Fingers Crossed
Both Monday and Tuesday at PJP Nifong were ridiculously slow for us. I was all set to blame it on the heat, the start of MU, and the never ending pandemic, because those are some solid justifications for sluggish sales. But then today, we rallied back with a really strong day…so who really knows. August is always a weird retail month, global health crisis notwithstanding. We have a lot on order as we round into the last few days of the month, so we are planning for a strong finish before we roll into the start of fall. Here’s a few items of note:
We have new fall merchandise arriving every day, plus people are starting to order pumpkin pie…and so we became the worst versions of ourselves: we ignored that it was 90 degrees this afternoon and started decorating the store for fall. I judged myself for agreeing to haul out all the pine cones and ceramic pumpkins, but then I noticed JoAnn’s had basically clearanced out all their fall and they are steamrolling right into Christmas.
There is a national gooseberry shortage. Like everything else that is out of stock, the alleged cause is COVID. (I’m still completely unclear how a virus has caused a shortage of coins, but I’m no monetary policy expert.) However, I would qualify myself as a gooseberry expert and I don’t see the connection. I even Googled “why is there a shortage of gooseberries” and there are no results. (Google did autofill to “why is there a goose in my yard?”, which seems like a more interested question…though I don’t know why you would stop to ask Google about a goose in your yard.)
There is also continues to be a large shortage of large Kraft bags. I finally got fed up and agreed to order 10,000 bags with our logo on them. Guess what? Production is delayed because of COVID. Gaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh.
But locally, we partnered with Fast Yowi for a new round of PJP t-shirts because it has been a hot minute since we’ve had in any in the store. We ditched the all black t-shirt and went with Comfort Color shirts in fun colors with the pink logo on the upper front and on the back, the shirts say “It’s All About The Matriarchy”. It’s a nice change from the norm and I have a feeling they will sell out super fast. They should be ready for purchase in the store on September 8th (which is also Jeanne’s birthday AND the first day of school for CPS, except COVID will likely ruin that plan too).
And if you can believe it, we are just two weeks shy of celebrating our first year at our Nifong location. Time flies when you are making a lot of pie, right? And since then, we’ve tracked just over 23,000 sales transactions, which seems CRAZY to consider. We’ve got some fun stuff in mind for our first year celebration….and maybe an announcement or two about what comes next for PJP. Fingers crossed.
