Seasonal Business

I guess all businesses have a seasonal ‘ebb and flow’ to their year, some kind of fluctuation in sales or activity that can be tied to the different times and seasons of the year.

For those of us with tourism-based rural businesses located along the Blue Ridge Parkway, Winter is generally our ‘down time’, our slow season. Most Parkway businesses close officially on October 31st each year, although I don’t know anyone who can’t be persuaded to stay open an extra week or so if Autumn leaf season has been long or delayed, due to cold and resulting color changes. Parkway businesses will keep their doors open for, and keep taking money from, the droves of visitors driving our back roads during the Fall season - as long as they keep coming. Some with strong holiday mail order businesses stay open through Christmas, and then close down. Still others stay open year round, but with reduced hours.

And then there are other businesses around here that only come to life for Christmas or Winter season only, like the Christmas Tree industry or Skiing. “Pick and Choose’ or ‘U-Cut’ Christmas tree farms are more popular than ever here in western North Carolina in November and December. I can’t say the same about skiing though. Although some areas of Appalachia were at one time historically popular during Winter as ski areas, more recently ’ski season’ has pretty much amounted to a few weekends of weather cold enough to manufacture a few flakes of snow. Any time I mention the movie, ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ it’s amazing how quickly people seem to change the subject or get quiet. I guess no one wants to consider the affect of climate change on seasonal businesses in the Blue Ridge mountains….so we’ll save that for another time. And another post.

Sections of the Blue Ridge Parkway at the highest elevations are often closed during Winter season months due to ice that rarely melts under areas shaded by pine trees. These sections of the Parkway are especially treacherous, all those beautiful overlooks without substantial curve barriers. So from November through April, most people couldn’t get to their favorite tourist businesses even if they wanted. But since so many fewer families travel the Parkway during Winter season months, there simply aren’t that many people inconvenienced by the closings.

And so an economic slowdown is imposed on all of us along the Parkway.

Years ago, when we started our handmade soapmaking business, this slowdown time of year was a time to panic. A time to be fearful. Few people - and few businesses - have to learn to endure months with little (or no) income, and also learn to view that seasonality as ‘normal.’ And it took me a while, because I used to worry and wonder: Would our customers come back?

But after ten seasons, we know that they do come back. Year after year after year. And so we’ve also learned it’s especially important to use our down time to prepare for our customers’ return in the Spring.

These days, slowdown season is really only a slowdown of in-store visitors. We don’t shut down and go to Florida or travel cross country for a few months, like many of our neighboring tourism businesses do. Our website sales are year round, as is our wholesale business, and so packing and shipping of orders is part of our daily routine all twelve months of the year. Although we’re not open daily with regular hours during the Winter months, we are happy to open the shop to customers for appointment shopping.

Without question, the most important part of slowdown season is that it is a time of special projects. A time to focus on making decisions that require careful consideration and time to ’sleep on it’ - like changes in product packaging or price increases. Time for projects that demand concentrated energy and creativity in planning - like getting this Backroads Business blog up and running. Time to offer related services that that can be offered in different forms - like intensive week long and weekend handmade soapmaking workshops.

And it’s also a time for property renovations. Because what self-respecting vacationer comes to the mountains to ‘get away from it all’ and wants to deal with all that noise and dust and mess caused by construction and renovation? If they wanted to deal with drywall dust and the smell of stain and paint drying, they could stay home and renovate themselves.

And so what’s one way we can show our customers how much we love them?

We can schedule our renovation projects during OUR vacation time!

Tomorrow we begin renovation to expand our web order packing and product packaging area. This will also allow a ‘re-assigning’ of other rooms’ to various business functions. As any business grows, your procedures and processes change. In order to stay efficient (and sane), the physical layout has to change too. And in our case, as our web & mail order operation has grown, we need more space to store product, pull and pack orders, and ship. Yet we still need enough retail space for our drop in customers to browse and select products when we are open full time during tourist season, May through October.

This Spring we’ll see a reshuffling of the current retail area. I’m thankful all the soap is still made out in The Soap Shed, and we’ve got plenty of room out there to continue expanding as needed. Soon it will be time to play ‘musical rooms.’ I’ll move two rooms of displays and furniture to sit out on our wraparound deck, taking the place of all those rocking chairs that customers enjoying their mountain vacation were lounging in just a couple months ago. When it was about 50 degrees warmer!

I think we’ve got it rough sometimes juggling our seasonal business, but then I read about a fireworks factory whose product is only in demand a few days of the year in July! Talk about a need to learn how to budget year round and survive seasonal sales slumps!

Downtime or slow time for a seasonal business can truly be a wonderfully creative time. What about thinking of how you might diversify the products you offer? How about brainstorming to see what other markets might be able to use what you make? Maybe there’s a new niche out there that would be able to use your product, if you made minor or cosmetic changes to ‘fit’ that new niche? Perhaps it’s time to write and print a new brochure, or to take product photos to update your website.

I don’t usually find much discussion about running a seasonal business and coping with its challenges. There is much, much more to say about running a seasonal business. So I will explore more, in other posts.

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