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Having a truly sorry holiday season as far as sales go? We are about 40-50% off from a normal year. About the only thing that is good is that we saw a large upsurge in sales after SEP 11 and were able to get our accounts payable down to near nothing for the holiday season. Many others in our area who bought big for teh holidays are gonna be in big trouble. Our county has seen a rash of plant closings in the last year with the second largest employer closing and letting 600 go this week. Is it like this all over or just in our area?
Its so slow I am putting things on E-bay for extra $$$$ whe the store should be packed giving me no time to play on the computer..oh well.
For a shameless plug, check out my ebay auctions![url]http://cgi6.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewListedItems&userid=miljeep&include=0&since=-1&sort=2&rows=25[/url]
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I'm not in retail at the moment but have spent many years in that and allied businesses.
Forgetting what's going on in the rest of the country for a moment and respectful I suggest so should you. What matters is what you're doing where you are under the local conditions that drive your market. Of course I agree there are times when national/international events produce "macro" national events that will affect most of the nation (Recession for Example - 2.9% unemployment for another.) But, you can't do crap about those - and anyway a pretty good percentage of the time, retail like politics, is mostly local.
Looks as if from a financial management stand point you don't have a clue as to what poor management is about. You were so dumb you took your excess cash-flow from the 9/11 bubble and pre-paid some bills - probably got some discounts too for early-pay. (Not to mention the penalties avoided that would be due from late-payment caused by "poor" cash management.)
Although you don't specifically state this as a fact, by reading betwen a couple of lines it seems to me that you've already adjusted your inventory to meet the new projected sales estimates.
With proper cash managemnet obvious and inventory almost certainly "managed" from this very distant location I would suggest that you take a 7th look at your ad budget as well as ad content.
Also you need to get on the phone and find three or four folks whose business isn't doing worth a crap and all of you together chant "Whoa, whoa, whoa (Or is it woe, woe, woe) is me while all of you ring your hands. Or I guess you could continue to explore alternative marketing channels such as ebay and continue on to the internet as a whole. (Course such actions only serve to bring ever closer to being guilty of being a business man/woman.)
If you were actually stupid enough to pay me to consult I would also be thinking about a couple more things:
1) I'm gonna go out on a short-limb and predict a good January 2002.
2) Have enough inventory - cain't nobody sell out of that proverbial "empty wagon."
(That'll be $.25 - by check if you please.)