Day One is Complete and We Survived with Happy Customers

Yesterday, Day 1 of our Swarovski blow-out, actually went well, even if we stumbled a bit. I had everything ready in case we had a crowd and people needed to self-shop, but people were spaced out pretty well, and they worked really well with Chickie. Our major sale of the day was from a long-time customer who basically pre-ordered because she knew she wouldn't have the time/ability to shop during the sale days because of work conflicts. She spent more than $800, so that made a good day a guarantee. 

There are so many colors and finishes on Swarovski 
crystals, and we have A LOT of them. In addition, there 
are a ton of specialty shapes, and we carry most of those 
also. It's a deep inventory and we'll be figuring out ways 
to sell it through the end of the year. 

Things started a bit slowly, but that was OK too. We had room to breathe. I'll be sending out another email either later today or early tomorrow to remind people about the sale. People ended up being spaced out pretty well. Chickie had put together a loose-leaf binder that was extremely helpful, and the fact that we ended up being able to go one-on-one with our customers was also excellent. I have a ton of items to clean up before we open today, but that's fine. I hope the rest of the week goes as smoothly. 

Ringing customers out with a BOGO sale is 
also a bit tricky, but Chickie managed like 
a charm. Basically, there would have been 
no sale without Chickie. 

Of course DH was of no help at all. He was busy grumping about this or that, and he did cut up some larger leather pieces into sizes that our customers seem to prefer. Still, he had a stack of leather on the countertop, sometimes folded, sometimes scattered, and he would leave it there while he checked on something else, or did something else, for hours! Very messy looking. GRRRR

It could have been a disaster, but people were well 
spaced out, and our one pre-order went smoothly 
as well (and was responsible for more than 50% of 
the day's proceeds). Hopefully the rest of the sale 
will go smoothly too. 

But, the important thing is that we survived our first day of the five, and hopefully we'll be a bit better at helping those customers who come through the door today. I suspect that our Friday and Saturday sales will be much busier, but that's just fine. We actually needed a slower day to get comfortable with what we were doing. I might have wasted a lot of preparation, but then again, maybe it's just fine. We'd rather work with customers one-on-one than just fill shopping lists anyway. LOL Have an excellent Wednesday. Just a reminder, Aearwen, I'm working today so no chat this week. But we'll catch up next week FOR SURE. Slave Ukraini.