starting over is a ***** ... and she has sisters to match. the key to just about every start over is foot traffic and getting your name out there fast, hard and cheaply.
Since you mentioned retail I will go by what most retail stores can do to easily get their name out. Coroplast signs are a big one for a retail space ... OP was right ... low balling helps initially bring in the foot traffic you need in retail to produce a sustainable customer base. With coroplast you can advertise your 'discount' you pland to lowball with. now with 99% of retail ... you will not find any production so the costs are a lot higher and any discount you give takes away from the markup you actually make money off of. the only real thing you need is a good product with a good price and enough capital to survive the beginning struggle even then retail his HARD.
as for another type of business (lets just say anything with a serviceable skill aspect like signs, plumbing or carpentry) Most everything starting out will be your foot traffic from place to place getting your name out there. getting your name out to homes is difficult since you can easily drown in advertising money and not get anything back, most of the time, well placed ads online and with the local news paper in their service provider pages will get you more than any yellow pages ad or radio spot. probably one of the most under utilized forms of foot path advertising i've seen has been coroplast ... with homes, they can easily stick on in the front yard of the home while they work on it (asking the owners first if they can) and it provides advertising to not only the neighbors but local drive by as well. also on the side of the road in residential areas (around stop signs and the such) people will have a higher notice rate than on busy roads. USPS actually has direct mailing now so you can send an entire area a post card to help them know about you as well. getting your name out to businesses is easier since you can just walk right in, throw a pitch of 'this is who I am and this is what I do' followed up with some media and your business card and out you go.
Hell, if I had to start from scratch tommorrow and jumped into the sign game ... first thing I would do is hit the ground hard going to office buildings and talking to office managers about doing some custom art for their work areas, most are drab plain areas and they will generally have a repair and renovation budget ... if you can stick to their budget and can make something that matches their company feel while still providing them with a color range to make for a more productive work force ... instant gold. with elections around the corner it will be rather wasteful to do coroplast in most of the areas that would help so instead what I would be doing is hitting the net hard with free give aways, I would also find some local coffee shops and the such in more commercial areas to give a bunch of promotional swag to give away for me. This is two fold ... they get something to give away ... gets more people in their store with the prospect of free **** without any cost to them ... and if you aim it right ... more business for you because of your bottle openers, sports bottles, frisbees, whatever. I think one of the other things I would probably do is find a local charity thing that regularly puts up things like banners, and tell them that I would donate a banner or three to them, but would have to reserve the right 1/3 of the banner for my own advertising ... you know ... the ussual "banner dotated by (Awesome Sauce Graphics I suppose)" ... easy stuff that uses very basic materials. And for the love of all that is unholy ... I would actually put my company name on my car that is prominant and well designed. I see 'sign' shops in this area put their name on the glass of their car and total size is like 4x6 ... idiotic.
