Relocating a business: what to check before you move to a new address

Before you move a business, check who the move makes further away. Map your current customers and staff, measure how many are within an easy trip of the old address and of the new one, and see which group loses. Then look at what sits near the new address that was not near the old one: rivals, things that bring people past, and anything that blocks access. A move that saves rent but adds ten minutes to the trip of your best customers can cost more than it saves.

This article is for owners of shops, clinics, studios, workshops and small offices who are moving within the same city. It is different from opening a new branch: you keep your customers only if they follow you. It covers what to check, a worked example in Sydney, the mistakes, and an AI employee that does the comparison.

What changes when a business moves

• Your customers' trip. Some get closer, some get further. Regulars who now pass a rival on the way may stop coming.
• Your staff's commute. A longer commute is the most common quiet reason a good employee leaves after a move.
• Your neighbours. The businesses next door decide who walks past. A dentist next to a school and a dentist next to a nightclub get different passers-by.
• Your rivals. The new address may be closer to a competitor your customers did not see before.
• Access. Parking, deliveries, a step at the door, a road that jams every evening.

How to measure who wins and who loses

Put your customer list in a table with their addresses. The Find nearest block takes each customer and finds the nearest of your own points, so give it two points: the old address and the new. Each customer comes back with which address is nearer and how far, in a straight line. Count how many customers flip from old to new.

Straight lines are a first pass. For the customers who matter most, draw a Travel area of 10 or 15 minutes by car or on foot around each address and see who falls inside each. A customer inside the old area and outside the new one is the person to call before you move.

What to look at around the new address

1. Rivals. Nearby places counts businesses of your own type within a short walk or drive of each address. If the new one has three rivals where the old had none, expect some customers to drift.
2. What brings people past. Schools, stations, supermarkets and offices nearby. The same block counts them.
3. How busy it is. Mobility Footfall compares how busy the area around each address is, in people-hours of presence by hour and day, about 10 days behind, in the cities it covers.
4. The roads. Traffic Flow, run at your busiest hour, shows whether the roads next to the new address are moving. It measures speed and congestion, not how many cars pass.
5. The building's record. In some US counties, Property changes shows a property's recent owners, sales and values from public county records.

A worked example in Sydney

A made-up case. A physiotherapy practice in Sydney is offered a larger unit 4 km east, at a lower rent. It has 600 active patients and 7 staff. The figures below are invented, to show the reading.

Made-up figures, for illustration only.

The new unit is bigger and has parking, but 17 of the 50 most frequent patients would move outside a 15-minute drive, five rival practices sit within 2 km, and two staff would face a long commute. The practice decides against the move for now and asks the old landlord for the empty unit next door instead. Had the numbers gone the other way, the next step would have been to write to the 17 patients first.

Mistakes to avoid

• Comparing only the two buildings. The rent, the size and the fit-out are easy to compare. The customers and staff around each are where moves go wrong.
• Counting every customer the same. Look at your best customers on their own.
• Telling customers too late. Customers who learn about a move from a sign on the door are the ones most likely to try a rival.
• Forgetting the online address. Update the address on your website, booking pages and online map listings on the day you move, or new customers will go to the old door.

Doing it with an AI employee

An AI employee can run the comparison once, and you can run it again for each address you are offered. The blocks, in order:

1. My data: your customers with their addresses and what each spent.
2. Find nearest: for each customer, the nearer of the old and new address, and the distance.
3. Calculated field: whether the customer gets further away, and by how much.
4. Filter: only the customers who get further away.
5. Sort and limit: by what they spent, highest first.
6. Email or Show on a map: the list of customers to talk to before the move, on a map.

What arrives: the customers who would be further away, the biggest first, on a map with both addresses. For the area around each address, Compare sites measures two or three spots the same way side by side. Competitor density around each site keeps watching rivals near the new address after the move.