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Prime Real Estate: The Shopping Mall And What It Costs To Set Up Business There

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When you own a small business that sells products, you want to get as much exposure as possible. One possibility is renting space in a shopping mall. Thousands of people go through a shopping mall every year, and that number is at its highest in November and December. You could even say that shopping mall space is "prime real estate" when it comes to getting people to familiarize themselves with your business and buy products. Yet, how much do you know about this "prime real estate" in terms of what it will cost you? The following will help you figure that out. 

Store vs. Kiosk Space

The one upshot of store space, if you can get it, is that you can customize the space to your needs and your business. The drawback is that this retail space wedged between other stores is going to be very expensive. On month-to-month leases, shopping mall property owners charge several thousand a month just for rent, and most owners do not foot the bill for electricity, heat, air conditioning, or water, either. If you have to pay for the rent and the utilities, you are looking at paying at least three to five grand a month. If you cannot make that up in sales, your store will be defunct within a month. 

Kiosk spaces, or cart spaces within the central aisles of the mall, are much cheaper because they are just cart spaces. They require almost no electricity, and you get the mall's electricity, heating, and cooling for free because of the location of kiosks. More or less, you are just paying to rent the space and a cart. You will probably pay about one third to one half or less of what actual shop owners are paying to rent the store spaces. Again, it is still a little pricey, but you have a better chance of making this amount up in sales than you would if you rented store space. 

Perimeter Space

You do have a third option, but it may not work quite as well in terms of space. Many malls have perimeter strip malls and store spaces for rent. You are still on mall property, so there is that. You might not get as much exposure, but it at least you would have a store. The rent is cheaper, or comparable, to the store space in the mall, depending on the size of the storage space available on the property's perimeter. The one downside you may encounter is that these stores are often much larger than most small business owners really need. 

If you're interested in finding real estate within a local shopping mall, speak to a store such as Peninsula Town Center for more information.


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