This is 3Bits & Change, an email about building a service and retail business. This one was written to the sound of the shop door open on a Sunday afternoon.
Happy Spring in Minnesota. It snowed Friday night. We went to the baseball game. Burr. By Sunday afternoon it was 60 degrees and I opened the shop for a few hours to see how Sunday shoppers might react to the door being open for a bit. It worked.
“Are you open? I was here earlier. I brought my knives back to the car. I’m going to go get them. Whew-hoo.”
“So great to find this shop. I did not know where to go from a high-quality food tweezers.”
The learning continues. We’re going to rearrange the schedule and get open for a few hours on Sundays soon. We’ll make the real estate work harder.
I had a solid and lengthy meeting with a design firm last week. We’re looking for some collaborators on a new iteration on the shipped sharpening product. They might be it. We’ll see. Development of our “that can’t be done” shipping label still seems feasible. Here we go.
//no.1 - Let’s try junk mail again
The top marketing effort by response rate and cash efficiency for the Wayzata store was direct mail. We’ve not done any for Edina, until now. We’re giving the strategy a go again, starting last weekend.
Cards like the above were delivered to addresses around the shop on Thursday-Friday of last week. There was an offer on the back side. We’re seeing positive results. Trade the card for a free knife. Simple enough. Folks come with knives or leave with olive oil. And a few are just here for the free things -eh.
It’s interactive. Folks need to use a scissors to remove their knife from the window by cutting it down. It’s more memorable too!
As of Saturday the promotion had covered it's printing and postage cost on the first 1/3 of the effort in two days. We’ll see what the final cost is when counting the cost of the orange knives in a few weeks. But, it’s looking good so far.
We’ll run this effort for two different sets of addresses in the coming weeks.
//no.2 - Let’s meet in Iceland!
When a good friend asks to meet up… by all means, find a way to swing it, and say yes!
My son and I boarded a Iceland Air flight on a recent Wednesday night and returned on a Sun Country flight out of IAD on a Monday night. We circumnavigated iceland counter clockwise in 5 days, and got back home.
It’s safe to say that should be a 7-10 day trip. And, it’s dramatically increased my desire to travel to Norway, Sweden and Finland. It was fantastic. Go.
Aggressive Nature.
I thought it’d be pleasant. The forecast said 25-35F. I brought a thinner insulation layer and a shell. That was a mistake. Please note, the weather can change every 3-11 minutes on the island. You can be on a dry sunny road going 50 mph and over the next 3 minutes go around a fjord, or over one, and the road will go from packed snow to pure ice with snow flying horizontally in sustained winds over 40 mph. It’s no joke nature there.
We were ~30 miles from the Arctic Circle. I’ll never go again without consulting the now well developed packing list including various layers of down, specific gloves and a sweet hat. The horses don’t seem to mind the weather. They’ll stand in all of it and simply wait for it to pass. They’ve practiced. There is a lesson there.
//no.3 - New Class, for lunch, on Wednesdays
See one. Do one.
These are the first two steps to learning new thigns. The third is to teach what you learned.
We have great classes. One variable I’d like to tinker with is to see attendees a few times in order more fully develop skills. So, we’re building Power Lunch, a course that happens over four Wednesdays, for Lunch.
We’ll all have the chance to learn some skills. Go home… and practice and then come back and learn again. I think there is a better chance for skill building in this environment vs. one-off versions of classes. At least that’s what we’re seeing when students take their second class with us.
More on Power Lunch here.
Join us and then you can pick to whom you’ll teach the skills you learn.
Sum
Progress is being made. Junk mail still works. Go to Iceland. Build your skills.
On Your Way
Enjoy learning!
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