Hi. I am Hazuki, the owner of THE EVERGREEN HOSTEL. I am writing the story about until I opened this hostel based on the essays I have been piling up.
■2015/ One day in July – I made my business card
I made my personal business card for the first time. That was quite simple with my name, phone number, and e-mail address, but without company name and title.I left the printing store hoping that the card will have hostel’s address and logo.
For your reference, here is the store I made my cards. They offer good price!
Expert in printing business card K-1 Print Shinjyuku
6th Floor, Nishi Shinjyuku K-1 Buld., Nishi Shinjyuku 7-2-6, Shinjyuku-ku, Tokyo 160-0023, Japan
http://www.k-1-print.jp/
■2015/7/15 – Started looking for the property
Started looking for the property. I cruised around the real-estate offices with my new business cards, A4 size resumes summarizing my desired property. This tells about the outline of my business, size, targeting areas, and tenant fee range….
I visited 10 real-estate offices mainly in local area. Bicycle is the most comfortable means in this situation!I want to say bicycles are the best to move around the town for sightseeing for the commutability. (Bicycles are rent at the City Bicycle office.)
Well, talking about the real-estate office, they did not take my story seriously. It was what I expected of their low interests. I read about this at somebody’s blog: Finding the property was the toughest phase for starting up. Some found the property after years later. I really agree with this situation.
By the way, why finding the property takes time and tough? I analyzed the reasons.
- Most of the real-estate offices are dealing with introducing the resident ones.
＝From the beginning, my purpose, “Would like to find a property for my business” does not attract their interest and it is not worth to dealing in most cases!
The building for residential or office use only, not for “retail promises”, has some concerns such as power capacity and building spec. Also, it might be a hustling to modify the usage; furthermore, it seems that the adjustment might require many registration works. The real-estate agent, who is always dealing with the residential, is not familiar with this procedure. I seems that these might put much burden on both of us.
- Real-estate company is not familiar with hostel business; it is difficult to have them an appropriate image.
＝There are only few people who know guest house and hostel well. But some of the elderly knew, “Oh, the one like a youth hostel.” Or some thought like a “tourist inn”, that nowadays that has plenty of stories. And they said, “The owner of the building dislikes with that, so it is not good: and the conversation was concluded…
Like this, I started the long journey for finding the property. Actually, will I find one…?
