Hi all,

Me and my wife are looking into running a small business and we need a nice location (of course plans are under budget). Can any one recommend best agency or place to look around for a decent location (especial near areas with children of age 0-4 kindergartens etc.)

Do you have a license to run your business?

My wife (Chinese Nationality) will do the needed paper work for the business. I am just her wingman (personal adviser) :)

'Good location' for what?

You will find a Kindy in almost every neighborhood now.

Concentrate on your business location. Go and visit locations, take your time. Find a street that is suitable for your trade, then look around for empty shop spaces. Ask neighboring shops how owns the place, although there is often a notice stuck to the door with a phone number.
Rents here seem arbitrary. Last time I looked, about 2 years ago, anything not in a big mall/prime site, outside the inner ring-road, decorated or not, good location or not, was the same rent. This was 60rmb/m2/month. Prime site, expect to pay a lot more.
Look for evidence of businesses that have come and gone. For example, at Nanya, there are lots of businesses that have closed down, as well as empty units, on the 2nd floor and higher. Same in Dianchi Wei Chen.

There are other crappy neighborhoods with a strong community/village still intact, with thriving businesses.

The new metro line will be opening stations over the summer and autumn. These will provide good opportunities for convenience stores and F&B. However, don't get a location directly above the station, say between the N and S exit. People don't walk there. You need to be a few yards beyond the N exit, or a few yards beyond the S exit, not in between. Also pick the exit that leads to a residential/shopping area or other hub.
Be careful of agents, they will rent you anything. Avoid long term leases if the area is not yet established. If an area is well established it might be worth paying more.

Also look at what kind of other shops are there. On our street I see a constant stream of shops opening and closing, and most of them open up with the same type of business, last about 3 months, and close.
There are far too many phone shops for the neighborhood, and we've even had convenience stores and pharmacies close because there were just too many of them.

The other thing to avoid is spending all of your available funds on renovation then having nothing to operate on till a customer base is established.

The only business I can see here that truly thrives is renovations.

Good point about seeing what is already there, and looking to see if the appear busy.

Good point about money for operating. It is a good idea to have the cash to float your business for 6 months, so that if you take 6 months to get established, you can still trade.

Another business that seems to thrive is fast and short order Chinese food restaurants. Low cost, but high turnover cash business. Many western eating places struggle because it seems that only the young Chinese want the novelty of foreign food on a regular basis. Older Chinese are quite conservative. In a student area, maybe yes. In a residential area, probably not. In an area that already has other foreign restaurants, maybe yes.

I touched on it before, but Kunming commercial rents seem to be on the high end for a tier two city. The rents we looked at were more than we are getting for our commercial prop. in an equally situated Shanghai suburb.

The best place to set up a shop is probably Taobao. This is low risk, and you can do it from home. I rarely buy from shops now. I might see something in a shop, go home and search for it on TB, get a better price and purchase.

If your only requirement is to be near a kindergarten, they are all over town, as Tiger said..

Indeed, if you sell a tangible product, sell it on internet.

Then instead of renting commercial property, spend afternoons around school closing times walking near schools - you can cover 5+ a week with just 1 person, as opposed to having physical location tied to a single school.

Of course it depends on your product. Internet makes the location less important or many.