This Easter was the quietest sales we have ever recorded, even worse thanduring the peak of the GFC.
The only thing I can think of is that people are very short of money after we got hit with the worst hail and rain storms in over 100 years just over a week ago. Even though insurance coverage was widespread many insurance companies “wrote off” damaged cars at market value when clients were expecting much more meaning they are now out of pocket many $000’s for replacement. Also some just paid to get repairs done on their houses rather than the lenghty wait to get it done via insurance companies.
For whatever reason we were down 20% over last year (and that was bad too). Many others are also saying sales were slower than usual.
The thing that hurt the most was on Good Friday where we have to pay double time wages (public holiday) and staff can only be sent home after 3 hours work. Even though we had lower staff levels we still we overstaffed for the sales. We sent 3 home after 3 hours and another 3 after 3 1/2 hours leaving just me and a driver on board … and we were bored.
Has Easter been busy for you in the past? I tried opening one year and did $130 dollars in eight hours, so that was the last time I’ll ever open on Easter Sunday. I think that may have been the only day in my store’s history that I actually lost money by opening.
Normally we do about 50 60% of normal sales on Good Friday and Easter Saturday but Sunday is back to normal and Easter Monday (a public holiday) is usually about 3 -4 times a normal Monday. Just hoping today (Monday) will be OK.
Easter week is our quietest week of the year … but not as quiet as this year.
After a busy week and even busier weekend, its time to close the week. We averaged over 6k/day Fri-Sun with 7 people. I’m whupped. Talk about under-staffed! We averaged 2k lunches with 4 guys. Off to bed.
Just dragged myself home from a super busy Monday to end a public holiday long weekend>
All Easter we were absolutely dead, but they all came out of the woodwork tonight. We only had myself and my manager / daughter, 1 customer service and 1 driver. We made up a less than full rollout due to the previous 3 days quiet sales but the phones started jumping as soon as we opened at 5pm. At 7pm I was rolling out another batch of 13" and 10" bases and as soon as I had them done they were gone … continuing right up until about 8.30pm. We closed at 9pm totally spent just short of our best ever Monday since having the shop. Could’ve got another couple hundred $$ if we had another staff on. We tried to get one who was fully crossed trained but they were all out and about enjoying the weekend so we battled on. Wages were good for the night even after paying double time public holiday penalties. My driver earnt $32 an hour plus delivery allowances and tips. Should sell up and become a driver
HUGE numbers here, but as some may know, we are adjacent to the town park so we had lots of kids out Saturday for the annual Easter egg hunt, which we gave away free kids meals and of course FINAL FOUR in INDY, hotels are packed and butler wins!!! GO DOGS
