The setback that I wrote about last week had a happy ending. The customer whom I suspected of receiving my mis-sent parcel really did get it, and she contacted me as soon as she got back from a vacation. I must bear in mind that not everybody lives online and works 365 days a year, like I do. Normal people get days off…holidays…even vacations.
I was briefly tempted by her kind offer to return the caps, but I stuck with plan A and offered them to her without repercussions. She immediately placed a large second order that partially offset my loss. That reinforced my long-held belief that a satisfied customer matters more than a profitable sale. Although I must say that I do like profitable sales.
I usually write or revise a bit of my weekly blog entry each weekday, then clean it up and post on Friday morning. This week I thought it might be interesting to preserve the day-to-day journal approach as I chronicle
The first week of December (last week) never quite made up its poor start, and ended up about 14% behind LY, so I'm going into this intimidating week with a deficit already.
Sales were mediocre on Sunday, surged nicely on Monday, then turned strange on Tuesday. On Monday 293 customers visited my store, setting an all-time traffic record. (For comparison, normal non-holiday traffic is around 100 visits.) Just as the first of three huge backup orders of Panther Vision lighted caps arrived, this hottest item of the season stopped selling almost entirely. I had been selling at least a dozen caps a day for the past couple of weeks. I found another store undercutting my price by $3 per cap, so I promptly cut my price. While I was in a sacrificing frame of mind, I knocked my Pursehooks down a couple of bucks, too. What started out as a novelty in the fall seems to be ubiquitous now, and robust early sales sputtered out almost entirely.
So Tuesday looked like a bloodbath – one of those disturbing days when things get so quiet that I suspect technical problems. A rare, large jewelry order staved off disaster, but still left me substantially behind LY. Then, just 15 minutes before
Wednesday, which should have been the strongest day of the week and one of the best of the year, continued the slowing pattern. The smaller items that I’ve been selling in great quantities (and with which I’m very well stocked) are dead. I should be bouncing off the walls trying to keep up with them. Instead, I’m selling just enough large-ticket items to keep a pulse going. (Levitating globes FTW!) Each day I fall farther behind LY, and I don’t know what changed. It is as if Christmas shopping ended on Monday night, just as my major reorders started to hit. It makes me literally sick when something major and unexplained like this comes along. I feel an urgent need to do something, but I have no clue what, or if anything I do would make any difference. At times like this that I wish I had coworkers to talk to. Wednesday ended many hundreds of dollars behind LY. Traffic was basically flat at 203 visits.
Thursday opened with only one small sale waiting for me. I resolved during my morning walk that I am not going to stress out over it anymore. I’ve done everything I can do. This morning I added shipping advice right on my key product pages, and cap sales revived. Maybe that’s all I needed all along? If so, it’s a valuable lesson. I wish I’d learned it two days ago. This is the time of year when every day counts. Traffic is still around 200 visitors per day.
My ambitious plan to kick out one last newsletter plugging my new 4-LED Camo cap died in a major snowstorm. My delivery run to the post office and
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