At about 2:00 this afternoon, I will grab the BLACK BOOK, and try to get across the street against the biker flow, and leave the store for the weekend in the hands of the cheerful young fellows who work for me.
I'll mow the lawn, dink around the garden, then settle down with the BLACK BOOK (I always intone that) to do my monthly orders.
I was not going to say anything about street closures this year; because it's a no win situation. "That which you can't change....blah, blah."
So for 3/4ths of the next six weeks or so -- the very meat of summer -- we will have closed streets on the weekend. It appears there is a new event tacked on, as well as the bike race today which was a new event last year. (I could swear they said they weren't going to add new events.)
Oh, well. The majority of the downtown retailers seem to like these events; or at least acquiesce to them.
So be it.
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5 comments:
Hola dunc and gringo parasitic bitches, .. Just don't have time to keep up with the 'blog'.
Bend is Fucked (tm)
Back here in town this month and what a fucking DIFF.
Now NOBODY will deliver any material to any property except CASH.
The funniest thing is that biz owners are now delivering said materials for cash.
Realtors are now in a FUCKING panic, all sort of rationality is BEND-GONE(tm). The end is fucking near. Bend is a combo of the fucking Titanic&the BP Spill. It's going down, and smart folk got on the lifeboat back in 2006.
Mexico is looking like fucking paradise now compared to the USA.
Obama today announced a $100B fine on BP, and the stock will soon be worth a big Bend zero.
Cop's are out writing tickets and fucking Bend citizenry like a Nazi fucking State. The look on the cops has changed so much, since I have got back from Mexico, now its like Bend is just a big fucking prison and the cops are guards whose only job is to protect Hollerns property's, and have course nickel&dime the citizenry to death.
Is it fair to point out that with half the day over, so far, I've done 8.5% of normal business, and 6.7% of what I did on Thursday? Actually, pretty much one customer from John Day who didn't know about the bike race, and who got here in the first half hour before the traffic when kabloowy.
Other than that? I've had 37 people in, who have spent 8.00 total. On .50 and 1.00 books.
But I'm sure its good for me. Everyone tells me so...
So I have an idea.
First, you write me a check for 500.00 every day you close Minnesota Ave. That won't quite cover the immediate loss, but it's a nice round number.
O.K. For the following three months, I'll give a survey to every single customer in the store, with six questions:
Did you come in because:
1.) Word of mouth.
2.) You've been in before.
3.) You found us through the media. (yellow pages, google.)
4.) Because of special events.
5.) You just wandered in.
6.) Other.
So my average sale is probably about 13.33, so for every person who answers, "special events" I'll give you back 13.33.
Since we're talking about something close to 7000 people, you would only need about one half of one percent of people to answer #4 to get your money back. 1% answers would more than double your money.
I'd take that bet.
In fact, if they didn't know about the purpose of this survey, I'd be surprised to see many of #4 at all.
At least, someone ought to do an objective survey -- someone other than those who put on the event or profit from the event -- to see how much validity there is to the premise that they bring business downtown for the average retailer.
I had close to 100 people in yesterday, I had very nice sales. Roughly 60% were regulars. I'll do almost no business with regulars today. I'm doing just fine with downtown being downtown. We are doing great downtown. Really. Left alone.
Since they are closing the streets about 12 times over the next six weeks, that would be about 3000.00 you have to gamble with. Hell, I'll give you all of Sept, Oct. November to get it back.
Except now, because you've hit me for six weekends in a row, you've got to get a hit rate of 3.2% of respondents, but gosh, you have so many more events so you should get so many more answers, right?
(Or I'll trade you all of Jan. - May, five months!) to show me how many people come back cause they were just so excited to be downtown for bike races and such.....
Ain't never going to happen, is it? Because the fact is:
THEY DON'T KNOW!
Ended the day over 500.00 below the previous day, and at about one third the average....
To follow up. Saturday, we were about half our average...
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