Like a housewife rearranging the furniture...

I've always liked rearranging the store. Yes, the store is mess. Yes, it's stressful.

But at the same time, I've always loved this aspect of the store. Making improvements. I'm also able to clean the store, top to bottom, which is satisfying. Mostly though I just love trying to figure out the right arrangement with what I've got.

I pretty much need to do it alone, except for a few heavy fixtures. When someone is there helping, they tend to say, "That won't work," whereas, I'll try something and if it doesn't work, I'll change it back. Which is twice as much work, but since these big changes are infrequent, I might as well get it right.

Most of time, the stress of needed to finish is overwhelming. This time, I'm sort of relaxing into the realization that I have time.

The other thing that happens when I have people helping is that they want to get going. "What do you want to do here?" they ask, and my general tendency is to mull things over. Sit in a chair and think through the ramifications, wait for my subconscious to give me the go ahead. Which obviously doesn't work if someone is standing there tapping their feet.

So I like just puttering around at my own pace. I take on a task, get tired of doing it, start doing something else, come back and do the first task and then the task I left off of yesterday, and so on. I can only keep track of this if I'm by myself.

So...back to the store for the next three days and getting as much done on my own as possible.

What a mess!

The store is an unbelievable mess. I looked at a random stack of books yesterday and realized that they came from completely different parts of the store. Basically, it's gridlock. To move the fixtures, I have to move the product--the move the product, I have to move the fixtures.

Stalemate!

What happens with all complex tasks is that I put blinders on and try to deal with one small thing at a time.

Toby has been doing all the heavy lifting since Todd left, and he more or less needs me to tell him how to finish up. Looking around, I wasn't sure. I made a big mistake by not taking pictures and measurements before we started. So after Toby left yesterday, I wandered around the store and tried to figure it out.

And then I started thinking of improvements. Uh, oh.

What if I replaced that fixture? What if I moved it over there?

The thing about Pegasus is that everything was placed organically over the years--dictated was possible with the measurements I had. The store is literally spaced by the inch--entire displays are possible or impossible because I either have or don't have an inch to spare.

I started measuring things and realized that there were improvements to be made. I have a basement full of bookshelves (purchased from the guy who bought the Bookmark from us--he didn't want the shelves we had.)

It always helps to be alone when contemplating changes. I can try things without anyone second guessing me--and if something I try doesn't work, I just change it back. I like doing that, even if it means dragging up bookshelves from the basement by myself. 

Once I started thinking of changes, the changes started to escalate. The big problem was--they were clear improvements, not small ones, and thus worth doing.

Which means even more chaos.

Toby had told me he'd come back on Friday to finish up. He needs to start looking for a job. I called him up and asked he wouldn't mind coming back on Sunday, giving me three days to mess around on my own. 

I'm going to try to pace myself. Right now, the focus is on the fixtures. I'll deal with the product later. It's a huge mess, but fortunately, I think we'll have time to deal with it all, and it was be a nice improvement on what we had.

How I see the near future for my business.

Trying to figure out how much business we might do after reopening requires that I step outside myself, try to see the situation clearly and objectively.

What do we know?

Well, we know:

1.)  Tourism is unlikely to come back in any significant way, at least for a long time.

2.) Tourism is a large percentage of our summer business, therefore, we have to order in numbers that reflect that drop.

3.) The store is well stocked. We aren't in catch-up mode, so we can afford to take a wait and see attitude. Once we order, it's nearly impossible to reduce orders. On the other hand, if we don't order, we can always do it later.

4.) Most of our overhead is fixed, so the only way to reduce expenditures is to be careful with the product.

5.) Most sales occur in the top 20% of product (the 20/80 rule). We start by ordering the essential product. The way I put it is this: instead of asking, "Will this product sell?" we ask, "If we don't order this product, will anyone notice?"

6.) It's best to do this kind of moderating early, because playing catch-up is nearly impossible.

With cold clear eyes, I think a a 20 to 30% drop in sales from yearly average is almost guaranteed. That means, the drop will be even more severe during the summer. I believe there will be an initial surge as people rush to get out and try to support their local businesses. But that surge will happen no matter what we have coming in.

But after a month or two, I think it will settle down to reality.

We can monitor from day to day, and adjust upward as necessary. I think this is going to be harder than most people believe, because a huge chunk of money is being taken out of large segments of our society, (for instance, airlines, movie theaters, sporting and entertainment events, etc.) and that has to affect everyone else. Especially in Bend, tourism is important for hotels, restaurants, and shops.

The temptation is to just pick up where we left off, but I can't see that as possible.

Pegasus Books has a lot of stuff.

In putting down new flooring, we had to remove all the product from the shelves and move them, willy nilly. It has really hammered home how much stuff we have.

As a result, there are all kinds of books and graphic novels whose covers I'm seeing for the first time in years. A lot of them are very intriguing. They've all been hidden, spine out, undiscovered for years, even decades.

It has me questioning everything I'm doing.

On one hand, a good rule of thumb is--the more product I carry, the more I sell.

On the other hand, equally valid, is the idea that the more product that is displayed face out, the more I sell.

A couple of years ago, we removed used books completely and replaced them with graphic novel racks where I could show the covers. Sales went up.

So the idea would be to carry just as much product, but show more of it face out--and that isn't possible. In fact, the basic concept of the store is that if a product can be stacked, vertically or horizontally, I'll order it. If it's an odd size, or must be displayed face-out, avoid it. (Except for games and toys, which can be displayed on the walls six feet up or higher.

I don't know that there is an answer, except to continually try to be creative. (A bigger store, of course, but downtown Bend is the gold standard right now. My location has become almost a "legacy" at this point. I don't want to lose that.)

One thing I can do is more systematically change which titles are shown outward on a regular basis. I always have that intent, but in reality, this process is usually pretty random.

I could perhaps winnow out that stuff that hasn't sold for a long time, but that's the stuff which has a strong profit margin--and the whole point of this post is to figure out how to display the "stuff that hasn't sold" in a way that it does sell.

Oh, well. In putting everything back, I'll have a chance to rethink which product needs to be displayed and which can be simply stacked. I'll try to change it out a little--but not too much, because the store was doing very well BC. (Before Coronavirus.)

Don't want to mess with a winning formula too much.

Status.

Well, the money is going out fast. I put some money in the checking account thinking it would be more than enough. Now I'm seeing it is going to be a squeeze. The renovations aren't costing too much more than expected--maybe 15% above estimates--which I'll take.

What I underestimated was the overhead beyond rent and wages. It's about double what I estimated in my head. Which was stupid of me--I just needed to go into last year's taxes to get the real number.

I'm not second-guessing myself on the loans and grants. The grants wouldn't have helped much, if at all; and I'll be damned if I'm going to go into debt.

For our first twenty years of business this would have been a disaster. I'd probably be on the phone asking everyone to please be patient. Back then, I was careful not to have any automatic withdrawals--I wanted to be able to time payments. Now all my bills are automatic, so that money has to be there in the account.

I have the money to weather this. But some of it is tied up in investments that, if I cash them, will have a heavy tax penalty. I was hoping to avoid that.

I'm still not expecting to open until mid to late March, more likely the latter. It could even be later. At least that gives me plenty of time to put the store back together.

We'll need to be careful at first on our buying of product. What really kills me is the thought that most of the big chains who are our biggest competitors--Target, Walmart, etc--are still open and making money. Some of them, lots of money.

Looking around, I really have to wonder how many Mom and Pops have the resources to make it through this. Or, even if they do, whether they have a huge debt load after they open again. There is simply no way to get through this without pain.

All for One, and One for All? Nah.

What follows is probably the thing that makes me the most angry about the business I'm in.

I talk a lot about what an independent fellow I am. I don't belong to any retail organizations. I often feel as if these types of groups breed "in-crowds" and that almost always they result in "group think."

So, admittedly, what follows may seem somewhat contrary to that.

I find myself getting really angry over those shops who purposely seem to join the "enemy"--those forces who don't mean the entire market well. Publishers or wholesalers who make decisions that either go around or even purposely harm the majority of retail stores.

Most often it's a "I got mine" or "It's good for me, too bad for you," type attitude. Even more often, they are just idiots who can't see the harm they are doing. There seem to be a large percentage of these people who are new to the business, who have no context to make such decisions, and who don't care to learn. As long as they perceive it to be good for them, it doesn't matter if it's bad for everyone else.

Well, fuck them.

I use the word Quisling for them. They make me so angry I could spit. The people we are fighting almost always use these Quislings as examples that not all of retailers agree. Which is true--in the same way that climate deniers use the few scientists--usually not even scientists, but under educated TV weathermen--to say, "Not all scientists agree!"

Bullshit.

The last time one of these publisher schemes popped up, a survey of retailers found that 85% if retailers were against it. I have no fucking clue who the other 15% were. People too stupid to be running stores, that's for sure.

But I always hold my tongue while I watch the vast majority of my fellow retailers try to reason with them. Because, like I said, it really makes me so angry that it isn't pretty.

I probably won't print this--I'm just venting.

OK. More Quislings have popped up. So print.

Downtown walk around.

Todd and Toby have pretty much taken over the store and are doing all the work. I think I’ll let them. I’m no good at renovations—I’d probably just get in the way.

Linda and I walked around downtown instead. It was a great chance to look in all the windows. I was amazed by how many businesses I didn’t know. I’ve just lost track.

Dropped into Mountain Coffee and talked to Gordon, the owner. Turns out he reads this blog—or used to read it when I was talking about things other than writing. So we exchanged some gossip and information. Interesting changes happening downtown all over the place.

More businesses than I expected have taken the route of completely closing for the duration, even restaurants.

I think some businesses are being a little casual about letting customers in. I really believe that keeping people indoors for more than a month or so is very difficult. Things are starting to fray, even among those who believe the virus is dangerous. (And I do, very much so.)

Several stores are doing renovations, it looks like, from major to cosmetic. 

I'm just trying to be patient and wait until we can go back to business. We're going to lose money--no way around that. But we can weather it.