Slowest Month in Forever!

[jociejones]

I sell used brand name clothing online and often start at 99 cent price points. I have been busy, especially in Feb and March and now my sales have absolutely dropped right off. I rarely sell at 99 cents and there have been a few lately. 
Any ideas? Is April a traditionally slow month or am I doing something wrong? 

[femmefan1946]

Are you keeping month to money records?

Are you sure this is the 'slowest month ever' or are sales off just this past couple of weeks?

You are experienced enough to know that there are going to be ups and downs. I find I spend a lot of time on Mondays and Tuesdays shipping, but rarely anything on Thursdays or Fridays, for example.  And I may as well close down in December.

If the 99 cents openings have stopped working, maybe it is time to raise the openings, especially since your customers seem willing to go to $20-$25 to buy.

Or add a Buy It Now option at that $25 price point. Still a very good deal on LuluLemon and better for the customers who wants instant gratification.

[jociejones]

I keep very accurate records and so far this month my profits are cut in half of that than the previous few months. I found it odd for this to happen in April.

I think I may take your advice and switch up the auction/BIN style and see how it goes. 

[reallynicestamps]

I wasn't thinking in such short terms. I was thinking of over the past few years.

When I was working for my husband (B&M) he would get upset when sales were off for a few days. Well, we had pretty high overhead.

So I started keeping daily records of sales in the daybook, then weekly, then monthly then annually.

All written because this was the 90s. I wasn't using the computer at that point.

So if DH moaned about sales being off, I could show him that the past few days were off but we were still on track for the month and sales were higher than last year or the year before at this point.

Our best months tended to be January and early summer, but our worst was December. We never had any Christmas rush.

We also found that sales/ discounts did not increase the number of transactions, only reduced our income per transaction. 

Useful exercise. YMMV.

[38e_avenue]

It always is slowing down starting the end of March here, but not this year - this will be surely my strongest April ever. 

[38e_avenue]

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@reallynicestamps wrote:

When I was working for my husband (B&M) he would get upset when sales were off for a few days.

I learned to live with the steadily up and down sales - here is my April