Lafayette coworking space launching Retail Business Accelerator
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Lafayette-based MatchBOX Coworking Studio is launching a new accelerator program designed to help business owners grow their retail presence.
The 12-week, two-part Retail Business Accelerator will give participants the chance to learn about everything from point-of-sale systems to marketing to the type of retail offering they want to pursue.
“I always say we’re facilitating conversations, and encouraging them to ask themselves questions that might not occur to you if you’ve never started a business before,” MatchBOX Executive Director Amanda Findlay said.
Findlay told INside INdiana Business that there has been a big push in the last few years toward more Main Street, brick-and-mortar businesses in the Greater Lafayette area.
“Those businesses have slightly different needs, more specialized, specific needs,” she said. “Their customer acquisition strategy looks a little bit different. They have sales cycles that they have to figure out. Some of them need to know what their point-of-sale system looks like or whether they’re going to go wholesale or direct to consumer. How much square footage do they need to run a retail business if they want a brick-and-mortar space? Things like that.”
The first part of the Retail Business Accelerator is a seven-week course that focuses on customer discovery, product market fit, and creating a go-to-market strategy, among other items. The remaining four weeks will feature a specific focus on each participant’s unique challenges, data-driven decision making and guest speakers.
Business owners selected for the accelerator will have access to the MatchBOX Coworking Studio through the duration of the program.
Findlay said the organization has received three times as many applications as there are spots in the first cohort of the new accelerator, which is encouraging to see.
One area of business that has stood out from those applications is the number of people selling items online who are looking to expand.
“A lot of Etsy stores. I found out that we have a lot of makers around here who are selling online and have been for quite a while [with] really impressive sales numbers, but they’ve just sort of like, stalled out, and they they want to grow beyond that, but they’re not quite sure how,” she said. “So the demand has been pretty cool. We’ve seen a lot of folks with ideas, and a lot of people who have been at it for a little while and just don’t know where to go from here or how to grow more than they already have on their own.”
Findlay said the city of Lafayette opened a micro-retail space about a year ago that was occupied by two small businesses, and she’d like to see more pop-up retail spaces open in downtown Lafayette.
“We have some open store fronts on our main street—not as many as we did 10 or 15 years ago–but there are still a couple, and we’d like to utilize those to give people the opportunity to pop up for a little while, test a retail concept, make sure the customers are there for the product or service they want to sell,” she said. “I’d love to see our retail ecosystem move in that direction and have more resources like that in the future.”
Applications for the Retail Business Accelerator close on Tuesday. You can find more information by clicking here.