Expanding to Dhaka or Chattogram? Research the market before you rent the shop

The question behind the move

"Our shop in Natore does well. Customers from Dhaka already order from us. Should we open there?" Many owners decide this on a feeling, on a relative's advice, or because a good shop space suddenly came up. Then the rent, the advance, the decoration and the staff are committed before anyone knows whether customers in the new city will actually walk in. A lease is hard to undo. A few weeks of research is cheap by comparison.

The aim is not a thick report. It is to answer five questions with evidence before you sign anything.

Five questions to answer first

1. Who exactly will buy from you there? Not "people in Dhaka". Which area, which kind of customer, buying for what reason. An office district behaves differently from a residential area or a wholesale market.
2. Who do they buy from now? Walk the area. List the competitors, what they sell, how they price, how busy they are at different times of day, and what customers complain about in their reviews and Facebook comments.
3. Why would they switch to you? If your only answer is "we are cheaper", be careful. Big-city competitors often have more buying power than you.
4. Can you supply it from here? Transport time and cost, damage in transit, who restocks, and what happens during hartals, floods or the Eid rush when the highways slow down.
5. Who will run it? A branch several hours away needs a manager you trust, clear daily reporting and a safe way to handle cash.

Cheap ways to test demand before you commit

• Look at the orders you already get. If you sell on Facebook or by phone, sort past orders by delivery address. Repeat orders from one part of the city are your strongest signal. Few or none is also an answer.
• Run a small, targeted ad test. Show your page or a simple landing page only to people in the target area, and see whether real enquiries come in, not just likes.
• Sell there before you rent there. Deliver into the city for a few months, take a stall at a fair, or place your product with a shop that already has footfall, on agreed terms.
• Talk to people. A dozen short conversations with likely customers, nearby shopkeepers and delivery riders will tell you more than any online data.
• Visit at different times. A street that looks busy on a Friday evening may be empty on a weekday morning.

What to decide and prepare

Before the research starts, write down what result would make you go ahead and what would make you stop or wait. Without this, people tend to read every finding as a "yes". Also prepare the real numbers from your current shop: margin per product, monthly running costs, how long stock sits before it sells. You need them to judge whether a new location can pay for itself, and an accountant can help you test those assumptions.

Common mistakes

• Choosing the location because the space was available, not because the customers are there.
• Copying the home-town product range and prices without checking local demand.
• Underestimating how much of the owner's time a new branch takes in its first months.
• Treating a relative's enthusiasm as market research.

You can do most of this yourself. An outside view helps in designing the test, reading the results honestly and building the go or no-go numbers. That is part of the business development work I do.

The smallest useful first step

This week, list your last few months of orders and mark the ones that came from the city you are considering. It costs nothing and tells you whether demand already exists. If you would like help planning the rest, get in touch.