Saturday, November 1, 2008

Feeling the Vibe

I just did our October analysis for the store. It told me I've been embracing the mood of despair while in reality the store is doing very well. The down side of the "community center" game store model is you get the good and bad vibes from the community. Customers tend to project their mood onto you, especially when they don't understand your business model.

October is not a good retail month for us normally, it's a transition month between Summer and the holiday season. There's a lot of quiet time to embrace those bad feelings, if you allow yourself to indulge. In the end we were profitable and did significantly better than last year, but it felt hard earned. It wasn't really, it just felt that way.

4 comments:

  1. So you're saying that the store's economy is fundamentally sound, but that all the negative propaganda has you focusing on the bad things and giving you a negative impression... luckily you didn't panic and do anything stupid.

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  2. There's nothing much to do in a situation like that. I did enact a lot of cost cutting and guerrilla marketing plans as a result, but that's just good business.

    I've decided to take time off from the news, at least until the election is over.

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  3. That's not much of a pledge given the election is Tuesday :)

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