Location, Location, Location, Open Hours

Hi, I'm Donna Bordeaux with pyopaccounting.com I am a CPA who works as an industry specialist with ceramic art studios. And I want to take a moment today to talk about a question that I hear pretty often. I often hear discussions, whether it's on the board or with my clients, where they say, I'm thinking about moving locations and I want to explore this just a little bit more because I want to make sure that you have milked your current opportunity for all it's worth before you make that big decision and tackle some pretty expensive costs sometimes to get yourself moved. Now, we've all heard location, location, location. I get that. I want to make sure you're in a fabulous location too, where you have a good amount of traffic. Now, we know there are trade offs between retail traffic and the cost of your location, and sometimes it pays. I've seen studios with the highest extraordinary rent that operate very effectively and have some really high revenues. So sometimes that can pay off. But before you make the decision to move to a new location, let's take a look at your current location. Make sure that you're utilizing it as much as you possibly can. The number one area that I see problems in are your open hours. I'll see a lot of people say, oh, I am so busy on Saturday, I can't get all the people in who want to come visit my studio. That's a fabulous problem to have. However, if you have limited hours, if you have days of the week when you are not open, you have an opportunity. You're paying the rent on that space for 24 hours a day. Okay, you have access to it. So sometimes it means rearranging your capacity to utilize the space that you currently have better. It's always an awesome thing to have more space and a new space that you can customize now that you've learned different things about your area. However, that's a very expensive promise. And it's difficult to make sure that you are able to get all those people to move to your new location too. So you sometimes take a little dive in revenue when you take that move because people don't know where you're at. They don't necessarily follow. Depending on the distance, the timing, the place, you may lose some of your customers. So let's make sure that we make the right decision before we do that. Look at your open hours. Are you closed on Monday or Tuesday? Okay. A lot of people tell me, oh, my town is just not busy enough. I just can't get people to Support me on those days. All right, what if you moved your events, your private parties to those days? If you had specials on those days or special projects that were done, maybe your board art is only done on Mondays and Tuesdays if you don't have a walk in option for that. So look at making sure that you're utilizing every ounce of time that you can in your current space before you make the decision to move based on capacity. Okay? Also, look at your space planning. If you are packed up on Saturday, are there areas where you could set up some flexible arrangements to have more seating or to squeeze more people in? Don't be afraid to to squeeze in people. Sometimes the buzz of having a tighter studio and having people closer together may generate a bigger buzz in your studio and a bigger interest in your studio. Look at all those people. There must be something fabulous going on. You could have 50 people in a small studio and look at a business next door that has those same 50 people in a really large space. It doesn't look as fun. All right, so there's something to be said about having a little more capacity, but there's something to be said about having a tighter squeeze on things too. So if you have questions about opportunities to move or expand your location or how to better utilize your current location, I'd be happy to help. Thanks a lot. I'm Donna Bordeaux, CPA with pyopaccounting.com SAM.