The shop that moved three doors down

Rachel ran a bike shop on the same Halifax street for eleven years. When her lease came up, she had two problems. The landlord wanted a large increase, and the shop had outgrown its back room, where bikes waiting for repair were stacked three deep. Three doors down, a former furniture store had sat empty for months. It was bigger, had a rear door to the lane and, after some negotiation, cost less per square foot than she was being asked to pay to stay.

Rachel is a composite of several retailers who have made short moves, but her experience captures something they all said: moving forty metres is not much easier than moving across town. The distance is short. The list is not.

Lining up two leases

The first job was timing. Her old lease ended on the last day of March. The new landlord could give her early access in February for fit-out, but rent on the new space would start on the first of March. That meant a month of paying two rents, which Rachel budgeted for rather than hoping to avoid.

Her lawyer reviewed both documents side by side. On the old lease, the key questions were what she had to remove or restore before handing back the keys, how the deposit would be returned, and what would happen if she stayed a few days past the end date. On the new one, they negotiated the early access period, a fixturing allowance and a clause confirming she could install signage similar in size to her old one.

She also looked hard at the numbers. As an illustration, if the new space cost $2 a square foot less than the renewal offer on 2,400 square feet, that was $4,800 a year saved, or $24,000 over a five-year term. Against that she set the overlap month, new fixtures, signage and moving costs. The move still came out ahead within the first couple of years, and it solved the storage problem that renewing never would have.

The work that wasn’t moving

Rachel started a list in January and it grew every week. Internet and phone installation at the new address, booked well in advance because lead times can be long. Utilities transferred and new accounts opened. The security system moved and the alarm company told. The business insurer informed of the new address and the larger space, with a new certificate of insurance sent to the new landlord before she got the keys.

Then the address itself. Suppliers, the bank, payment processors, her accountant and the tax authorities all needed the new address. So did online map listings, her website, the shop’s social media pages, printed business cards and every bike she had ever sold with a sticker on the frame. She could not do anything about the stickers. She updated everything else in the week before the move.

Keeping customers on the right sidewalk

Short moves have a particular risk: customers walk to the old door, see an empty shop and assume you have closed. Rachel put a sign in the new window a month before opening saying the shop was moving in soon, and a sign in the old window with an arrow and a hand-drawn map. She kept a note on the old door for several weeks after the move, with the old landlord’s permission.

Regulars got an email and a card in their bag at checkout. Bikes already in for repair were the hardest part. She stopped taking new repairs for a week before the move, finished everything she could, and moved the rest herself with a list of every owner’s name and phone number taped to the wall.

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The move was forty metres. The to-do list was the length of the street.

Moving day, and the day after

The actual move took a Sunday and a Monday, the shop’s two quietest days, with the store closed on the Monday. A small truck made two trips for the display stands, tools and parts. Bikes were wheeled down the sidewalk by staff and a few friends. The point-of-sale terminal and the internet were tested on Monday evening, and the shop opened in its new home on Tuesday morning.

The old space took longer. Rachel had to remove a workbench bolted to the floor, patch the holes, take down the sign and repaint a feature wall back to the building standard. She photographed the finished space, walked it with the landlord and got written confirmation that the restoration was accepted before handing back the keys.

What she would do differently

Asked what surprised her most, Rachel said it was how many people told her they had not noticed the move at all. They just thought the shop looked better. That, she decided, was the best possible review of a relocation: the customers barely felt it, and the business came out the other side with the space it needed.