Business Hours.

I generally expect most retail places to be open starting at 10:00am but honestly I rarely shop at that hour. A more comparable operation to yours that I frequent would my my local homebrew store which does keep some fairly odd hours (12-6 Tue-Sat, closed Sun/Mon) and I have adapted to them. But there aren't exactly major retailers putting pressure on them to have more flexible hours. Only competition they face is from internet sales.

For my restaurants we keep different sets of hours for different days, we stay open later on Fri/Sat and open an hour later Sun mornings, but that is pretty SOP for that industry so consumers are used to the idea. We used to adjust our hours to be open even later during the summer but scrapped that idea about 10 years ago.

When I had a fish tank and would shop for either fish or dry goods, it would almost always exclusively be on the weekends. The last thing I wanted to do say on a Tuesday work night was acclimate fish to my tank. The only exception to this was an emergency need, such as blown pump or light. Imho being closed Sundays is a bad idea.

Corndog_sl said:

Yeah my sales figures definitely show that being closed Sundays would cost me a lot of money. That being said, people seem to do all their Sunday shopping Noon till 3pm or so. Maybe a touch earlier if I was open earlier.

Click to expand...

If I were you I'd do 12pm-5pm on Sunday, as this isn't an unusual timeslot to use. On another note, one local fish store did something really cool to drum up business by creating "children's educational sessions". Basically parents sign up their kids, and you hold a cool/fun two hour "teach-in" where you teach kids about fish, coral, oceans, how to setup/clean a basic Hagen tank, etc. From by observations, it must be making them some decent money as they're still holding them a year later with plenty of kids attending.

The 'hard' evidence is most of the story. You already know that. Track revenue during every hour of every day and figure it out over the long haul.

HOWEVER, there are soft benefits that youmay, and I say may only because it seems you are in a niche market, have to consider. If you have mostly repeat customers, you need to follow the patterns of your biggest customers. If they come in once a month during one of the times you'd no longer be open, would that cause them to go to another store and would you lose only that $25 revenue OR would you potentially lose a customer?

Give you two examples for me personally:

1) I almost always bought everything at one music store in my last town. I wouldoccasionallybe forced to buy something at Guitar Center or another place because they had small business hours. However, in that market segment, loyalty, knowledge and relationships are worth FAR more than $14 or getting pissed off once because youreallywanted something but had to go to a big box. I still buy (and have shipped) items from there across the country, because the place is amazing. I still visit when back in town.

2) About 3 months ago I needed an ink cartridge to finish an important document in color at work because our color laser ran out of cyan and of course the courier hadn't dropped the cylinder off in time and OF COURSE someone had used all of the HP cartridges for the single ink-jet randomly in the office from the night before. I went out in the morning to go to Staples and they didn't open until 9 AM. I did a half-panic until I realized, duh, I could just get it at the 24 hour Walmart because it was still a new model printer. I just simply came to the conclusion Staples is a shit heap now and doesn't help me at all so I completely avoid it both personally and professionally now. They've lost a regular customer because their inconvenience in my hour of need made me realize there wasn't value there. It's not like it was even my money, it all goes on a corporate card. It's 100% convenience business and they just no longer are.

So... figure out what the price is. There's a reason Home Depot/Lowe's open at ridiculous hours in the morning even though there may only be 2-3 contractors who show up per hour. It's not because of the revenue, they are losing money if you look at the 'hard stats' but guess what, it's worth the price to open the store to retain those customers. Are you a niche business people only go to when they need the thing the box stores don't have, or are you a niche store people only go to a box store when they absolutely have to because you are out of stock/closed/etc.

I wouldn't go to a small business retail spot after 6 PM because I would just assume that they were closed. At least where I live in Seattle, it seems like all the small stores close at 6 so I wouldn't both to keep track and realize that the fish store was different. 12-5 on a Sunday seems reasonable, closing entirely... meh.

You might want to pick 1-2 days where you are open even longer (like 9PM). I hate it when stores are open till like 5-6. I can't possibly make that unless I don't eat. So I'm either going to go to your store on the weekend or say fuck it and never go at all. This isn't with regards to pet stores but juts a general principle.

Corndog_sl said:

Interesting, I do have by appointment up at the moment and the new hours haven't started yet. I think a drop box would work as a phone number would be problematic. People would call all the time for advice. As it is right now customers call while at competitor stores asking for advice because the store they are in can't help them... Really annoying.

Click to expand...

Or do a web form. QR code and url for the oldtards

lendarios_sl said:

But if they are calling you for advise. Isn't that a good thing? At least they trust you, maybe a that time offer a price match to what they are asking u about.

Click to expand...

I used to work under the table at a paintball shop. We'd get calls like this all the time from people trying to decide which gun or equipment or paintballs to buy online instead of from us. My standard line was always "it is really tough to explain over the phone, but just come on down I'd be happy to show you!" If you figured 0% of these calls would result in sales for us, it worked surprisingly well. I'd guess 1 in 4 actually came in and most of the time once they were in store I'd make a sale.

I would suck it up once and help them. After that dunk them in the piranha tank