Also bear in mind that your approach to the trade may well change as you go along to suit your expanding customer base. By this i mean that you may well start out with an idea of the sort of shop you would like and the type of customer you would like to serve along with the range of products you would like to sell. This can be a bit like planning the rest of your life at primary school. In some ways your direction will be influenced by the demands and choices made by your customers. Let's face it. You will have a reasonably static customer base within x miles of your shop. If they don't like what you are doing, you won't be able to ask them all to move so that a new lot of people can move in. So by all means, have a vision, have a goal, and work towards it, but be prepared to adapt at a moments notice. Sometimes, survival on the high street depends on it. So with this in mind, are you prepared to invest thousands in new shop fittings, knowing that you may want to change things around in the future. Large corporates will do this every couple of years, but they can well afford it.