On Tuesday, March 24th, we stopped turning people away and invited them in with our happy, friendly, sleepy smiles. Here is the first person that entered the store - a woman. I just love the fact that the first person to enter a hardware store was a woman!
We told the staff on Monday evening before they all left that they shouldn't be nervous (even though Harry and I were nervous as hell about getting the store ready and couldn't sleep) and that we expected the first day to be extremely slow since no one even knows we are open. Told them that we would be very happy if we had 30 people. To all of our surprise, we had exactly 100 transactions on Tuesday. Once we have been open for a while our goal is to average 350 transactions a day so not bad on the first day. Staff did a great job talking to the "browsers" who walked around for 20-30 minutes and left with nothing - we'll have to change that habit. But they were also great at assisting customers with projects so our sales were higher than we anticipated for the day. Harry and I are feeling pretty good about the staff we have selected. We have several on the team that have great all around product knowledge.
We had visits on the first day from several family and friends. Thank for the money plant Lewis. Let's hope it brings good kharma. Thanks for the very crisp $1 bill Kathy. To tell you the truth I don't care if they are crispy or dirty, as long as we get a lot of them.
So of course we had to take a picture of our first "official" paying customer. Wouldn't you know it, the guy is in town for a trade show. Has a booth at the Convention Center and needed someway to reach up to the top of his booth to dust it off. I guess we will never escape trade shows completely. I sold him a light bulb changing device. Hey it extended 11'; who cares if it didn't have a duster on the end. Sold him a dusting item to attach to the end. That's Ms. McGyver to you!
We had visits on the first day from several family and friends. Thank for the money plant Lewis. Let's hope it brings good kharma. Thanks for the very crisp $1 bill Kathy. To tell you the truth I don't care if they are crispy or dirty, as long as we get a lot of them.
So of course we had to take a picture of our first "official" paying customer. Wouldn't you know it, the guy is in town for a trade show. Has a booth at the Convention Center and needed someway to reach up to the top of his booth to dust it off. I guess we will never escape trade shows completely. I sold him a light bulb changing device. Hey it extended 11'; who cares if it didn't have a duster on the end. Sold him a dusting item to attach to the end. That's Ms. McGyver to you!
We didn't have our paint matching software system when we opened Tuesday so we couldn't sell paint Tuesday. Luckily it came in on Tuesday afternoon and we were good to go for Wednesday when we got our first paint customer. Too bad he only bought a quart. It's going to take a lot of quarts to pay for the $32,000 invested in paint tinters, shaker and paint matching software.
We've been averaging 85-105 transactions a day since we opened, until yesterday. Yesterday was a light day but at least it gave us time to get caught up on some projects. It will probably take 6-9 months for us to really determine our traffic flow and then we can adjust staff schedules accordingly.
Next week Harry and I start splitting the days so that we can get more office time in. Our Assistant Manager is catching on quickly so I think we'll be able to have him be there alone sooner than we had anticipated. Since we are only 4 blocks away, Harry will be able to run over there if there is a problem.
I'm sure there are a lot of funny stories to tell you but the 4-5 hours of sleep a night aren't enough to keep my brain cells in order. We'll try to update the blog a little more often now. The Grand Opening is just around the corner (May 1-3) and that brings the blog to an end so we have to get the fun stories in now.
Thanks for checking in.
Next week Harry and I start splitting the days so that we can get more office time in. Our Assistant Manager is catching on quickly so I think we'll be able to have him be there alone sooner than we had anticipated. Since we are only 4 blocks away, Harry will be able to run over there if there is a problem.
I'm sure there are a lot of funny stories to tell you but the 4-5 hours of sleep a night aren't enough to keep my brain cells in order. We'll try to update the blog a little more often now. The Grand Opening is just around the corner (May 1-3) and that brings the blog to an end so we have to get the fun stories in now.
Thanks for checking in.
1 comment:
I'll miss the wit and repartee of the blog but am happy that you are so close to "officially being open". Great job and thanks for sharing all of the "fun". It's like being there without all of the work or stress; just the humor. ;)
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