Why New Businesses Fail – Top Reasons

When Starting a Gift Basket Business, Learn the Top Reasons Why New Businesses Fail

Starting any business brings with it the possibility of failure. Do your due diligence, read all you can, speak with others who already own a gift basket business. Knowing what to avoid increases your success rate.

Top Causes Why a New Business or Home Business Will Fail:

Choosing a business that isn’t very profitable. Even though you generate lots of activity, the profits never materialize to the extent necessary to sustain an on-going company.

Inadequate cash reserves. If you don’t have enough cash to carry you through the first six months or so before the business starts making money, your prospects for Success are not good. Consider both business and personal living expenses when determining how much cash you will need.

Failure to clearly define and understand your market, your customers, and your customers’ buying habits.

Who are your customers? You should be able to clearly identify them in one or two sentences.

• How are you going to reach them?
• Is your product or service seasonal?
• What will you do in the off-season?
• How loyal are your potential customers to their current supplier?
• Do customers keep coming back or do they just purchase from you one time?
• Does it take a long time to close a sale or are your customers more driven by impulse buying?

Failure to price your product or service correctly. You must clearly define your pricing strategy. You can be the cheapest or you can be the best, but if you try to do both, you’ll fail.

Failure to adequately anticipate cash flow. When you are just starting out, suppliers require quick payment for inventory (usually COD). If you sell your products on credit, the time between making the sale and getting paid can be months. This two-way tug at your cash can pull you down if you fail to plan for it.

Failure to anticipate or react to competition, technology, or other changes in the marketplace. It’s dangerous to assume that what you’ve done in the past will always work. Challenge the factors that led to your Success.

Do you still do things the same way despite new market demands and changing times?

What is your competition doing differently?

What new technology is available? Be open to new ideas. Experiment.

Those who fail to do this end up becoming pawns to those who do.

Over-generalization. Trying to do everything for everyone is a sure road to ruin. Spreading yourself too thin diminishes quality. The market pays excellent rewards for excellent results, average rewards for average results, and below average rewards for below average results.

Over-dependence on a single customer. At first, it looks great. But then you realize you are at their mercy. Whenever you have one customer so big that losing them would mean closing up shop, watch out. Having a large base of small customers is much preferred.

Uncontrolled growth. Slow and steady wins every time. Dependable, predictable growth is vastly superior to spurts and jumps in volume. It’s hard to believe that too much business can destroy you, but the textbooks are full of case studies. Going after all the business you can get drains your cash and actually reduces overall profitability. You may incur significant up-front costs to finance large inventories to meet new customer demand. Don’t leverage yourself so far that if the economy stumbles, you’ll be unable to pay back your loans. When you go after it all, you usually become less selective about customers and products, both of which drain profits from your company.

Believing you can do everything yourself. One of the biggest challenges for entrepreneurs is to let go. Let go of the attitude that you must have hands-on control of all aspects of your business. Let go of the belief that only you can make decisions. Concentrate on the most important problems or issues facing your company. Let others help you.