@ Fernando

Whilst the points you raise about the 'businesses you observed' has relevance for general discussion and may in fact be true of those businesses themselves, I think the premise on which you arrived at the conclusionwhich formed the opening question to your thread is somewhat flawed.

You say you pass this one shop in Leytonstone high road and everytime you pass it there is this 'lone guy starring at the door'? This led you to wonder about his business plan and his market testing? Then you go on to say the same applied to barber shops and haridressers. Well when reading your post it made me wonder about YOUR market research and business analysis of said businesses. From your visual observation of this lone guy starring at the door you conclude that there must be some flaw in his, and the other businesses you made the same casual observation of, business planning.

Now you may be quite right (and I can tell you from experience that many business fail for the very reasons you made reference to), however there are severe weaknesses in the way you arrive at your conclusions. Consideration of the following points will highlight what I mean:

1. How long did you observe the business(es) at the time you pass them? Did you watch them for any period of time or just noted the lack of clientele at the particular moment you passed?......Could it not be that you just happen to walk by during one of the times that trade was slack (i.e time of day effect)

2. Did you observe them more than once over a period of time and witness this same phenomenon each time? Or was it at different times of the day over a period of time? If you observed them at the same time of day on each observation (assuming you came to your conclusion after several observations) you may be just witnessing the slack period I referred to above.

3. How do you know this business is not maybe one of several they have? Maybe they have a chain of such outlets and this one is their latest venture in a new area to see if they can obtain the same success theyenjoy in other areas where they have shops. It takes time for businesses to build up trade because they are not known enough when they first start.

4. How do you know (say, in the case of the cloths shop in particular) that the majority of their trade is not through shop sales to 'passing trade', but through mail order and other direct sale to established clientile that purchase in large quantities. They could well havea few big buyers and onlylook on the passing trade as small change.

5. If you have noticed this phenomenon with the SAME shop over a long period of time and the shop is STILL there, open for business, maybe that means that trade is not all that bad. Don't you think if day in day out it was just a lone guy starring at the door, and no customers, that the business would not be there for too long?

6. How do you know these businesses are black owned/run? Just because you see black faces behind the counter of establishments catering mainly to black customers does not mean their are black owned. Surely you are aware that there are many 'black' products with black faces on them that have no link to black whatsoever in their ownership or production.

7. Have your observations been limited to barber shops and hairdressers? Do you know anything about how other black owned businesses perform (travel agents, recruitment agencies, accounting practices, surveryors and solicitors etc. etc.)

All I am saying at the endthe day is that one cannot 'simply assume' from limited observation and knowledge about a thing without looking further into it. You came herepainting a particular picture ('lone guy starring at door') to put forward the notion ofpoor business planning on the part of someblack people in business and seemed not to have analysed in any depth the cases that formed the basis of your assesment and conclusion.That is dangerous and misleading for it is difficult to debate something meaningfully or arrive at reasonable conclusion to problems if there has not been a proper assessment of the 'problem' to start with.

Like I said, the points you raise may well be valid (in fact I can siteexamples where they are valid), butthebasis of your assessment leaves a lot to be desired.

Respect