Spring Break

Interesting results.

MARCH RESULTS.

I hit my Fall Season numbers in Jan. and Feb. after expecting a 20% drop. So I was feeling pretty confident going into March, which is usually my 4th or 5th best month of the year.

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD.

Sales plummeted in the first ten days of this month. The 20% drop I'd been expecting earlier finally happened.

O.K., I said to myself, no problem. I planned for this. I'll need to cut spending for the next month of so, and we'll be back to even.

GOOD TIMING IN THE BAD TIMING.

The irony is, that right after that decision, sales started rising! The end result is that I'm back to my target numbers, again. Which means that I was doing about 15% higher than that average over the last 17 days to get back to even-steven.

Because I held off spending until the 23th, this increase in revenue resulted in better than usual profit.

Still -- that ten day plummet scared me enough to be careful, which is probably a good thing since I tend to be too optimistic.

SPRING BREAK CAME THROUGH.

For me, at least.

I'd called a compatriot in another town earlier in the month when my sales slumped, and he was doing great. We seem to leapfrog each other. This week he called.

"The tourists aren't spending money!" he says. "Usually Spring Break is one of my best sales periods."

I had to tell him that my sales were pretty good.

KOHD has a couple of articles on Spring Break and tourism. Hotel receipts are down, ski visits are up.

YOU CAN'T STOP THEM

I think people are spending money, but avoiding the big expenses a little more: Hotels, and I assume restaurants.

But you can't keep the American public from spending something. I don't believe they will truly change their ways without a lot more pain than we've felt up to now.

Of course, the reality of job loss and hours cuts has a concrete result in my sales. But the tourists seem to have showed up this week, at least for me.

TAKING THEIR TURNS.

I love that the Spring Break are pretty clearly separated this year. First Oregon, then Washington, then California. It seems like over the last decade, they overlapped more often than not, and the big school districts didn't always get out at the same time within the same state.

But even further into the past, when each state had it's own time period, it worked out well.

We are halfway to summer, and the second half of the year. I'm trying not to be too optimistic.....