Store Meta Question
Here is where proposed ideas for the future of the store. In other words, How Should The Store Grow?
Current Planned Improvements Timeline
- Before Thanksgiving (date pending) - Carpet removed. Floor looks like rest of building (old fir).
- Before Christmas - shelving replaced with either wire racks and/or custom shelving a la shop people.
- After Christmas - Possible refinish of floors to make them *nice*
Boutique Thrift Store
Make the thrift store into a boutique. Reasons for doing this: Make more money per transaction. Make the store more appealing so people are more comfortable spending larger sums of money on stuff.
- Advantages
- Disadvantages
Multiple Locations
Having more locations has one obvious benefit: We will have more customers to sell stuff to. This is not yet possible because we can't keep stuff stocked in out current store that people really want.
- Satellites with same basic stock
- Advantages
- Disadvantages
- Satellites with a different stock
- Advantages
- Disadvantages
- Considerations for a store/drop-off site (this might be better as a separate page if it seems like we are going this direction)
- Type of store might be impacted by the neighborhood/suburb it is located in.
Two Different Stores
Perhaps using Goodwill as a model. That is, a "retail" store and a "bins" store. There are two reasons to do this 1) Increase reuse and 2) separate "bins"-style customers from "retail"-style customers (this also means separating parts geeks from whole-system buyers).
- Advantages
- Disadvantages
Brainstorming Impact of the Weirdness
The weirdness will have an unknown effect on the size and composition of our stream. Here are some possibilities:
- Size of stream goes up, quality goes down (more stuff that no one wants)
- Size goes up, quality goes up
- Size mainly unchanged, quality goes up
- Size mainly unchanged, quality goes down
- Size goes down, quality goes up
- Size goes down, quality goes down
And it's the economy stupid
- The economy is a likely basket case. What kind of impact will this have on our customer base?
- If this is merely a recession then people will probably substitute whole system purchases for parts to upgrade
- If this is a second great depression then the sales will likely go down (!). We would have to have a plan in place to deal with the change in revenue if this occurs.