I'm one of a two party partnership currently trying to open a salon in metro Atlanta. We've had little to no luck getting anything out of the Georgia SBDC (Small Business Development Center). We went to one class and then were in contact with the woman who taught the class. We emailed our business plan to her and two weeks later received it back with little more than junior high revisions mostly based on very elementary argument strategy and grammar. Two weeks after replying with our revised copy, still nothing. What we need is help getting together our start up costs. These seem to differ greatly depending on where we open. The problem is that the company we are trying to open the salon through (a specific product line) has to approve the location. But that company doesn't want to talk with us until we are ready to spend the $20K buying their product line. It's the whole chicken-before-the-egg thing and we're getting extremely frustrated. Does anybody have any advice? Any direction to steer us? We're starting to feel that we need something from somebody who knows about the salon industry because I feel that a lot of people in their own small businesses don't understand the seasonality of the salon industry or how widely our start up costs can differ depending on our location.
Please help! We're in dire need!
