I remember Early last year i was enquiring about a stall in Tom Mboya Next to Tuskeys,They were asking for a goodwill of 1 Million. After a Few days the stall was occupied and the guy was selling Torches,Key holders,Small radios,Padlocks things that are normally hawked around the streets and this was mind boggling

This goodwill business has been takes out of proportion. Why would someone charge even a cent as goodwill on an office space that has never been occupied, for example this new building called aghro house which is asking for rent and goodwill at the same time. The space has never been occupied b4 hence no business has ever been done in the space and obviously there has never been any customer, makes me wonder what "goodwill" is being sold.

When leaving, the landlord will tell you to sell your business and recover your goodwill and hence are stuck to getting the landload a tenant otherwise you lose.
Recently found some new shops –just finished in O. Rongai renting at Kes 25k & goodwill of Kes 250-300k, within a week there were all gone.

I think this goodwill scam is slowly dying. I have seen adverts for "stall to let" on two shops clearly stating "NO GOODWILL". One is on Moktar Daddah Street.... I'm trying to remember where I saw the other one [I'm not searching for a stall so I did not need to make a mental note]

Its really sad, this goodwill value is not justified for some shops and locations. A shop on Mama Ngina or the CBD or even river road may be acceptable..Ksh200,000- Ksh1M goodwill i believe is fine. A new building like agro house has no business at all charging goodwill. Should an office space at Transnational House 5th floor really charge goodwill. On the point that its refundable....you as a tenant will be forced to hang around longer till you get a new tenant totally annoying and may take forever.Most probaly you may forsake or settle for a lower amount. @Kenyanlyrics that may be true but how many of them are set up by the rich..very few. Lately you have seen conversion on most business on ground floor to stalls and exhibitions. A place for instance which used to do first food in moi avenue. Say 2000sqf. Subdivided and repartitioned for stalls each of 100sqf. Lets say 2 shops on street facing fetch each 1M goodwill, the other 13 shops(minus 500 sqf for pass ways) 500k each on goodwill. This guy pockets a clean 8M+ not to mention the monthly rent collections.

1500 bob profit per phone???? be serious.

Talked with a friend and incidentally when talking he never mentions sales he talks of profit per item. He has no problem paying a goodwill of 3m (varied for 5yrs) on a stall on tom mboya/mfangano/luthuli and again the rents of between 70k and 100k per month.I think these small guys we see around may be minting cash. Saw some stalls near njoguini hotel and beams club on mfangano strt they measure aprox. 8m sq to 10m sq asking goodwill of 4m and monthly rent of 90k (6 months upfront) and i was like guys must be joking. going there 2 weeks later most of them taken.

This movie business must be good, but I am just trying to understand the maths behind it, if a copy goes for 50 bob on average, for me to make 60k I will need to push 1200 copies per day - ama how does this movie thing work.
I think I need to convert my used books stall, pap.

@bird_man

I concur with you, have several friends in those beauty, phones and mpesa stall business and a majority of my friends are making a handsome income. Most of them i can attest do supply and feed other businesses e.g., to bigger distributors, upcountry and regional retailers and supermarket chains. The business networks behind those stall businesses is amazing and not just the walk in customers we see.

Now i have a friend selling a front shop just right across the fire station on tom mboya street for ksh 1.5 million, as they cant manage several of them on different streets(owner has health issues). Another friend at veteran hse moi avenue selling a second row shop for ksh 2.0 million to concentrate in supplying beauty products to some supermarket chain.

until you get to know them quite well one may simply dismiss them.

During my high school days I was one of the resident idlers at a DVD shop, and I can say with certainty that the figures being quoted here are way off. The one big issue with the DVD business is the highly inefficient fulfilment process. Let me explain.

The typical set up is one or two computers connected to the internet, with DVD burners on each machine. Series/movies are downloaded from the net and then burnt on DVD. The process of downloading takes 2 hours MINIMUM and CD burning takes 40 minutes MINIMUM. These two factors makes for a very unpleasant experience for a purchase that is meant to be an impulse buy. Many people come in, ask, "do you have this and that?" and are told no, or wait for it to burn.

Also, I think only between 50-150 people visit the shop per day, with a 50percent fulfilment rate.