What's your busiest day of the week?

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Paul Cascio

Paul Cascio

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Also, busiest week of the month? Or slowest, if that's more apparent?
 
In our shop: Saturdays are #1, Mondays are #2.

I haven't seen any pattern about which week of each month is busier. With some other type of businesses, i think it coordinates with when people receive their checks. (examples: groceries, big box retailers, casinos, liquor stores, etc) We own another business which services the casino industry, and we see a huge spike in activity around those times. (which I think is depressing)

With a luxury product/industry, I'm not so sure there is a pattern. Have you found this to be the case?

Interesting topic!

Mike
 
I feel like Saturday is busiest, but the numbers say there is no pattern.

No week of the month is different than any other week of the month.

For me, and I suspect most of us, I am so small in my gross and because any ticket can be relatively high, it's much too hard to answer these kind of questions.

A higher volume shop might be able to discern statistics?
 
In the past year the only thing that I can say is consistant is the inconsistancy. Every week seems to have a different day that is the busiest and the slowest. Even times of the days are inconsistant, we can sometimes do an entire days worth of business in 1 hour of the 11 hours that we are open each day.

Makes staffing a bitch!
 
Sat and Mon are usually busier than other days..

1st two weeks of the month are busy and last week is pretty slow...

I think is has to be due to retirement area and monthly paychecks in at first of each month.?
 
Not a real pattern here either; usually Tuesdays are my slow days/no customer days. Followed by Saturdays although I do have pick ups, so sometimes it seems busy.

Customers on Saturday come before noon, no business after that.
There is a definite pattern every day though; mornings until 2 are when people come in. I seldom see anyone after that.

As for weeks in the month; there is no pattern there either. Summer months are busier than winter months (my lowest ever was December....)
 
It is a crapshoot to try to guess which day is going to have even one person through the door.

In the good old days before the big box invasions, Saturdays used to be gangbusters.

Now Saturdays are usually dead as the proverbial doornail.

OK, now I am totally depressed.
 
sExactly what Tim said. No rhyme, reason or pattern. Some Saturdays are dead, others very busy, Mondays too.

The only consistent factor is that should they decide to show up, they do it at the same time! It never fails.
 
Ha ha ha Paul!

Yesterday was a very rainy day, so usually that's a total no customer day.

Turned out four people showed up, all within 5 minutes of each other. (2 of them were picking up, but hey, it looks good to appear so busy!!!)
 
Paul N said:
The only consistent factor is that should they decide to show up, they do it at the same time! It never fails.
Click to expand...

It just seems that way, 'cause what they really do is sit in the parking lot in their cars and talk on their phones until they see someone in the store go on break. Then they all jump out of their vehicles and make run for the door.
 
My busiest days are always 2 and 3 days before a show or art festival. Then I have the week that the college students have their projects due. The first week of the month has a spike in retirees.
 
It's very random for me too. Saturdays are consistently my slowest days. Fridays after 2:30 pm, not a soul for miles around. Mondays have become slow, too, because many of the few remaining businesses on this street are closed on Monday. For 2 days leading up to a holiday weekend, and for at least a day or two after a holiday weekend, nothing but tumbleweeds rolling down the street.

Oh, and I haven't taken in a penny since last Saturday morning at 11 AM. Not a single customer all week.
 
Paul...you jinxed us...my usual busy Sat ( today ) has been the worse Sat in over a year..one customer with an order and one pickup.....That'll teach me to respond to survrys like this (LOL )
 
Awhile back I looked over a whole year's worth of sales data. There is no day of the week or week of the month that is busier than any other. Saturday's do tend to be a little slower most of the time. I have some long-time customers that come from about 2 hours away, and that's always on a Sat. When they come, they usually bring a number of projects to be framed, and my sales always spike up then.

From everyone else's posts here it doesn't appear that most of us have any real patterns; and I do think it's the type of business we are in.
 
Saturday is usually slow but today I had 4 pieces picked up which came in 2 days ago and had to be hung today for a gallery show. 2 came in for a show that had a deadline of yesterday for a show but got an extension. 6 incoming for printing and framing for a show that has a deadline of Friday. Also had a customer that is redecorating 2 beach house rentals pick up 15 and drop off 6 more. She is hanging the 15 this weekend and will be choosing as many more next week for printing and framing. May is the beginning of their rentals so they will be needed in a couple of weeks.

Of course with all of the printing that has come in for shows in the last week I have run out of 6 ink cartridges and they won't be in untill Tuesday. Tuesday afternoon I will have a line of photographers waiting for the prints to come off the printer so they can design the framing which will need to be picked up on Friday. That will be 10 pieces printed and designed Tuesday for delivery of framing Friday. Another artist which expected to enter 2 of his pieces was expecting his printing on Monday but the show will not allow the size of the framed pieces he had selected. He now has to choose 2 different pieces since there is a size restriction. He will be returning to town Monday and will choose different pieces then.

If I have the energy April will beat my best ever month which was when I invoiced 450 pieces for the Freestyle Park job last year. I broke their 700 pieces into 3 months of invoicing. I also have the college students buying the 11x14 mat board blanks for their photography portfolios this month which will be over $1000 in those alone. The graphics students will be purchasing their matboard blanks beginning the end of the month and spill over into May. There are 2 more gallery shows scheduled for the end of this month as well which I have not seen any of those artists come in yet. Should start seeing those the weeks of the events.
 
In our old location, we used to hit thursdays pretty big. Could have closed on wednesdays and actually saved monday, and every other saturday was good. You could count on all this.

So I moved the store 5 minutes up the road, and Mondays have gotten better (only about half of the dozen frame shops in our tiny town are open mondays), wednesdays light up, and saturdays pay the bills.

More interesting is our old location, we would only get customers in between the hours of 2-3pm, guaranteed. Our new store: they come in at 5:30. And each day I feel like leaving early.

How about doubling our gross sales from February to March of this year, does that count anywhere in here? :D
(I feel sorry for you Paul, I'll hafta come by your place and buy something from you soon. You wouldn't happen to have any of that Fotiou moulding I'm looking for, do you?)
 
Odd, I recently did these very stats for our store going back since 2001. I can tell you that although it always seems random day to day, the yearly averages turned out to be very consistant. The only thing that has changed is the amount of $ being brought in.

Monday = 17% of $, 15% of transactions
Tuesday = 15% of $, 14% of transactions
Wednesday = 14% of $, 14% of transactions
Thursday = 16% of $, 17% of transactions
Friday = 18% of $, 19% of transactions
Saturday = 20% of $, 21% of transactions

These percentages were consistant year to year with only a couple of exceptions.
 
Saturdays are traditionally for us the busiest, even though only I am waiting on customers and Justin is down stairs building frames. I really should have one other "customer service rep" with me to handle all the business on Saturdays, but who can afford to hire new help these days?

Mondays also are busy. I don't know why. It seems a weird statistic to me, but there it is. Perhaps because my store is open on Mondays, as opposed to others who are closed and, therefore, those employees can go shopping on Mondays.

Also, for some odd reason, rainy days bring out the watercolor artists looking to buy our ready-made frames! A customer brought in a giclee on canvas one sleety day in December. The giclee was very well protected in a plastic wrap, but, when the customer un-wrapped it, a big drop of rain ran off his forehead and plopped right in the center of the UN-coated giclee canvas! My employee, who was waiting on him, cringed in horror as she saw the drip travelling down the customer's forehead, but was ever so happy that HE did it, not HER!

Non-sequitor, but also an observance. Rain and bad weather brings them out for us. But we're in New England, and New Englanders tend to scoff at bad weather. Not good for their art, however.

Saturdays and Mondays.

Wendy
The Art Corner
Salem, MA
 
I'm amazed how many of you are busy on Monday. My experience is that most (or at least, a lot) of our customers are closed on Monday. We're busy, because a lot of those people "closed" Monday are actually catching up, organizing their week and placing orders.
 
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