This assumes that you are creating the repo on your local drive.
First, create the directory in which you’ll store your repo.
Then, use svnadmin to create the repository in that directory:
svnadmin create /path/to/directory/
The typical convention is to set up an initial directory structure as follows:
/trunk
/branches
/tags
To do so, do the following:
mkdir svntemp
cd svntemp
mkdir trunk branches tags
svn import -m ‘Import of initial directory structure’ file:///path/to/repo
Now cd to whatever working directory into which you want to check out your repo and do a:
svn co file:///path/to/repo /name_of_dir_to_checkout_to