Well it's been a long time coming this next installment of my blog. Due to having no net connection between moving back home to our place in Ealing to moving lock stock to Pinner and again having to wait for Internet connection to be re connected. To top it off, my beloved Dell laptop gets infected with a virus, so whilst I'm rebuiliding the application list on that it's down to the trusty iPhone to blog away. December till February was a strange period. We looked at 3 shops in 3 different areas and all 3 fell through. Although I have found another site I'm going to have to get the ball rolling again. What is surprising in this current economic climate landlords are still holding out for the silly rental and lease lengths. This is dispite the fact a lot of the shops remain closed for long periods of time. I saw a lovely shop on Ruislip, Middlesex which has a mobile number in the window with big sign saying To Let. I rang up the number and was told on 3 occassions to call back in 2 weeks time so after 8 weeks of waiting I tried again and guess what? The same answer call back in 2 weeks time! Then I saw a shop/unit in Stanmore which looked promising but that I have been told after pestering the agent has been taken by a company with stores all over the country again 6 weeks later the shop is still empty and has the sign saying All Enquiries. The third store is in another secondary high street, the landlord is refusing to even negotiate on the lease not ideal for me or anyone else that is interested. With a lot of financial experts predicting a W recession the amount of empty shops is frightening. A lot of secondary high streets are looking quite bare and very run down even in affluent areas like Stanmore and Pinner.
One blessing for sure is that there isn't a surge of £1 shops which although might add value to the locals, too many can also ruin a high street. Look at the once very good Hounslow High Street, for example which had once boasted the likes of Waitros,Next, and The United Colours of Beneton as it's tenants. A good high street improves the local area too by attracting better house prices which then reduces the ASBO effect.
With expenses increasing on a daily basis only crazy folks would give up cushty well paid jobs to run a business. I suppose I'm one of those crazy types. Or I will be once the first shop is on full swing. My target is to quit the IT contracting stint once my business is bringing in 70% of my IT income. Hopefully my next blog entry won't be as long time in coming. In the meantime whilst I'm being crushed by a rather large woman who doesn't seem to understand that my space is my space on the tube into work I'm going to sign off. The crazy one has left the building or atleast the tube station
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