….and their usually in the hands of your customers

The other day I was sat with a niche retail client and we were discussing different strategies for growing their business. Before we got onto innovations I asked him about the behaviour of his existing customer base and when he did the largest part of their trade. As it turned out, most of his customers came into the shop at lunchtime and after work. Given that, I asked him if his opening hours at the end of the day had an impact on his sales ie. were they potentially closing too early or not? Was their opening hours aligned with their customers needs? This led to a couple of weeks tracking customer movements and a little bit of data analysis. The result was that they were seeing a large volume of customers in the shop when they were closing up on certain days. Therefore, as an experiment we agreed to change their opening hours (opening later on certain days) during the week. The result is that their business is on track to increase turnover by up to 20%.

It’s funny how, sometimes, the answers to growth are right in front of us. If you took a fresh look at your business, what areas could you come up with to grow your business.

Hopefully, it’ll lead to some of those Homer Simpson “Doh!” moments. Bring it on!

Thanks to dvs for the image