Fair’s Fair “For Book Lovers”

After nineteen years in business our sales ebbs and flows are quite predictable.

Every year our most drastic slowdown starts just after the middle of November and, until last year, it always lasted until December 15th. Last year was the first year it only lasted three weeks and we were quite surprised and very happy.  

This year the downturn started on Monday, November 19 and completed its damage on Saturday, December 8th. During that time weekly sales were off 9%, 20% and 7.25%. So we are hoping this second consecutive 3 week downturn is a sign that longevity (and constant attention to improving our processes) will eventually smooth out this blip.

We know the blip is caused by everyone buying new merchandise for Xmas presents and it ends when they start looking for more unique gifts for the people they care about.

I recall that for many years  we could count on four good months - July, August, September and December and two bad months - January (after Xmas lapse) and June (gardening season hereabouts) and the other six months had average and sometimes above average sales but were mostly quite stable.

We still tend to think of January as a bit slow because our short term memory only allows us to compare its sales and average activity to a hectic two weeks at the end of December. But, all in all, we know 3 slower weeks out of 52 and 30 or more good to outstanding weeks is quite remarkable in most retail businesses.

Even at that, we believe that downturns would almost be eliminated were it not for the media’s penchant for making bad news out of whatever next catches their attention.

Weather is one of their favorites in this area - maybe because it is a discussion point requiring little thought.

When I was growing up in this area the weather was cold enough for prolonged periods of time that we had many many outdoor hockey rinks - they are almost non-existent nowadays. And yet the weather people keep talking about a week where the temperature occasionally dips to -15 Celcius as being cold - that is still +5 degrees fahrenheit and forty years ago we never even considered plugging in the block heaters in our cars until it went to -10 degrees on that scale.

Even Al Gore has figured out the weather is nowhere near as cold as it used to be and he received a Nobel Prize this bit of profound wisdom. It’s a sad day when a politician is able to come across as being smarter than a weather person, however temporary that might be.