Step By Step Instructions

Running or Opening a Christian Dollar Store is not that hard. Here are the step by step instructions. I got these from my experience in opening the New Concord Store.

1. Pray about it and decide if this is what you and God want to do, open a store. Get the OK from God.

2. Fill out our application and send it in.

3. After receiving the franchise agreement sign it with your attorney's approval. Send it back in with you initial franchise fee of $5000. To be able to use our trademarked name and to have your store listed on our website.

4. Before you sign the franchise agreement make sure you have the amount of money for the square footage of a store you want to open. Before sending in the franchise agreement you should already have a location picked out and notified me Chris Swartz through my email or phone and you have already negotiated the rent and have a signed lease agreement.

5. Open up your business checking account. Make sure you have an accountant lined up to do your books for you unless you decide to do them yourself. Make sure you have your vendors license and other state requirements done. Your federal id number and so forth. Make sure you have your employees picked out. And what hours you want to be open. 2 employees are enough per shift. Usual hours are 10am to 7 or 8pm. Track your sales to see what hours are best for your store. Every town and store is different.

6. Get a local sign company to do your signage for you. The specifications are Blue cut out block letters. I will give you more details later. The size and font and so forth. Check with your city code enforcement office for their approval before your pay for and order your sign on their requirements.

7. Go in and put up pegboard on all walls, and build yourself or have a local contractor or handyman build you the 4 feet by 6 feet high pegboard cubes that will go down the center isles. Order your hooks, bags, shopping carts, cash register through Quick books and their software so you can get their training on operation of equipment. If you want me to go where your are and do all of this it will cost a lot more. I am trying to save you a lot of money. It's not that hard its really very simple, take it from me a mother of 4. I did this myself with no training.

8. Order your merchandise. The rule of thumb is $15 per square foot of merchandise. You can order the merchandise through our website. Make sure all items that you choose are going to retail for no more than $1.99. I will let you know what the top sellers are, and can even put together your first opening order for you, then all you will have to do is reorder when inventory gets low. It will be all hanging stuff also retail ready. I will give you your own special code to get discounts on your products you buy from us. Also I can set you up with other distributors that we use.

9. Scan and price all merchandise through your register that you get from Quick Books. They will train you and your employees on to how to do it and how to run their equipment. Have employees start hanging the merchandise. There is no set way that you have to do it. Experiment, do whatever you think looks nice.

10. Make sure all employees are trained on equipment and what proper conduct is, how to treat the customer and so forth. Give them their blue Christian Dollar polo shirts to wear. This is optional. Instead you can have them wear a blue t shirt with jeans with a name tag instead. What I did with my employees is that I pretended to be a customer and had them check me out with various items to see if they knew what they were doing. I paid with a credit card once, a check once and then with cash. If you are going to accept credit cards and I do recommend it, you need to get it set up with your bank when you open up your business checking account. Accepting credit cards can double your sales. They will have their own training also on their equipment.

11. Put your open sign with hours on your front door. Decide what day will be your grand opening, put ads in local papers, radio ads and flyer's. Whatever your budget will allow. Contact your local TV station and newspaper for free publicity, they might do a story on you and your store for free. They did for me on the New Concord store.

12. You are now ready to open up for business. I will want to go there to visit the store and see how everything is going. This cost is on me not you. That's it your done. That's how you do it.