I would stay away from a traditional PPL shop. There used to be two areas where money was made. Headsets and GPS. The GPS market was recently reduced to iPad accessories only. So this is a market in decline which is well covered by the existing shops.
Where I would see more potential is aircraft parts. Only spruce offers 21st century online shopping. All the others you have to call them to get their list prices. There simply is no good end customer aircraft parts business in Europe I know of.
I think the problem is how to enter this market with anything resembling a decent range.
Aircraft Spruce may have a clumsy UK / European representation but they could make it slicker anytime they choose, and their US backup is massive. Nobody could possibly compete with them.
As a consequence, anybody trying this is going to be vulnerable.
Also the top of the market (savvy owners / operators) is being skimmed off by those people ordering directly from the USA, from a variety of suppliers. Anybody who runs a few planes and has a brain is not going to be buying bits from European parts distributors. He will be importing them in bulk from firms like this which is EASA approved and thus good for both new and overhauled (used) components. Plus also from Spruce....
A good comment above about 3rd World pilot uniforms. Maybe I have the same "mole" but I have heard stories of astonishing prices being paid for ludicrous regalia which would make a masonic lodge look like Lidl.
Aircraft Spruce may have a clumsy UK / European representation
aircraftspruce.eu is fantastic. I guess I am one of their best customers by now. They offer everything the US Spruce offers (minus hazmat) at a very reasonable price and in addition to that they have all Cessna parts although without 8310/Form 1 but again at a very attractive price, usually 30-50% less than the official Cessna distributor. The most common stuff they keep in stock, the rest arrives within a week.
The S&H outside Germany is not cheap. Maybe that is an opportunity?
I may perhaps be more qualified than most here on this subject.
It is an old joke, but so very true - if you want to make a million in aviation, start with two and at the end of the day you will have just the one.
I don't know in which part of the world you are but the UK is pretty much covered by the big 4. The German, French, Swiss and BeNeLux markets are also pretty well covered. I understand that Scandinavia is not particularly well served. Despite the open European market, cross-border shopping is actually very limited.
The pilot supplies market is, in general, in terminal decline. The rise of iThings has destroyed the GPS market which was the mainstay of many business models. The decline in paper chart sales and the rise in e-books will have a further knock-on effect. The lower end of the headset market is flooded with cheap Chinese DC clones and the upper end is small. Additionally many suppliers these days insist on a physical store for their products.
Customers are not prepared to wait. If you don't have what they want in stock they will go elsewhere. Margins are thin (despite what the customers think) so getting somebody else to drop ship and sharing the margin means that both parties actually earn diddly squat and in any event, you are then at the mercy of the final supplier. They screw up and you get the blame.
Avionics market is difficult unless you are actually able to install the gear. Garmin, for example, will not supply you direct unless you have an approved avionics shop. I have been trying for 20 years without luck.
I don't know about uniforms - too much hassle with the need to stock every size and colour.
Good luck if you decide to go ahead
Obviously there is much more to an avionics shop than just buying the hardware (like... being able to wire things up and in a really advanced scenario possibly even understand what the wire is doing) but you can freely get Garmin boxes that are "overhauled". It is only new stuff that Garmin restrict to their dealers.
My own business model, since 1978, has been to do nothing too fancy but specialise and do it very well. So what could one do in GA?
One thing which often crossed my mind was working as a freelance avionics installer who positively encourages customers to buy and free issue the hardware.
That way you don't make the ~25% dealer margin but the customer can buy the stuff discounted from the USA and the end result is similar.
I think a really clever installer who really knows the equipment and can talk to the customer like a real pilot would, would do well.
The warranty situation would be tricky however... as would approvals.
Living just off the hourly rate isn't exactly great. Also your customers will want fixed price quotes for work. This requires a larger shop and the margin on the hardware to work. I have tried several shops and I've learned that 10h * high rate and good result is cheaper than 50 * low rate and bad result.
OK, but isn't that just another way of saying that if you go to a shop which doesn't have a decent deep understanding of avionics and just follows the wiring diagrams in the back of the IMs (which is the vast majority of avionics installers; certainly in Europe) and finds the finished job doesn't work, it is better to be at a shop which charges a load more because they will be less reluctant to fix the issues at their expense. I can understand that, and a shop which made a few k on the supply of the kit alone will be happier to sort things out.
My advice is to not pick a declining industry to put your effort into.
A friend of mine runs a pilot shop in the US. There's no doubt that trade has shrunk remorselessly. He recently told me that paper charts (once the backbone of his business) are 30% of what they once were due to Foreflight. His field is home to several flight schools and training is up so he now does a lot of business in test papers etc. but not enough to make up for the shrinking charts.
However, here in Europe VFR charts are a much bigger issue and the withdrawal of the Jeppesen GPS charts is a major issue for travellers like myself. Without Jeppesen we have to source ICAO national charts and this can be quite difficult. A lot of online pilot shops simply lie about availability and leave you in the lurch waiting and waiting...
Personally I'm a long way from relying on Skydemon (or any other electronic means) and want to carry a paper chart for every country I'm flying in. An improved, honest, service in that area would be welcome.
I hadn't read Peter Mundy's post when I wrote that and want to make it clear that I don't include him in that remark about the honesty of pilot shops! They know who they are!
However, here in Europe VFR charts are a much bigger issue and the withdrawal of the Jeppesen GPS charts is a major issue for travellers like myself. Without Jeppesen we have to source ICAO national charts and this can be quite difficult.
AFAIK Jepp are dropping the printed charts, but they are not dropping the electronic versions of these which they sell on a CD as their Raster Charts product. They still sell this which costs something like €250 for Europe. They are dropping the coverage for the UK but I don't know of any UK pilots who ever used the Jepp charts, because the UK CAA ones are basically good. The RC CD can be loaded into Flitestar VFR Europe which costs about €100.
For pilots who like to fly with paper (which is myself too) the above is the way forward.
Also Jepp are doing a vector-based chart product for the Ipad, whose coverage is currently poor but they have plans to expand it to most of Europe; same as the Raster Charts.
I don't see Jepp getting out of the VFR chart business, because VFR PPL training and flying is carrying on all over Europe.
Whether this represents a business opportunity for a pilot shop is a different matter. It's one thing to say the €250 RC CD is good value relative to buying the whole stack of the printed charts, but probably in reality most pilots only bought 1 or 2 of the Jepp printed charts, for a specific trip. I recall, for my early long VFR trips like this one, buying maybe 2-3 of them for Spain and then the French SIA ones for France. For this trip which pushed VFR about as far as it can be easily pushed, I bought maybe half a dozen. And there is no way to automatically print off strip charts along the planned route, from Flitestar (in the way FS can do this for IFR). One can do it manually...
I have no idea if the Ipad product will print off strip charts, but I guess it will because I think (not sure) Skydemon can do that and SD must be eating a bit of Jepp's lunch. I suppose Ipad products are bad news for pilot shops because they bypass the pilot shops totally, and that will be true for both Jepp and SD.
