Library Journal Review

Ever wanted to own your own shop? If so, this book can show you how to let out that inner entrepreneur. Finell has combined her 20 years of experience running niche apparel shops with her love of shopping to create a primer on opening a specialty store. She covers all the basics, from planning the business to financing, marketing, and even staging the grand opening. Lots of anecdotes and examples make for pleasant and worthwhile reading, with fewer business slogans and page-hogging graphics than many books of this type. Each chapter is fairly in-depth, so you'll find quite a bit of information here. Finell stresses practicality, including facts on the failure rates of small businesses and explaining how to deal with taxes and licensing, develop a return policy, and figure out where and how to advertise. Each chapter concludes with several success stories. Three appendixes provide information on trade shows, e-commerce sites, and contact data for the actual stores featured in the book. Overall, this is recommended as a useful purchase as materials on small-business enterprise are in demand.-Susan Hurst, Miami Univ. of Ohio, Oxford (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.