April - following on from busy March thread.

movietub · Apr 4, 2009

Firstly - can any passing mods please add abasic poll to this thread? I.e busier than March or quiter than March. I suspect more people would be honest if business was down if they didn't have to actually post and explain it all!

Back to April. So far we are still busy. Its weird becasue the spending shot up the 3rd & 4th week in March and then stayed at the same level through to this week. It's as if people running out of money and then being paid simply didn't occur this month. It's flat high every day.

We also had 3500 more visitors in March over Feb and already April looks to be better. And we have made no significant changes to our site - other than daily updates etc.

serrano · Apr 4, 2009

March was a very good month for us, April?, time will tell although trends have remained the same thus far. The significant difference we have noticed is that weekend spending fell off a cliff 5 weeks ago, weekday sales are up though...

That'l be shoppers on the high street looking for a bargain then..anyone else noticed similar?

Emcar Vending · Apr 4, 2009

April sales so far have been good. Not actual sales direct from the website, but through enquiries generated from the website.

It's probably down to the weak pound but I'm getting a lot of overseas enquiries, even from Australia, which is a long way to ship a vending machine

cjd · Apr 4, 2009

March was 6% up on Feb but it was 3 days longer so, all in all, a decline of 4%. We're pretty static now month on month now - although double last year at same time.

Obviously it's too early for any idea of April but it is another short month - two Bank Holidays - and also a holiday period so I would expect another slight fall.

JGSG · Apr 4, 2009

We ended up taking more in March than we did on the run up to Christmas which is the busiest time in the jewellery market. April has started even stronger for us than March and daily sales are more than double daily sales from March. I hear that its the same story for others in my market too... others online anyway.

Vending Siting Services · Apr 4, 2009

We are incredibly busy, have been all year.

We went to a Range Rover dealership today and they were bragging how they have never known it so good! They are selling around 50 cars per month, half new and half second hand ...

That is big bucks!

deniser · Apr 5, 2009

April is great so far but we're closed now for a week so it will be interesting to see how many orders we get while we are away. Plus this week before Easter is traditionally a quiet one for us.

Every month I seem to get a new country on board in large numbers as someone mentions us on a blog or forum somewhere - last month it was Finland, this month (so far) it seems to be Slovenia.

KateCB · Apr 5, 2009

March was a great month and there sees to be no drop so far; long may it continue as Easter is hitorically a poor timefor us.....

downsouth · Apr 5, 2009

well for one, I didnt expect to have to restock some lines after march sales exceded our expectations. Hope April is the same building up through May and June.

On a bad note though a supplier has just seriously hiked up stock prices, based on currency rates, higher production costs, this will seriously seriously effect all who sell these items

In some case wholesale price is now higher than last years retail price!!

movietub · Apr 5, 2009

deniser said:
April is great so far but we're closed now for a week so it will be interesting to see how many orders we get while we are away. Plus this week before Easter is traditionally a quiet one for us.

Every month I seem to get a new country on board in large numbers as someone mentions us on a blog or forum somewhere - last month it was Finland, this month (so far) it seems to be Slovenia.

We get the same. currently a lot of people from the ukraine. No doubt they are chasing quality (so they actually get their goods!) so a decent review can pay dividends.

I've been thinking that we really need to do a better job of selling overseas. Long term the biggest and best companies will be those that find solutions to all markets available to them.

We can add unlimited shop fronts to our main shop managment software so I wondering about starting off with a french version of the site, then german probably. It's a bit like starting again each time becasue each new site requires investment in someone that can speak the language fluently as well as english to manage the site!

A lot of effort of course...

deniser · Apr 5, 2009

movietub said:
We get the same. currently a lot of people from the ukraine. No doubt they are chasing quality

That's interesting as Ukraine isn't one of the countries I ship to (yet). Might add it to my site and see what the interest is.

I read recently that Russians (guess Ukrainians are similar) like to pay more money for top quality items. They have the opposite mentality to us in that they buy something as an investment and expect it to last instead of buying cheap with a view to throwing it away and buying again.

movietub · Apr 5, 2009

deniser said:
That's interesting as Ukraine isn't one of the countries I ship to (yet). Might add it to my site and see what the interest is.

I read recently that Russians (guess Ukrainians are similar) like to pay more money for top quality items. They have the opposite mentality to us in that they buy something as an investment and expect it to last instead of buying cheap with a view to throwing it away and buying again.

Therin lies the challenge of achieving multi market success! When selling online there is no reason not to sell to worldwide so long as shipping is feasible. The decision has to made as to whether the shop owner is happy with things ticking over in the uk - so long as bills get paid. Or if they want to grow the business as much as possible.

Currently setting up a profitable online shop is quite simple. I imagine however it will be much harder for startups to compete with the more established shops in a few years. Volume is the key to selling competitively online, so for the future I am keen to expand my territory as far as possible!

And those sort of ambitions will no doubt be much more challenging than what I have to manage now. But I do think now is a good time to start thinjking and planning for the explosive future of online selling.

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April - following on from busy March thread.

movietub

serrano

Emcar Vending

cjd

JGSG

Vending Siting Services

deniser

KateCB

downsouth

movietub

deniser

movietub

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