Sunday Spotlight: My Slow Store!!!

Haha, so it appears this week that I am veering off course from my usual Sunday Spotlight designer feature. (For those of you interested, I will be resuming that again next week!) In the meantime, I just have to write today about how SLOOOOOW it has been lately at my store. It is unfortunately the thing that I have been thinking about all week and trying to figure out!! I can't even believe how few people have been coming into the store lately--you'd think every day was the 4th of July of something. It's frustrating too because it's something that feels totally out of my control--I can't just make people come in and buy my jewelry (unfortunately!!). Although some days I really do feel like dragging people in off the street :)

It would be helpful if I felt like the store had a definite marketing plan or was really being proactive about attracting new business, but it just feels like things have been stagnating a little bit lately. I mean, marketing is not an easy thing--it's something that requires both time and money--either lots of time (making phone calls, writing emails, keeping up with social media, doing press releases yourself and so on...) and little money, or little time and lots of money (hiring someone to do all the things you don't have time for!), or some sort of combination of the two. And I'm not sure the guys running this place have much of either to spare at the moment, which means that we are for the most part depending on whoever happens to be walking down Broadway on any given day. We do of course get repeat customers, but we definitely do not have so many that we can depend on only them and street traffic to support the store.

But we all really want this place to work!! I don't want to have to leave the store next year because it can't support my business. I know that the location is great, that the concept is great, that the store itself is really, really great. But the bottom line is that we just HAVE to have more customers. Not just during the holidays, but year round. Otherwise none of us will be able to afford to stay here! None of us are big businesses--all of us are small, independent designers who really depend on our sales at this store to pay our bills.

Which means that for now, all the designers here have been trying to put our heads together to come up with ideas to try to increase business, since the lack of traffic has been really affecting us all. It can be hard to make decisions and find solutions when you have 15 different people with 15 different ideas of what should be done, but I think we are all starting to agree that it's better to try more things instead of less! And so yesterday we all more or less agreed on a free wine happy hour from 4-7pm! It was a really fun and easy idea, and it's something we're going to start doing every week. It will probably be on Friday evenings in the future (and maybe Saturdays too!), so I will definitely let you know. It's a fun reason to stop in the store and hang out for a little while! We also even had someone get into a yip yip costume and run around the store yesterday :) That wasn't an official idea per se, but it was hilarious. And sometimes you just really need some silly, fun energy to lift your spirits, which it most definitely did.

I'm also feeling hopeful about all the other things I'm working on in my business right now--the lookbook shoot is, after all, happening tomorrow--I can't wait!!! I will be posting at least one or two shots from the shoot here tomorrow. And hopefully we will get some more traffic in the store today....keep your fingers crossed for me! And hey, come visit if you're in the area :)
Have a good Sunday night everyone!!!