Trends

I just don't get it.

Every year I expect the beginning of the season to be slow, and to be fair, the first day or two usually is, but without fail May and September are my highest sales. I've checked.

On Thursday, the first day of the season, which happened to also be the last day of April this year, so maybe it doesn't count, was a good day for me. Friday? Even better. While my neighbours were struggling to reach the single digits in sales, and one was happy because she reached the double digits, I was well and truly ensconced in figures much higher than that.

In fact, and here's the weirdness, I tend to do best when it is cold and windy here in beautiful downtown Victoria. Again, I've checked.

There must be some strange mental aberration that gets people to say, "Oh gosh golly gee whillickers, it's really cold and windy out here in beautiful downtown Victoria. I should strap slabs of metal all over my body."

These people are nuts.

Aside - Yesterday, as I was getting ready for the day, I noticed my change purse was really heavy. I went upstairs and dumped all the change on the bed. "Quarters? I don't deal with quarters." So I put them all in the piggy bank. "Loonies? I deal with loonies." "You sure do", said my loving wife. (Loonies are the Canadian dollar coin.) (Isn't it cool that our currency is called the loonie? Of course, that explains why it's not worth all that much in the international market.)

I love them, but they're nuts.

So, let's take a moment and look at trends.

First, I mentioned that thing about the weather, right? Well, you see, for quite some time I kept track of the weather in my sales book, just because I was curious. Sure enough, there was this weird weather trend. Cold and windy? Sales spike. Hot and sunny? Sales spike, which made sense if I kept my stuff in the shade.  Cool metal on a hot body. Sure. I get it. Still doesn't explain the cold and windy thing.

Anyways. I tracked it for a while until I began to see the trend.

Then I decided to track something else. I had noticed that my sales figures were all over the place. Some days people were like, "Oh my God! Chain-mail!!!!", and other days people would whisper as they walked past, "Oh my God, chain-mail", as if they were commenting on something better left unmentioned and avoided on the sidewalk.

Why?

Aside - Have you ever noticed, fellow mailers out there, that many people tend to say the words "Oh look, chain-mail" when they go past your booth? They never seem to say, "Oh look, t-shirts" when they pass my neighbour's booth. I've never heard anyone say, "Oh look, nature photos", or "Oh look, pottery".Just something I've noticed.

Back to my original thoughts.

I was wondering about the varied sales numbers, so I decided to see what was different about each day. In a word, cruise ships. Ok. That's two words. But they should be one. Cruiseships.

I mentioned that I live in Victoria, BC, Canada. And here in beautiful downtown Victoria (I mentioned it's beautiful, right?) we get lots of cruise ships.

Well, we don't actually get the cruise ships downtown, although it would be amusing to watch them try to navigate the streets. They go in to Ogden Point, regurgitate their slew of passengers, many of whom head straight to Bastion Square to buy my work, or at least sneer at it.

So why the difference in days?

I was curious, so I started recording which ships came in on which days.

I went through the cruise ship schedule, yes they have it here in tourist town, and put it all in a spreadsheet. I eliminated those that came in on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, since I don't sell on those days, and got rid of those that arrived after 4 pm. That was when I noticed my trend.

Princess Cruise Lines and Royal Caribbean Cruises are like the Walmart shoppers of the tourist trade. They love the chintzy kitsch, t-shirts, "wish you were here" postcards and all.

Norwegian Cruise Lines? They're like the Viking warriors of tourism. Raiding, pillaging, looting, and spending it all on good quality armour, or at least fine armour-like jewelry and fashion designs.

Now, on the days with the Caribbean Princesses, I set up my booth a bit differently. The pink and blue scale butterflies migrate forward, along with the purply and pastel bracelets. The bronze and steel slide into the background. Flowers and cutsey fluffy rabbit-like things suddenly appear, while the big horking shirts fill up the dark corners of scary-dom.

And the next day, when the Vikings invade, all the stops come out. The heavy metal booms forward, the bunnies go scurrying for their lives, the growls and the screams resound, and the flowers are nothing more than a distant pastel nightmare.

And thus hath my sales book leveled out.

There are other trends that seem to occur, but most of them are illusory. You will often hear people say "Purple is the in colour this year" or orange is, or lilac, or fuchsia. Poppycock. That whole colour of the year trend is a joke. While it may have been true fifty years ago, when there were only a handful of magazines controlling the fashion industry, that is certainly not the case today. We live in an age where people can find what they love any time at all. They can follow their own tastes in style rather than some narrow-minded editor locked up in a dark office in New York City who picks a random colour out of a hat. That whole fashion sheep thing is a by-gone memory, in my opinion.

So, no trends there.

Again, I checked.

How, you ask? I'm glad you did, dear Reader.

You see, it only took me 26 years, but I finally realized a few years back that I could sort my bracelets by colour rather than weave. I know, I know. I'm such a guy. All the women readers are sitting there going "Duh, of course." And all the guys are going "Wow. That's brilliant."

Now I have one row of display space for each colour scheme of bracelets. I have little baggies of overstock for each colour. As the baggies empty, I make more in that particular colour. No spreadsheets. No fancy schmacy programming things. I just look at the bags nd think, "That's looking a bit low today."

And you know what? Every year I consistently sell the same ratio of colours, like four times as much purple as orange. Red and yellow? About the same of each. Black? Tons. Blue? Tons. Green? Well, maybe half a ton. Last year, when purple was supposed to be the "in" colour? No change in my sales of it. I checked. I looked at my orders to see how many bags of purple rings I ordered.

Trends.

They're interesting things. And they're worth looking into. You never know what fascinating things you'll discover.

Like my Vikings and Princesses.

Or that cold and windy thing that happens.

I still think they're nuts.