Nemo's Six Month Assessment

Well, we have been open for just over six months. It has been an amazing ride...
We negotiated free rent for awhile when we signed our lease, and we were able to reach the break even point in about 2 1/2 months, which is exceptional!! That is based upon a 'no rent' scenario. We continued to build sales, and we were able to reach the break even point again, with rent included in the budget. Once again, that was great performance and ahead of schedule for any given retail endeavor.

On the personal side of things, our personal savings dwindled to the point that I went back to work full time about a month ago. We were without personal income for the most part from December 2006 until October of 2007. We have learned how to be frugal, and how to make the most of everything we have available to us. It has been a really good experience. Me going back to work has reinstated our personal income, but left a huge void in the schedule at the shop. We promoted Robert to Assistant Manager and increased his hours to full time, plus some (he is working about 45-50 hours a week). We also hired James and Vanessa. These coverage moves have significantly increased our labor costs, dropping us below the break even point yet again. I am excited to say that last weeks' sales reached 103% of our break even needs, including both rent and our increased labor costs in the budget. I'd like to see that kind of performance consistently, and I'm sure it will happen. Any way you slice it, Nemo's has performed beyond our expectations from the start. We have built our revenue base on quality products, excellent customer service, developing a sense of community at the shop, and by marketing the studio to various groups and events to get people in the shop and to drive sales. We have done all of this by word of mouth, and to this date we have not spent a single penny on advertising or marketing!

So where do we go from here...
We have done a great job of capturing the local business community as walk in customers, as well as growing our night time business with the photography and Photoshop classes, and by offering the studio space as a meeting room for other groups. We have grown comfortable with this level of sales, and meeting the needs of our current customer base is no longer a challenge. It is time for us to take Nemo's to the next level.
When you work for a company, it is typically not your job to be concerned about growth. It is normally your job to show up, clock in, do your thing, and clock out. Health of the company is not in your hands, beyond what you can control by doing the best job that you can. I've been thinking quite a bit over the last couple of weeks how to grow Nemo's from our current state. I have mentioned several ideas in the blog over time, but here is a synopsis of where we are headed. I honestly believe we can more than double, or even triple, our current sales quite easily, if we implement the following ideas:
1. Purchase the drive through location one block east of us, and capture the commuter crowd. US Bank commissioned a traffic study for Pikes Peak Ave several months ago and we have 80,000 cars driving by DAILY. Right now, we are capturing a whopping ZERO PERCENT of that commuter crowd. Our shop sits back from Pikes Peak Ave, with poor visibility and poor signage. Our shopping center is easy to get into, but difficult to leave. The traffic light at the exit of our parking lot takes forever... No one likes to sit at a light waiting and waiting and waiting to get out into traffic and get to work. The drive through location has high visibility, easy access, and an easy departure back onto Pikes Peak Ave with no traffic light delays. We are still pursuing this opportunity and will keep you posted via the blog on major developments.
2. Initiate and grow our delivery/cater service. We expected to develop quite a few regular customers from the Chidlaw Building directly behind us. The building houses 2000 employees. As it turns out, very few of the employees have the opportunity to leave the building during their shifts. We do get a contingent of their work force in our shop, but it is an extremely small percentage of the workforce that has the opportunity to come over. They have asked us, to the point of nearly begging, to bring coffee, pastries, breakfast burritos, sandwiches, etc to them. To accomplish this, we would need to purchase some type of cart to bring product to their building and sell it at their workplace. We would also have to increase our staffing to prep the product, and deliver/sell it. We were to the point of initiating this service when I went back to work full time. It fell by the wayside while the staffing dynamics evolved with me missing. The existing and new staff had to develop new routines and become proficient at running the shop without my contributions. They have done so, and now it is time to start stretching the limits again. We will be having discussions this week with Premiere Global and Time Warner to set up a delivery schedule and get this program moving. I think we could easily add $300-400 in sales per day through this program.
3. Whole Bean Coffee sales... While I was doing the construction in late 2006 and early 2007, Tracy was extremely busy selecting our product line. She researched both local and national vendors, ordered product samples, did quality/taste comparisons, and chose the best of the best as our product line. The high quality of our products has been instrumental in our success so far, but we have not marketed whole bean sales at all. We have a few consistent whole bean customers, but we do not even have a whole bean menu or price list developed or displayed. Our product is far superior to any offerings from local roasters (that might ruffle some feathers, but no offense is meant... we just like our product better than everything we tried locally. There are some great products offered by local roasters, but we believe our source is better...) In order to build our whole bean sales, I want to approach it in a way that builds a community feel to it, just like everything else we have done. In order to accomplish this, we are going to start having in house coffee seminars and tastings. We will be educating our customer base in a social environment. We will be preparing various coffees by different methods (french press, brewed, espresso, chem-ex, etc). The seminar will include information regarding the coffee growing region, process, as well as information about roasting. We will do these seminars in a sitting environment, and treat it as an interactive class, with foods that compliment the coffees. We will then offer a 10% discount on all coffees that were highlighted and sampled at the seminar. I don't think it will take long to create a strong following for our seminars, and I think we will see significant whole bean sales growth. I am also going to have my friend (Neil Dana) cut us a new menu board and get it powder coated (you can see old posts in the blog to see the development of our menu board system, including custom cutting of the boards from sheetmetal, and being powder coated). Getting the whole beans out in front of our customer base will also help to drive sales.
4. I am not ready to spend any money on advertising yet, but we are looking for some 'free' advertising. We have made some acquaintances in the radio industry, and we are going to start providing free product to them. They can drink our coffee, and they can also offer our coffee as prizes for the daily call in games they do. It will be a very small cost to us, and it will get our name on the radio. I am also going to get some signage made that I can post along Pikes Peak Ave. A couple of hundred dollars invested in sandwich board signage along Pikes Peak Ave should get a few commuters in the store. Once again, it would be an insignificant cost, but may have a positive effect. The third plan is to do some flier warfare. The demographics study from last year shows that there are 18,000 daytime workers that commute into the area within a one mile radius of our shop. It will not be expensive to have 10,000 fliers printed. We intend to visit all of the offices/businesses in our area, starting with the ones that are located closest to the shop. We will take fliers into the offices to leave in the lobbies/front desks, and we are also going to place fliers on the cars in the parking lots. It is time for us to branch out and get our name/location out to the multitudes that are just beyond walking distance. This will be especially effective if we get the drive through location in operation.

We have some other ideas that we are working on, that I'll discuss more later. The ideas are not fully developed, and I'm running out of time for this session.

to wrap things up, we are very pleased with how things have gone during our first six months. It is time, though, to step up to the next level. As we begin to implement these concepts, I'll keep you posted on how things are working, what difficulties we encounter, and how it is affecting our revenue growth. And overall, it is important to thank God for this incredible opportunity. It is our hope that all we do gives glory to God. We want to impact people in a positive manner, and i think we are doing that. The way we see it, Nemo's belongs to God, and we are just stewards. I believe that if we continue to approach our business model in a humble and grateful manner, and continue to seek God's will in our personal and business lives, that He will make great things happen.

Before I go, I want to thank Brad Ewing and Unseen for playing in the shop Friday night. They are incredible musicians, and it was wonderful to listen to them play. We look forward to having them return again early next year...

Take care,
JD