How does your business trend toward Christmas?

[mspecperformance]

Just wondering how everyone's sales is doing and what is traditional for you during Christmas time. We live off a smaller car count, higher ARO. We have seen a dip in spending and lower car count than in weeks past. How about you guys?

[Shopcat]

All the shops I've been involved with experience a dip in business this time of the year. I worked with one shop that set aside some advertising money to focus on this time of the year. He sent a flyer to existing clients with unsold estimates in the system a little before Thanksgiving. It was the " Check Your Sleigh Before The Holiday" campaign. It worked well. The idea was get your clients to think about all the driving that was going to happen in the next few weeks. These were the same clients that had the seeds of needed repair or maintenance planted earlier. I took alot of the dip out of the business, and like mspecperformance also improved the ARO.

[cdhowell]

Same here. But I do get a few gift certificates sold for Bedliners and side bars, etc. So it picks up pretty quick after X-mas.

[xrac]

November, December and January are always are slowest months. However, November was ahead of last year and December is also running ahead except Monday and Tuesday were stinkers. However, we have now picked up some large jobs which will help.

[Joe Marconi]

It's been rocky roller coaster for most shops. Not sure why either. You would think that the drop in gas would stimulate the economy. I think people today are much smarter and have a lot less money in the pockets.

 

This glut of oil around the world may give us an emotional lift when we pass a gas station, but we all know that there is something in the wind that will hurt us.

 

When you combine all the factors, and add in that people want to reserve some money for the holidays, it sets up a tough next few weeks, perhaps months.

 

Build now with each customer, don't let any opportunity slip by you. Be proactive, and don't wait for cars to come to you

[insomniac]

these next 2 weeks are always terrible... But January and February are usually my best months. Having transmissions as the core of my business I guess maybe its the cold breaking them...

[mspecperformance]

Cold and snow!

[insomniac]

Cold and snow!

 

yeah has to be the right type of snow tho... if it starts over night and drops a foot then everyone is snowed in and no one is driving in it. It needs to start at like 10am so everyone has to drive home from work in it... Then they blow them up, especially those Hondas and Acuras... Honda's false great reputation is the best thing to happen to the trans business. A lot of time my shop looks like a Honda dealer