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This month’s vent comes from Dennis P. of Johnstown, PA, who is now retired, and is a retrospective vent on one very bad holiday season his store had many years ago. (Editor’s note: There’s no time limit on venting in this department.) Spoiler alert: there is a happy ending.
OUR MALL LEASE had no clauses for limited hours due to catastrophic circumstances. THE ISSUE: Special mall hours were set from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. on December 22nd and 23rd. A horrific flu affected eight of nine employees. A huge snowstorm hit. Mall hours didn’t change.
Government offices and schools closed. Virtually every entity outside the mall closed. Radio and TV ran announcements telling people not to go out — while continuing to run our advertisements to come shop.
It gets worse. It takes an hour of prep to open and the same to close. So on the 22nd, my dedicated part-time college student and I went in at 6 a.m. and got out after midnight. The second day, he could only help half a day. I ran the store and closed alone. Awful! Completely exhausted. Terrible Christmas.
That experience put a plan in motion to “get out.” After two years of market research, I bought a 6,000-square-foot building and passed on my lease option, ending 25 years of mall occupancy. Overnight I became a truly independent jeweler, a landlord, a hero to my dedicated staff — no Sunday craziness, and no more mall hours. We went from 81 hours a week to 48 hours during normal seasons. My community supported us with a grand reopening! Overhead went down, numbers went up, and the bottom line became very sweet.
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Everybody won!
P.S. I’m always grateful to the mall for its role in establishing my business and reputation. Regrettably, it entered a precipitous decline and didn’t survive — resulting in four fewer competitors for me.
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