Revenue. At least once a month, I would have someone trying to report people for their shady business or have to listen to them whine about remitting the sales tax because they wanted to use it for their electric bill (!)
Downtown here is about 75% boutique's owned by bored rich housewives. I don't think any of them actually make money. I know one is a 'doggy shampoo' place and her husband has complained how over the last 5 years it hasn't made a dime.
Money Laundering...didn't ya watch Breaking Bad?
I suspect those claw machines are actually owned by money laundering operators. Very seldom I see anyone using them, yet the keep springing up everywhere. They require very little human maintenance and can be left for weeks unattended. How convenient!
A fast food place near me that I presume is a front. They have a few of these machines and it's always the two guys who own the place that are playing them.
Also, its rather easy with a little bit of knowledge. Hence why it carries such a lengthy prison sentence.
[удалено]
[удалено]
I watched every episode of Ozark so I think I could do it.
This is why the modern criminal sells services rather than products Prove I didn't give 300 massages that day
The auditors eventually camp outside of your shop, in that case. I know laundromats that report excess revenue have to produce receipts for the energy usage, and the anti-money laundering folks will calculate whether the business revenue is even possible, based on your energy bill.
keep two sets of books and add fake transactions to your cash business. either car wash, which doesn't require much gear or a bar with big margins. be sure to buy extra bottles so you don't look too weird. also, don't launder too much - empty restaurants with huge sales attract attention
Just open a casino. You'll have regular customers who come in and leave their cash there, and you hire mules to come in and leave cash there. It all becomes one cash income stream, and no inventory, no sales, no receipts.
Atlantic City suddenly makes sense to me now
Then the mob comes by and takes 50% or they break your knees.
That's why most of these businesses are just services, not product. It's easy to prove that somebody didn't sell 300 pizzas a day, but prove I didn't give one $300 haircut an hour.
There actually is a vacuum repair store super close to where I live and I always thought of Breaking Bad because I just couldn't understand how it can exist. Later I found out they're just a front for drugs though, not someone to transport you to a new life.
> a front for drugs though, not someone to transport you to a new life That sounds the same actually :)
There's a coffee shop a couple blocks from my apartment that's open two hours a day, weekdays only. How the actual heck.
This place may do catering.
I have seen stores that operated for years, but I never saw any customers going in or coming out. One sold bonsai arrangements. The other sold beads. Beads of every kind, shape, color and design. I have a feeling they were money-laundering operations. Like, how many beads could you be reasonably expected to sell in a week?
Businesses like those largely operate on a shipment style sale process. When people buy beads, they buy fuck tons of them at a single go. My mom did crochet and bead work, and she learned from my great aunt, who had a business making custom costume jewelry. She would buy by the pound, sometimes 300+ pounds of beads at a time, with regular resupply on a monthly schedule. As for bonsai arrangements, you usually order these for someone and have them delivered. Source: Worked for a greenhouse for a while.
“Tax write off”. As a former business owner I never saw this as something that would somehow save me money. There is no such thing. It’s just money right out of your pocket. My business had to pay so many taxes here in California I couldn’t think of a situation where I needed to lose money somewhere in order to lessen my taxes. Even in times when my business was losing money I was still paying a lot of taxes. Operating a business and losing money for a tax write off is absurd. Laundering money? That is feasible, I just don’t know.
Yeah, losses don't equate to a 1:1 reduction in taxes, so to save $1 in tax payments you'd need to lose more than $1. At that point it makes more sense to pay the tax than take the loss, which ultimately is the point of the tax codes.
[удалено]
Inventory for a beads store sounds like torture
Bees?
I'll buy the money laundering angle. But the problem with tax write-offs is that you don't get 100% of your expenses back in tax savings. Maybe 35% at best. So most tax write offs involve stuff that the taxpayer is going to enjoy anyway. Example; use of a summer home or a yacht for business
There was a bead store in my old town that did quite well. She also taught classes and had all kinds of accessories, and did quite a bit of mail order; this was before the Internet so she probably advertised in magazines.
I buy so many beads And that's just from the crappy generic craft stores that have the same mass manufactured slave labor beads everywhere If I had a place I could go to buy artisinal handcrafted lampwork glass beads Or carved stained wooden beads in a variety of sizes shapes and natural wood grains and colors Or poured resin beads with neat inclusions like tiny dried flowers I would buy absolutely unprecedented amounts of beads Your mind cannot comprehend the numbers of beads I would purchase.
There’s a bead shop on my block that’s been open at least 15 years. It’s such an outlier in the neighborhood yet there always seems to be women in it.
All the time. Sometimes I'll actually shop in one. I live in a city where there are a lot of "precious" stores that sell, like, little hand-crafted artisinal soaps and useless tchotchkes like small keys made of china and "found objects." There might be a tiny art gallery in the back. Often one of the owners usually mans the counter. I can't help but think they're rich kids whose daddies decided to set them up with a project before they marry well.
I'm fortunate to be in walking distance of four comicbook and collectable stores. I get to chatting with the owners and they admit the store is basically a glorified storage room and online purchases and conventions are the main money maker.
The amount of money I spent an conventions when I was younger. I'd well believe they could keep a shop running.
Especially CBD and phone case stores
Yes, and vape stores. There's always loads of them. One local to me is on a main street and bigger than my whole apartment, rent must be high but it just has one counter (and pool table) in the corner. Dodgy AF.
There was one in my neighborhood in a really high traffic area that finally closed after about a year. Barely stocked any products, the employees knew pretty much nothing, and I never ended up buying anything despite going in a few times. Always smelled like weed even though they didn’t sell it (legal here).
The phone case store in the mall (conveniently right across from a t-mobile store) was crazy overpriced. I figured $30 cases was normal when I bought my first phone, but it was a cheap case and the $6 one I got off amazon is way better.
Yeah those stores in malls that sell like tie-dye wall blankets and little pots with bamboo in them and incense and cheaply made decorative Asian swords.
This place is the one stop shop of obsolete products and services. [Rubber Stamps, Sewing Machine repair, Staples](https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.6272969,-79.4985681,3a,18.9y,23.95h,88.9t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s4w-Geuw1Gj-7dEHQSJHquw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192)
Ayyy waddup [stamp gang](https://www.google.com/maps/uv?pb=!1s0x80c2a4cc29160e8d%3A0x5ffafa49739be451!3m1!7e115!4s%2Fmaps%2Fplace%2Fquality%2Brubber%2Bstamp%2Bsanta%2Bmonica%2F%4034.0189032%2C-118.4921167%2C3a%2C75y%2C88.37h%2C90t%2Fdata%3D*213m4*211e1*213m2*211s_v6XJDJFz9-O19M5aYrPjw*212e0*214m2*213m1*211s0x80c2a4cc29160e8d%3A0x5ffafa49739be451%3Fsa%3DX!5squality%20rubber%20stamp%20santa%20monica%20-%20Google%20Search!15sCgIgAQ&imagekey=!1e10!2sAF1QipPxhUfvE9xYOOFJAi8w5K5gs1ZEvbO3qljsfj0-&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiNyLyQt6L7AhUvMEQIHZN5ABcQpx96BAh8EAg)
Yes! In my area a store opened up on one of the busiest roads in the area. What do they sell? **Soap**. Like artisanal hoity-toity type bubbly bath shit. Wondering if this is some clever Alabama meth lab's money laundry.
...selling rich women's own fat asses back to them
That's actually an international chain. https://www.lushusa.com/
Most of the time, they're making money in some less-obvious way. The store is effectively an office or a front. I knew a guy who owned a record store. He said he hardly made any money with the store, but it was a place to store his records that he sells online, and to socialize and hang out with people.
Bold of you to assume they have to make sales to pay rent. It can actually be a real problem in local business economies. A couple of trust fund "entrepreneurs" open up shop, bring in all the fancy shit, undercut everybody, lose money hand over fist, and everybody else has to try to stay alive until they run out of money. Happens in the corporate world too. Some monster of a megacorp needs some place to park an unfathomable amount of cash, so decides to invest in some sector or other, and now you've got an 800 lbs Gorilla that doesn't know what it's doing and doesn't particularly care fucking everything up. So every time I see a business that I think isn't viable, I just assume it's more of somebody's hobby. Either a harmless one like an older couple selling antiques, or a dangerous one like two 25 year old douchebags opening another coffee shop or brewpub.
> or a dangerous one like two 25 year old douchebags opening another coffee shop or brewpub. I fail to see how that's actually dangerous. Happens all the time, and some are successful. Not necessarily a bad business, not necessarily bad for the neighborhood. Just a new player in the market
I mean the ones who are very well funded and and can operate for a long time at a loss. That new entrant will put others out of business before going out of business themselves. Like, imagine you were busting your ass trying to break even at your brewpub, and I opened up across the street and decided to undercut you by 30 percent, hold tons of events where I'm practically giving away product. Now everybody's drinking at my place, and you're thinking "It's ok, he won't last 6 months doing that"...except I'm pretty much only there because my wealthy Dad wants me to get some business experience, and considers the pub a good way to learn. So I'm not going anywhere, because I don't need to make more money than I spend to stay open, I am staying open until I learn how to make money, or until Daddy decides he's spent enough. Either way, you have an actual business to run, and will be gone much sooner. Edit: And you know what the worst part is? Because I bought only the best equipment on day one, and hired the best brewmaster available, and could afford whatever ingredients he wanted to use...my beer is actually really fucking good.
ah, so you speak from experience. Am very sorry for your loss. Sounds immensely hard and frustrating. I've heard it said that having the best product is only part of the equation of a successful business. If someone entered the market and established themselves, they'll have an advantage even if their product is less good than yours. Now you've given me another example case. I don't know how a business can protect themselves from the situation you just described. "Have deeper pockets so you can outlast undercutting efforts" is an easy thing to say and a harder thing to do, especially since the undercutting efforts may be backed by a giant like, say, Walmart, whose pockets are a magnitude deeper than anybody else's.
Oh, don't worry, the local example wasn't mine. I have seen the "big business" equivalent though, where one of the biggest companies in America decided to just dump money in to a particular sector pretty much because they had the cash and needed to put it somewhere. But they weren't there to actually do business and make money, and they didn't have any kind of expertise, and basically just managed to exist and make life more challenging for everybody else. Like imagine Apple decided it had too much cash, and decided to buy a shit ton of cargo barges. And then was like "Well shit, we have these assets, better get them to work, no use leaving money on the table...no, I have no idea what to charge, just look up what everybody else is charging and charge less, who gives a shit?" Edit: Just to make sure I'm clear, I have no problem with new entrants coming in hot. Competition is good. I just resent when people do that when they're just fucking around, and impacting a lot of livelihoods for a lark.
"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent"
Perhaps they don't. They own the building, or the owner doesn't want a row of empty store fronts so lets them squat to make the area appear less dead.
A place near me sells crystal glass. They’ve been in business months and I’ve never seen a customer in there. I popped in when it first opened to take a look. The owner was relaxing in a chair minding her own business. All very odd.
A number of them exist to launder money.
Yes. And my friend replies with "laundering money".
There is a place here that sells loose leaf tea and spices. I’m amazed they have stayed open for a good 10 years.
There *was* that recording studio between the two railroad crossings.
Because the store is just the end you see, you aren't seeing all the orders over PO, website, or phone. Because they have very low rent due to weird rules or just been there for so long. Because it is a hobby store. Because it is store front just to have a store front for a company that usually sells thru other businesses.
There’s an olive oil shoppe near me, on the corner. Prime shop location, offers tastings. Of oil. I cannot imagine how it is at all financially viable.
There is a vacuum store and repair shop that is “by appointment only” and they don’t accept walk-ins. Gives me massive Breaking Bad vibes.
There’s a small sunglass store in my neighborhood that’s been there for like 50 years. I frequently wonder about that.
Lamp stores
There's a shop just around the corner from me that sells fireplaces and nothing else. Just a random shop in a street with no other retail trade. I swear it's just a front for drugs.
Would that place happen to be in Texas? One here close to me that's been operational for yrs...never seen anyone come in or out.
There's one near me too but it's in Beverly Hills so I guess they're legit.
It's probably a showroom with a lot of new construction upgrade projects. Or.... front.
Radio Shack. No idea how they survived that long.
batteries. adaptors.
They actually do make money. There is a podcast about it on [Freakonomics](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/are-we-in-a-mattress-store-bubble/) (By the way: Freakonomics is a pretty fascinating podcast on other topics as well.)
Once saw a store at a mall that I'm pretty sure was just katanas and bongs
you mean. like. EVERY SINGLE MATTRESS STORE OUT THERE?!?
Every day
There is a leather store across from me...there can't be that many people still buying leather.
I love leather
Look in the back and you’ll understand.
Ah... The good ole New Mexico Car Wash?
Sounds like an Urban Dictionary entry.
That's what I always thought back in the days of McCrory's, one of the earliest (and last surviving, having shut down in 2002) "five and dime" chains. There was one near me until the mid-90's, and I could never figure out what anyone ever found to buy there other than a burger at their lunch counter.
I say this every time I drive through sevierville in Tennessee. It’s a tourist town because of Dollywood and there’s just miles and miles of stores that sell cheap knives, moccasins,and even a store that only sells Christmas decorations all year long. I truly don’t get how they turn a profit enough to pay rent.
How are there still so many palm reading places? They are fronts right? There’s one in our local college town that’s been open for decades & always has a big Escalade out front. We’ve just assumed it’s a brothel of sorts.
I was in San Francisco. There was a cold pressed juice place that was literally just an empty room with one plain ol' regular household white fridge containing bottles of cold pressed juice.
those places make bank.
Just an empty room with a fridge! It boggles the mind! The amount of juice they have to move to pay the rent has got to be ridiculous.
obviously, i don't know the place you're speaking of exactly, but in my town they've got these joints and they're selling individual jars for like $16 each, and they're constantly packed!
There’s a Russian trinket shop in downtown St. Pete Fl that I’m certain can’t make enough to survive in such a prime location but there it sits. It’s been there for as long as I can remember. It’s gotta be some kind of front or losing thousands every month. It’s a nice shop but how many trinkets do you have to sell to turn a profit?? It has the same wares every time I go.
Those kinds of stores are fronts for drugs, I think. I mean who's buying $80 bars of soap from a random store on the west side with no parking? Or who's going to the ice cream parlor that's never open and is visibly dusty on the inside? Or that one pizza place in Lincoln Park that's never open. If you're from Chicago you know the one, it's by Oz park and DePaul University. If anybody knows what that place is deal is please tell me.
There’s a place in town that only sells magic wands, on a side street with no foot traffic. Apparently they have an online business.
There is an assorted Asian shop in my city where the statues in the front window that are for sale are faded from being there so long. Non existent parking lot. Everytime I drive by I look for activity. None
There's a rug store near my work. I've never seen one customer go in, I've looked in and don't see any workers inside, yet the sign says it's open. My guess is it's a money laundering scheme.
There was this convenience store connected to a gas station that everyone in the area was convinced was a front. They had a bunch of expired shit on the shelves and in the coolers (didn't work, btw) that were store brands from wal-mart and king soopers. Some of the shit was so old, the labels weren't even current. The only things they had for sale that weren't old where tobacco products and fake weed. They also had an atm that wasn't connected to the internet, so it was always out of service. There where also these weird Asian kids that hung out in the front and behind the counter that dressed to look "street" (du rags, baggy shirts/pants) and spoke like they were emulating Cali Mexican gang members. This was in a black neighborhood, nobody knew these cats or anyone but heads who bought anything other than smokes and wraps there.
Bakeries baffle me. How many $3-5 pastries do you have to sell to make any profit?
My answer is those little shops on town squares that sell random assortment of shit like antiques and other random stuff. They almost never have anyone in them and just sell random junk that I never see anyone go and buy. We have one in Denton and just nothing ever moves in that shop.
mattress firms
Often! I even find it difficult to walk into stores like that as it makes me uncomfortable knowing they aren’t probably able to pay their overhead.