On your marks…
Setting up a business in the UK is pretty straight forward. Company house, HMRC, getting an accountant, setting up a bank account, and legal. There’s plenty of guides online. I may elaborate one day, but that bit was easy in comparison to the nuts and bolts of setting up the operation.
I should have started sooner. I wanted to be live by January 1st. I honestly thought there would be a ready supply of suitable premises and there just wasn’t. If you’re looking yourself, make this the first priority. You might be lucky, I was and I wasn’t. The supply was tiny in my location (Woking in Surrey so I had to look further afield in Hampshire and Berkshire) - places I thought suitable mainly didn’t want motor trade or were too big/expensive. I wanted just enough room and a smart, secure location. I needed a place that was the right class for the work I would be doing. I needed a landlord that didn’t mind motor trade. I wanted the rent to be ‘right’ for the business rate exemption. I needed it to be available! I actually found the perfect place pretty quickly. Just that it wasn’t fully built yet. So I had to compromise on start date and in the end, the wait was very much worth it. I have a supportive landlord, great location, space and neighbours. I couldn’t have asked for more…
Equipement wise, it’s all pretty simple. You need a dry ice blasting machine to start. There’s cheap crap from the east and there’s quality from a little closer (or at least, backed by a European company even if it’s still made out east). I went with AVRO. Very impressed with their demo, pre sales and price point. There are other highly regarded machines out there so do a little digging.
Air Compressor! Wow…I was not expecting I’d need such a big one. I managed to source a Atlas Copco GA15; relatively newish one second hand at a nice saving, but I think I may have been lucky and it’s still a considerable amount of investment.
Lifts. There’s a lot of these about. My priority here was to source a new one with a UK company that can provide backup.
If you’re in any doubt, just those 3 items have cost around £25K and if you wanted new everything…think £30-35K and that’s not including premises. I can see why not every detailer in the land has yet to invest…
