The next business opportunity we will be discussing is something is more in line with a retail business than the previous two restaurant opportunities. The proposal is a large design center. From my experience these tend to become destination spots and bring with them a lot of traffic and some tourism.

Opportunity: Des Moines Metro Design Center

Business Case: If you’ve ever wanted to find some real contemporary hardware for your new condo or home; maybe some interesting lighting choices and apartment size furniture. You currently either have to drive out of town to either Chicago or Minneapolis or order online. Order online is fine, but you can’t really touch and feel or see how the item would look in its environment. We have a few lighting places in the metro but they don’t offer a huge selection of contemporary lighting. If you are looking for cabinet/door hardware you are limited to the big box stores and their limited choices. And I could go on. If we had a design center, this would not be the case.

Let me try and explain my vision on this one (and it’s not as easy to explain as I see it in my head). You would have one location that would be divided up into spaces and each space would feature a huge selection of contemporary items in their respective categories. There would also be modularized mini-showrooms that would be set up that would show a finished room using some of these items (such as a kitchens, bathrooms, living rooms, etc.). Then finally there would be designers and vendors that had a presence (i.e. small office) in the design center. More about that in a moment.

The design center would include: a lighting showroom; a hardware showroom; a bathroom fixture showroom; a kitchen cabinets and fixture showroom; and a furniture showroom featuring contemporary pieces in smaller footprints, perfect for a downtown condo or loft.

In addition to these showrooms mentioned above local vendors would build small modular rooms on site displaying their tile work, carpeting, hardware, etc. in completed room vignettes. For example depending on space, you could have 3 to 5 contemporary kitchens set up, 3 to 5 contemporary bathrooms etc. With the vignettes being built on mobile platforms, they could be rotated in and out of a joining warehouse space.

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Posted under Living Downtown
Tags: Business Opportunities