Brick and mortar
What is brick and mortar?
The term “brick and mortar” refers to companies or institutions that operate in physical buildings, be it a store, a factory, etc. It is the opposite of an online store or company (which only operates online) that doesn’t operate in a local environment. It is the opposite of an online store or company (which operates only online) that doesn’t have a physical store or location where orders can be picked up, the so-called Pure play.
Halfway between companies with a local structure and companies that are 100% online or pure play, we find companies that operate under the brick-and-click model. In this case, it’s a model that mixes traditional brick and mortar and click and mortar sales.
In contrast to this concept, brick and mortar stores have a local store as the sole protagonist of their commercial offer. This is what the name refers to.
1. Brick and mortar costs
As a general rule, the administration and management of a purely virtual business is cheaper than that of a business with a physical location where face-to-face customer support is offered, because there are fewer costs to deal with.
The cost of maintaining a local store depends on the size of the store itself, the type of business, the location, etc. To calculate the costs of all this, you need to take into account the basic costs, which are as follows:
– Rent or property: if you don’t have a physical location to sell from, you’ll have to pay rent or lease.
– Licensing and permit fees: Stores, whether online or local, need to pay fees and obtain licenses, with the consequent cost they generate.
– Initial stock: you need to have enough stock from the day you open so that customers won’t have to wait several days to get the products they want to buy.
– Decoration: your store should be actractive so that customers will want to visit it.
– Professional services: these are the costs of employees and external professionals whose services are required: legal consultants, accountants, IT specialists, cleaning staff, etc.
– Advertising: in order to become known to the public, you will need to plan online and offline marketing actions.
– Web and technology: even if you are a store without e-commerce, you need to develop an online presence both with your own website and on additional social media platform. Likewise, you will need to buy computer software and hardware, such as point-of-sale systems.
– Insurance: it’s essential to have an insurance policy that protects the owners, the store and the products it houses against damage.