The long tail at work?

Thank god, spring is finally here. Spring showers and all.

After a lousy first two days of the month, yesterday I had my highest sales day of the year so far. Part of it was having my best weekly customer come in and clear 3 weeks worth of comics. But even without him, it would've been a good day.

See, I've been getting this feeling that tourism is going to be good this summer. Just a sense that I'm getting plenty of visitors in the door. I decided to start keeping a customer count again, after a couple of years of not doing so. Yesterday we hit 95 people in the door.

I can remember when breaking 100 people walking in was a very big deal, and it usually only happened during special events.

Now? I suspect I'll come close to averaging that in July and August. What I keep telling everyone is, that because of the changing surroundings in my corner of downtown, the foot traffic could probably drop in half from current levels and it would STILL BE HIGHER THAN MOST OF MY CAREER!

There is starting to develop a bit of group think among the retailers downtown that because people will be staying closer to home, and because gas prices are so much lower than last year, that we'll see good tourist traffic.

As I said above, I think so too. Because that seems to be what I'm seeing.

But there was a bit of a splash of cold water on that idea in this morning's Bulletin:

"Tourism Dives In April."

"Deschutes Couny and the city of Bend's transient room-tax collections dropped 29.8 percent and 22 percent in April."

The Thing about Bend: we're not a Day Trip kind of place. We're too far from anywhere not to have people staying overnight. So, either people are finding other ways to stay -- friends, camping -- or the fact is we aren't getting as many people as I thought.

And, if it's not too much of a cop out: that was April, and Summer could be very different. It could be, you know.

I hope this isn't patting myself on the back too much, but I think my store is so full of intriguing product right now, that I'm getting a bigger percentage of people spending money than in the past. Because the store is maintaining so well, I seem to be able to stay within budget and still just keep piling on the new material.

I'm still going to factor in a 20% drop in sales through August, and a 10% drop thereafter, but I'm hoping for better.


NOTE: On the Budget Game.

I spent 13.3 of the 100 points this morning on Diamond Sales. I hadn't intended to spend so much, but the selection was pretty rich. I usually grab any Nightmare Before Christmas toys when they become available at reduced prices. (Much as I love NBX, they are Japanese imports and a little on the spendy side -- getting them at a discount makes me able to price them at what I consider more normal pricing.)

I seem to be having great success with the discounted product -- there's nothing particularly wrong with the stuff, it just maybe sells a little slower, but with the new pricing, they become reasonable. And it takes me out of my normal buying; which is a good thing. People constantly surprise me with what they buy.

The long tail at work.