I own a houseplant shop in Oxfordshire and have had a fairly rough few years ( luckily I have other incomes for mortgages etc)
The last few week have been basically dead and I have been pretty much paying to be open.
Is anyone else in a similar situation? How do you deal with it?
I’m in the brink of walking away but I have literally bleed for this place!
When I managed commercial carwash, we would sometimes go dead during the slow season. I mean like no customers for half hour or so.
When this happened, I had the employees run their personal cars through the wash and then detail them out front in the finishing area along the frontage street.
Don’t you know it, within minutes customers would start pulling into the property.
In other words, a busy business tends to attract customers.
No one standing in line at ice cream stand, no cars in parking lot, maybe ice cream isn’t that good for the price.
Here in the States, there is company call Liberty Tax Service.
Firm is known for having people dress up in bright green Statue of Liberty costume and stand on sidewalk and wave at people and they wave back.
Company says this provide highest ROI on advertising and promotion.
Have a “give plant away” day for charity.
Put a whole bunch of displays out on the sidewalk. Hire someone to dress up like a crazy plant or flower like Peter Gabriel from Genesis and wave at pass-by traffic.
Offer a free seminar on plant care basics.
Hope this helps more than throwing stuff up against a wall.