Before we start…
It’s important for you to take a moment and think about your own business ambitions. Where do you see your Home-Staging company in 6 months, or a year, or even five years?
Depending on where you want your business to go, you may not necessarily need to increase your capacity.
It’s okay to have a lifestyle business.
Not every entrepreneur wants to build an empire or dominate the world.
In fact, based on what we have seen, the majority of Brisbane-based home staging companies are lifestyle businesses. Content with the current size of their organisation, they are not actively looking to expand or grow. These companies are usually operated from home by a solopreneur, with a contractor-based business model (3rd party furniture hire, no in-house logistics team, no warehouse). And that is completely okay. In fact, that is the beauty of being self-employed. You get to set your own pace and once you hit that sweet spot you are happy with, there is no pressure to grow beyond that.
At Foxy, we started with the intention to have a great work-life, but also with the ambition to grow, expand and become the industry leaders of South-East Queensland.
After four years of operating Foxy Home Staging, we are starting to see the results of our hard work, with more exciting news coming soon!
Keep an eye out on our social media for the announcement THIS WEEK!
Want your business to grow? Grow your capacity first.
If you have an ambition to take your home-staging company to the next level, focus on increasing your capacity first. You are not going to be able to grow in terms of volume of work and number of jobs, if you don’t have the capacity to do it.
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How to measure your capacity?
Estimating your capacity is easy, no spreadsheets or KPI’s required. We get to see our capacity every day as we are doing our daily scheduling. We know exactly how much we can get done in the 7.5 hours we get per day.
Depending on several factors (size of the job, location, property access, number of staff, etc.) our current daily capacity on average is four jobs per day, per truck (pack-ups and installs). Some days we can fit in five jobs, some days we can only do two per truck.
Our overall capacity is influenced and supported by these three pillars:
1. STOCK
2. STYLING TEAM
3. LOGISTICS
Each one of these crucial aspects of business determines how many jobs are we capable of doing.
Let’s delve into each in more detail.
1. STOCK
In this industry, it is not critical to own your own stock. There are a lot of stagers who hire their furniture from third parties, and we used to be one of them. In our view, it is a great way to get your business going in the early days, when you don’t yet have the capital to buy your own furniture.
However, the profit margins between owning vs renting the furniture are significantly different. And larger profit margins give you more flexibility, options and capital to invest back into your business.
“We’ve noticed early on that the stagers who make the most money are the ones who own their stock. That’s when we made the conscious decision to reinvest as much as we could into purchasing our own inventory.”
– Jake Shorter | Co-Owner of Foxy Home Staging
Read ‘6 Things to Consider Before Starting a Home-Staging Business‘ to see the real-life difference in our own profit margins.
Type of investment:
Purchasing stock is a relatively small financial investment in comparison with the other two pillars.
When to invest:
Invest incrementally and start as early as possible.
Impact on business:
Aside from the increased profit margins, there are many other benefits of owning your furniture, which we plan to cover in more detail in another blog post (very soon!). To name a few – better flexibility, differentiating factor, and increased control over the quality of stock.
Implementation:
Purchasing furniture doesn’t require any excessive planning; you just need to have the premises (e.g. a garage or warehouse) available to ensure safe and secure storage.
2. STYLING TEAM
Expanding our team and hiring new people has been the most challenging one of the three pillars, but also the most rewarding.
Uniting people with a common goal and getting to watch them become friends in the process, laughing, talking, joking around, and teasing each other like there is no tomorrow – that has been an absolute privilege to create and witness.
The hiring process is still one of the most daunting tasks for a lot of business owners in the industry, resulting in them continuing to outsource or prolonging the recruitment altogether.
“A lot of people look at these things and think ‘I’m so busy, I need help. But I don’t have enough work to justify hiring a full-time person.’ We look at it and say ‘We are very busy. We have growth ambitions, and we know where we want to be in 6 months. We might not need the person right now but if we get to where we want to be in 6 months, we will definitely need them.’ “
– Jake Shorter | Co-Owner of Foxy Home Staging
Type of investment:
Hiring a new team member is not a large upfront financial investment, as the cost is spread out over the year, therefore it’s easier to manage from a cash-flow point of view. The biggest investment when hiring a full-time team member is the commitment. Committing to a large amount of money (annual wages), cost of time and opportunity.
When to invest:
Invest incrementally, hiring people as needed, based on short and medium term growth plans.
Impact on business:
Having a good and reliable team has had the biggest positive impact on the growth of our business. Do not underestimate the power of bringing more of the right people on board.
Implementation:
This is where it becomes difficult. Unfortunately, it is not just ‘hire someone and you are good to go’. You must ensure they are a good fit for the culture and invest a lot of time into training them properly. Do not expect to get this right every time, people are complex and unpredictable beings.
3. LOGISTICS
The main business behind Home Staging might appear to be all about styling, nice furniture and cushions, and in large part, it is. But as we’ve grown it’s become clear that Logistics is in fact the hidden core business, powering what we do from behind the scenes, away from the public-facing side. Read the full article here.
And yet, despite the significant impact transportation has on our type of business, this pillar is the one that usually remains outsourced for the longest period of time.
The main business behind Home Staging might appear to be all about styling, nice furniture and cushions, and in large part, it is. But as we’ve grown it’s become clear that Logistics is in fact the hidden core business, powering what we do from behind the scenes, away from the public-facing side. Read the full article here.
And yet, despite the significant impact transportation has on our type of business, this pillar is the one that usually remains outsourced for the longest period of time.
Type of investment:
From a cash-flow point of view, purchasing a truck is not necessarily a large upfront investment (especially if you use a business loan), but the finance is a significant long-term financial commitment, both in terms of the business loan and the full time people required to operate it.
When to invest:
Ideally a few months in advance of your expected growth stage. Your capacity will increase immediately, but do not expect your volume of work to grow concurrently with that. Consider this an investment into building a foundation for the upcoming increased demand.
Impact on business:
The truck determines how many jobs can we fit into our daily schedule, which makes it the most capacity-increasing component of them all.
Implementation:
The process of buying a truck is easy, it was the decision that did not come lightly. We had to consider the sizeable long-term financial commitment and weigh up the opportunity vs cost ratio.
Thank you for reading!
If you are a fellow Home-Staging Business Owner, we sincerely hope you got some value out of it. Please remember that our industry allows you to structure your business numerous different ways. What we said above happens to work for us, but if you’ve decided to go for a different approach – power to you! Our way is definitely not the highway. It’s more like the M3 connecting Brisbane to Gold Coast, because that’s just what happens to work for us 😊
(*cough cough*) HINT HINT!
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Anyway, as we mentioned above – keep an eye out for an exciting announcement coming soon! Click here to follow us on Facebook, Instagram or Youtube.
Find more business-related chats on our private Facebook Group for Home Stagers.
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