Would you open a vinyl wine cafe with wine/cider/pastries/ empanadas/ice cream/bread snacks with board games/card games/puzzles in Seattle or Rio at under 2000 sqft.
Or would you open an ecommerce shop with clean skincare basics made from material sourced from mainly Africa and Asia.
If you had 250-300k to start a business, which would you start? A wine cafe or clean skincare company?
byu/mdabwt917 inEntrepreneur
Posted by mdabwt917
20 Comments
What are you most passionate about? If you’re asking in general, I wouldn’t open either of those. I’d open a gym/fitness center or possibly buy a franchise. But that’s me. What are YOU most into?
I’d open a laundromat with an arcade. Pinball, skeeball, etc…
Don’t start in 2024. Start next year. 2024 is rough.
skincare ecommerce would be way more cheaper to start – you wouldn’t need even half of that unless you are trying to scale your business really fast. there are multi millionaires that started with less than 5k/10k..
A wine cafe. The market is endless and you can set something both locally and online. The skincare space is getting crowded, weird (kids wanting skincare? lmao) and highly scrutinized w/ individuals wanting more and more rare ingredients. Although, the parameters and places you put them in, I’d choose Seattle for sure. Theres tech money, and they already love high end coffee besides Starbucks so it could work.
a wine cafe.
I wouldn’t trust a startup skincare company myself.
Both have their strength and weaknesses. Between the two, I would do the wine cafe but that’s just me.
That’s funny I’m actually trying to start a natural bath & body + skincare brand! But with my own limited savings. I have big goals and vision for the brand and it’s always something I’ve been interested in.
But that’s just me and everyone is different.
Those are all good ideas. It would depend on how lean you go or how big you go (so big you can’t fall).
Like someone said, if you have a good team and could solve a problem and have a great self owned business to franchises mix-up you are good to go.
Ecom is the way
Skin care e-commerce is highly competitive plus it doesn’t appear you know know anything about e-commerce.
Hi, I’d go for the clean skincare business, I have helped marketing both (wine tour company and skincare company based in Australia) and judging from the profitability, you can enter the market globally once you figure out logistics and stocks, wine only caters to market mostly women 21+ while skincare can be 13-90+ both women and men.
I would avoid skincare, too much risk/liability and heavy competition from shit-fluencers all over reselling or advertising products from other brands. Unless you’ve a very strong competitive advantage like dating Taylor Swift and being able to use her influence to push your brand I would never go for the skincare company.
What do you want your life to look like? Do you want to spend every day at your cafe or every day at your laptop? How do you feel about late nights? Do you have a spouse/ significant other? What lifestyle would they prefer? Are you energized from working with customers in person or would you rather work online?
E-commerce can be lonely, a wine bar will require managing employees and customer service. Imagine yourself a year from now and thing about which path you would prefer for your day to day.
Neither.
Wine cafe is certainly a risky lifestyle business.
Clean skincare company certainly potentially more scalable but an insane amount of competition.
For a lifestyle business, with the aging demographic I’d start a mobile x-ray service. If you have $250-300K you can probably get a small business loan from a bank for 5X that. Should be enough for the upfront capital expenditure to get going.
These businesses require different skillsets. Which is best suited to BOTH your passion and skillset?
Skincare ecomm can be really rewarding and scale quickly, but is highly competitive. Also, you could start, test and scale this for a lot less than $250K, taking a lot less financial risk. It would be easy to just throw money at marketing (and marketing companies) to grow the business. And that could be a very expensive and frustrating path if you don’t have clarity about some basics.
A local wine cafe sounds like something that could be lots of fun and in the right location incredibly profitable. Obviously, location is key here, but so will be setting the right culture. You’d be crafting an experience. And the way that is delivered by the employees will really matter. Will you be working in the business? If so, how do you feel about that?
Just for context, I’m starting a beauty tech venture, and I currently work for a dermatology/OTC skincare startup.
What are your expectations? There are a lot of clean skincare product lines. Do you have an idea for a competitive advantage? Do you have a unique story or experience that is shaping where you would fit in? Dealing with developing a product, testing, sourcing, marketing (not to mention the overhead) can sap a lot of the fun out of a business like this, so I think you have to have more than passion.
I’m not trying to discourage you, just in my observation of my employer and colleagues who have tried to launch skincare lines, I think you need a really clear vision for the skincare product line given how crowded it is and how expensive it can get. My employer has a lot of financial resources and the road to profitability is still extremely difficult. Do some market research, examine existing lines and see where you can carve out a niche.
If it’s just a passion project, I think the wine cafe seems a lot more attractive.
any b2b service company might work better to me and everyone else to avoid burn cash haha b2c is tricky af IMHO
If you have $300k you can easily do both
Neither.. wine cafe involves a brick and mortar.. skin care biz is over saturated.
Use that 50k to pay your rent while you educate yourself on a business that could be successful. Invest the rest in index funds/bitcoin.