What are you doing to stimulate and encourage midweek business?

Debbie Dusenberry
Curious Sofa
Kansas City, KS

To stimulate midweek business I send out an email blast to hit sometime on Tuesday. We follow through by keeping the shop blog updated with pictures of fresh merchandise, store events or a discount coupon to encourage customers to come in and shop. Mentioning other businesses or happenings in your area works well too as it gives people more than one reason to make the trip downtown. Considering partnering with a neighboring business to encourage midweek shoppers by running a Two For One type of promotion.

Gene Oberhauser
Imagine Gift Store
Warren, RI

We view our store as busy everyday, even if it is a bit slow. Gift store owners are known as an optimistic bunch. Having a positive outlook is contagious and will prove to be helpful in generating more traffic and sales. We have a Sidewalk Special every Wednesday from noon—4 p.m. Inside, one of our major lines is promoted near the front of the store. We have started using a single helium balloon outside as an attention-getter; it works! We try to make our location stand out. "Open" flags, balloons, music, even a neon "open" sign are among the attention-getters that we use. These visuals create more sales if done tastefully. Soon we will be having music outside the entrance. We stay with the basics and never have constant sales like some stores. Sales get to be ordinary and treated as "no big deal" by the customers if over-done. A mid-week email is under consideration and looks promising. With more and more stores closing on Mondays, we are open and have found this to be a golden opportunity to attract new customers. ‘Get up, get out and be active’ is our motto for improving business.

Pam Hammond
Paddington Station
Ashland, OR

Certainly we are looking to enhance our local base, who are the ones that mostly shop with us during the week. We have done that predominantly by enhancing our preferred customer program and making sure the customer knows the premiums that are available to them for joining, which is free to do. We just started a birthday club offering $5 of free merchandise, and we’ve been amazed at how many people are coming in [because of it]. We can tell it is going to be a favorite. We still continue our evening hours; we are open till 8 o’clock, which is a big plus for people going home from work. We do get people shopping at lunch since we’re located downtown, so we make sure with our shift change that we are nicely solid staff-wise at noon so we can handle any groups that come through. We’re starting to have events; we have our first one for the first day of spring. We’re having a little party in the afternoon going into the evening with crafts and food and 20 things that are 20 percent off for the 20th of March.