Carrying 18k of staging inventory and no break even I can find

Before the money, do you know how to do it? I don't mean that as a dig. Cleaning and styling a room for photographs are different skills and the second one is the whole product. If your version photographs worse than the incumbent's, the price advantage won't hold you.

The 18k gets away from you. Every job you'll find something the set doesn't cover, a room shape that needs a different sofa, a house with no dining area, an odd wall that needs bigger art. I'd assume 18k becomes 26k inside a year of real jobs.

Also storage at 340 a month is 4,080 a year you pay whether you book two jobs or twelve.

The economics of staging turn on how much of your inventory is out working and on logistics cost per job. Your fixed costs are storage and the capital tied up in furniture. Those run whether the sets are in a house or on a shelf. Your variable costs per job are truck, fuel, crew hours for install and pull, and replacement of whatever gets damaged.

At 2,800 install plus 450 a month, a job that runs 60 days brings roughly 3,700. Against that, three truck days at 180 is 540, two crew days of install and one of pull at the 400 a day you'd otherwise bill is 1,200 of opportunity cost, and there's fuel and consumables on top. That leaves something in the neighborhood of 1,800 to 1,900 per job before you cover storage or recover the 18k. Six jobs a year covers the storage and puts a few thousand toward the inventory. Ten to twelve jobs a year makes it a real line of business.

The constraint that bites first is that a set is unavailable for the whole term it's out. Two sets and a 60 to 90 day average term means your ceiling is roughly eight to twelve jobs a year even if demand exists, and only if the calendar cooperates.

On the vendor question, staging demand tracks sales transaction volume in your market, and the relationships that route that work run through agents, flippers and developers. Those relationships are the main asset in this business. Two agents asking is a start. It isn't a book of business yet, and I'd want to know their listing count before committing 18k.

@rena-expert's ceiling of eight to twelve jobs is the number I'd stress test. Ask those two agents how many listings they took last year in your size band. If the answer is nine between them, and you win half, you're at four or five jobs and the storage eats most of it.

I'd want a third and fourth source of work identified before spending the 18k. Flippers are the ones who stage repeatedly on a schedule, agents stage when the seller agrees to pay.

Depends heavily on your price band too. Out where I look, houses list at 120k and no seller is paying 2,800 to stage, they'd rather cut the price 5k and be done. Staging fees have to be small relative to the sale price or the seller does that arithmetic and walks. What's the median in your area?

Basic question I've never been sure about, who actually writes the check, the seller or the agent? @cobalt if it's the agent out of their commission then you're selling to two people who already have a vendor and a habit. If it's the seller, the agent is just a referral source and there are more of them.

The number that decides this isn't the 18k, it's how many days a year each set is out earning.

Two sets gives you 730 set days a year. A 60 day job uses 60 of them plus a couple for install and pull. Twelve jobs at 62 days is 744, so twelve jobs is literally your maximum and only with perfect back to back scheduling, which never happens. Realistically you lose two to four weeks per set per year to gaps between bookings. Call your practical ceiling nine or ten jobs.

At @rena-expert's roughly 1,800 net per job, ten jobs is 18,000, minus 4,080 of storage, so about 14,000 to service the 18k of inventory and pay for the replacement @harrow is right about. That's a fine second year. The problem is year one, where you'll do three or four jobs while people find out you exist, net maybe 7,000, pay 4,080 of storage, and be down most of the 18k with your crew pulled off billable cleans on the days it matters.

So the real decision is whether you can fund a slow year one and whether you have enough sources of work to hit eight plus in year two. If your answer to @canton's question is nine listings between two agents, don't buy the inventory. Sub the first few jobs to an existing stager at a markup, learn whether you like the work and whether the demand is really there, and buy furniture when your calendar is the constraint instead of your inventory.

The one thing I'd add, staging volume follows sales volume in your market. If transactions slow, your cleans keep going and your staging line drops first. Don't fund the 18k with money the cleaning business needs.

The sub it out first idea in @thicket's post seems obviously right and I'm surprised it hadn't come up. You get the referral, you keep the relationship, you learn the job on someone else's furniture.

Agreed with subbing it out, though be careful about who the client thinks they hired. If the stager shows up in their own van with their own card, you've introduced your agent to a competitor and gotten paid a markup once for it. Put your name on the invoice and be the one who answers the phone about it.