Levelling up

The bookstore was closed to instore customers from March 26 until May 14. It has now been a month since we reopened. It is interesting to see what we have seen so far.

In short, revenue is a tale in three parts:

  • The days just before lockdown were busy indeed

  • During lockdown, revenues were (unsurprisingly) near zero (the exception being online sales that we could process at Level 3, and some regular donations)

  • After lockdown revenue so far is a cautious positive. Very busy weekends are compensating for very quiet weekdays. We shall see how we go.

Before

Here is revenue by day for the 10 days before lockdown.

Normally Saturday and Sunday are our busiest days. Before lockdown, you can see that Saturday was quiet but Sunday to Wednesday were extremely busy. Stocking up before the stay-at-home times, perhaps.

Monday and especially Tuesday are normally our quietest days, but Tuesday was actually the busiest day of this period. Bookstore breakeven is about $350 a day, which gives you a sense of how busy it was.

before.png

During

Total revenue in April amounted to a princely $389 dollars, compared with last year's nearly $11k.

Here is how the three affected months compare with 2019. You can see that revenue in March ended up close to last year's result, despite having six fewer trading days, which in part shows the effect of those very busy days just before lockdown.

You can also see that May looks pretty good too, given that we didn't reopen until the 14th (although the May 2019 comparison month was not strong, noting that breakeven for a month is a touch under $11k).

After

As at June 14, we have been reopen for 31 days. And so far, although we don't have any international tourists, we can cautiously say that domestic customers are making up for the absence. There are more of them than before the lockdown, and they are spending more. We aren't generating any cash overall, but we aren't going broke any faster either.

So overall things look okay so far, and certainly better than I feared that they might be. But, as noted at the beginning, my positivity is cautious. The effect of very busy weekends and very quiet weeks is that, in recent times, about sixty per cent of revenue has been coming from just Saturday and Sunday. It does make a bookseller a little nervous about what happens if that pattern changes.