Forum Moderators: buckworks
If your biz is seasonal, how do you deal with it? Do you put aside money for the lean months (easier said than done for me)? Or do you have another business you work during the lean months? Or do you have non-seasonal widgets also?
For the past two years I have been trying to expand my non-seasonal widgets, and it has worked somewhat, but my potential customer base for the seasonal stuff is so much larger that I am tempted to just jettison the non-seasonal and go whole-hog into expanding the seasonal widget line and gear more advertising towards the seasonal widgets (which is also much cheaper). Also, physically, in terms of storage and packaging and so forth, it would be much easier for me to concentrate on the seasonal widgets, yet I don't know how many people came to my site originally for the non-seasonal widgets and then bought the seasonal ones.
OTOH, I really enjoy making the non-seasonal widgets that I sell too, and unlike the seasonal widgets, most of them are totally unique so no one can compete with me on them. So I feel real divided. I could use some feedback about what others do with seasonality and how it affects your product lines and finances.
Why not have your main site focus on what your customer base likes and then have a second site that focuses on the non-seasonal stuff?
Creative thinking with your seasonal stuff goes a long way, too. Is there a way to get people to buy in the off season? Another member here and I were talking about the fact that there seems to be a shift in how people holiday shop, with, what appears to be, more people "buying gifts for themselves" and using the holiday season as a time to buy things for themselves that they normally wouldn't. Maybe, if you are not a holiday shop, you could run some promotions along those lines during the holidays.
Summer time loss leaders are always a good thing to test too. Every merchant in the world has some dogs in inventory that they need to liquidate. Rather than dump them off randomly, save them up for the slow times. Have a liquidation sale on all of them all at once to entice your customers to your site during the off season.
Think creativly, and while you may not make as much during the off season, you might make just enough to make it bearable.
I would actually look for another seasonal widget to push with a new separate site. One with a season diametrically opposed to your primary.
For example- Snowskiing vs. Waterskiing, X-mas vs. the 4th of July, etc.
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