I got a job at a Woodcraft franchise several years ago when my wife lost her job. It was fun, so I stayed on for another year after she got a new job, just to be around tools and other woodworkers all day, and to take advantage of the great employee discounts (usually 15-20% below wholesale, direct from the manufacturers). The guy who owned our store used to be an IT VP at Xerox, so he had some business acumen you'd think. Well, maybe....
Bill quit his job at 55 years old to pursue his "dream" business. He missed the bid on the new store in Rochester, NY where he lived, but Woodcraft's demographic studies showed that the Albany area could support a store. He got on it and made it happen. Sold his mini-estate in Rochester, got his wife to quit her teaching job, liquidated his 401K (incurring a huge penalty) and moved to the Albany area to open a new store in Latham, NY.
Business was booming with all the woodworkers in our area. He had the grand opening just before Christmas, and started out with about 6 full-time employees (including me) and maybe 8-10 part-timers. We were working 6-7 days a week, with a 12 hour day every Wednesday and Thursday when the store was open 9-9. Then, little by little, business started to drop off. After six months, there was only his operations manager and one full-timer left (me), with three part-timers - all retired guys pulling less than 16 hours/wk. There wasn't enough help to take care of the stock, sell, and man the cash register. Customers would come in and find the front empty because I was out unloading a truck and there was no one in the showroom. Theft began to occur. Then we had to cut back on our orders because we couldn't afford to restock what sold. That caused business to slide further. At a certain point, the handwriting was on the wall, and I bailed to go back to what I was doing before. A year later, I went in to buy some sandpaper and everything was 75% off... what was left of it.
He lost over $750K during that time. His dream estate in Rochester was gone and he was living in a leaky 19th century home in the Stockade area of Schenectady, NY. Bill was overqualified for just about anything in our area. His wife was unable to get a new teaching job. At the Northeast Woodworkers Expo this spring, an ex-Woodcraft employee I ran into told me that Bill had just died. He apparently had drunk himself to death.
Retail is tough, tough, tough. It's not something to jump into without an extensive amount of management experience. I have a strong background in both retail food and in hardware. Who knows, I may possibly have been able to help Bill if I was in control, but he wanted to man the helm all by himself, and he went down with the ship. There were many other contributing factors that I didn't go into that also led to his failure, most within his control, some out of it, but I feel the enterprise may have been doomed from the beginning. Good luck, though, if you go ahead with it.