Good morning everyone,
I’d really appreciate your honest opinions and experiences both from locals and foreigners living in Latvia.
I’m considering moving to Latvia to start a small business. I’m passionate about flowers, so my idea is to open a small flower shop, while also working as a web developer and graphic designer from the same space. My goal is to have a calm, simple routine run my shop during the day and head home in the evening.
I’m drawn to Latvia because it seems peaceful, not overcrowded, and beautiful, which is exactly what I’m looking for. That’s also why I didn’t choose larger countries like Germany or the Netherlands.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on:
Is Latvia a good place to start a small business like this?
How is the market for flower shops?
How are foreigners generally treated, especially women starting a business?
Any challenges I should be aware of?
Thank you in advance for your honesty and advice! 🌸
That what made me excited as non EU citizen (government) www.liaa.gov.lv/en/article/catalogue-latvian-startup-guide
Moving to Latvia as Foreigner for Business!
byu/AssignmentEven8258 inlatvia
Posted by AssignmentEven8258
8 Comments
Depends on what country you’re from, you may have some friction with opening a bank account and renting a location.
Otherwise, if you know what you’re doing, you might be able to open a flower shop, as that shouldn’t be too difficult bureaucracy wise. Expect around 1k in upkeep, depending on shop location.
Consider delivery options.
There are plenty of flower shops in Rīga. I think that most of them are doing good because they rarely go out of business. But I don’t have any data to support this. I’d suggest you to do some survey because in my opinion, the location for flower shops is very important.
It’s not difficult to start a small business in Latvia. There might be some problems with tax service to get a VAT number. They do check foreigners to make sure it’s not just another money laundering scheme.
Foreigners in general are not treated worse, but it will help big time if you learn a bit Latvian.
Attracting customers to choose your place over other flower shops will be the hardest challenge.
Latvia has a favorable environment for small businesses when it comes to ease of operations. Flower shops though are a pretty competitive market with a lot of small players, however you could use it to your favor as there is plenty of infrastructure already built to support your business, all you need is a unique selling point to stand out from the crowd. Foreigners are generally treated well by Latvians, obviously can’t speak for everyone though. Make sure you learn Latvian though, not only is it a requirement for employees working with customers, but our language is very important to us. Foreigners who speak Latvian are universally loved by locals just for that.
I buy flowers quite often, and from what I have seen, I think the biggest challenge could be the Latvian language. You will have to learn it because a significant portion of buyers are 40+, and oftentimes they will not be able to communicate in eng.
1) Highly depends on the place you open your business and what you can offer. There are larger and smaller flower businesses here and there, some offer flower delivery, some work on-site, some also sell other things, etc.
2) Is it saturated? Hard to tell, but I know quite a few flower shops in my neighborhood which have existed since forever, because you get flowers for your friends, for the decoration, for your home, for someone’s funeral and for pretty much every possible situation 🙂
3) If you learn the language and try to speak it, we’ll be more than happy to visit your business 🙂 It’s not easy even for us, so we really appreciate any efforts!
4) It’s hard to tell about the business side, but I’d suggest visiting Latvia outside the summer season (preferably in December / January) to see how it looks and feels outside because living somewhere with short and gray days and long nights might not be for you.
Anyways, good luck!
Latvia is pretty good as far as small business rules and taxes go, compared to a lot of countries but there are also pitfalls. Use getapro.lv to get some freelance tax advisor to run you thru the reality and see if it matches your plan.
– Any challenges I should be aware of?
* Tavā puķu veikalā visiem darbiniekiem jāvar runāt latviski. Nevis labdien un paldies, bet jāprot. Tā nav formāla prasība.
* Ziemā tu saņemsi rēķinu par apkuri un pieliksi bikses no pārsteiguma.
* Tev jāsaprot Rīga, lai varētu ierīkot veikalu pareizā vietā, kur ir daudz potenciālo pircēju.
You should probably come here and do research locally.
* We have multiple large wholesale flower markets across the city.
* Some of our basic super markets are selling flower as well
* delivery app have a flower delivery services
* we have 24/7 flower shops
* Fairly recently flower vending machines has started to appear.
* In a context of local small shops: it seem good foot traffic and location is probably main factor of success
For example more expensive boutique shop https://www.facebook.com/MagnolijasZieds