Pattern Recognition

I've been looking for patterns in our sales data recently (actually I've been doing so from the beginning, but patterns have only started to emerge recently).

Two weeks ago the store's identity shifted from "that new place with some stuff no one else has" to "the secondary option." Please allow me to explain. I was looking at how sales break down by day. Since day one Saturdays have by far been our busiest day. Over the last two weeks the gap has closed quite a bit, but to this day 3 of our 5 best days and 6 of our 10 best are Saturdays. Over the last few weeks, however, Fridays and Mondays have begun to catch up, with Wednesdays close behind. The obvious thing that jumps out at me is the fact that Wednesdays are not nearly as busy as I had anticipated. Which leads me to determine that we are primarily considered a secondary option by most of our clientele. I've had several customers come in looking for a title that their primary shop sold out of (we almost always have it, which makes us look good) and generally looking to pick a trade or graphic novel as well. We're filling a niche, which was the goal to begin with and I'm actually pretty happy that business is as evenly distributed as it has been the last few weeks. Sure Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays this place seems like a ghost town, but 4 out 7 works for now.

The other trend is the increase in the number of singles sold. Our trades and graphic novel sales have held fairly steady once we got through the first two or three weeks, but our singles sales the last two weeks is almost equal to our singles sales in the first month and a half. Things are trending in the right direction, now its just a matter of figuring out the right way to step on the gas and get us to the level where we can actually pay the bills.

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