seasonal business

[Leatherneck]

How many of you have a seasonal business or notice a decline or up swing in your business during certain times of the year.

The winters are dead for me as soon as the frost sets in. It varies from year to year, but mostly after the holiday season.

During vacation the phone doesn't ring as much either. I think that effects a lot of us unless your in the tourist business.

The early spring is when it is real busy doing estimates, because after a long winter people that want, or need a fence call and want too be on the list as soon as possible.

[Evan]

Our family business (pool repairs and electronic leak detection) is seasonal. This year has been one of the most quietest years in over 20 years of operation. A/R is also a little slow too.

[Aaron Hats]

I know all about seasonality. Sometimes I feel like I'm on a roller coaster. The seasonal buying I have to do is a bear to deal with. I used to buy most hats several months in advance then figured that for the most part I could place an order and within 1-2 weeks I have the product in hand.

[Steve B]

I follow the same season as you Mak. My phone stops ringing on the 4th of July and stays slow until late August. Then it's slow again in January and February. Luckily I have a second business that I can focus on during those times and/or I can do some marketing stuff for the fence business that I can't do when I'm busy doing estimates and installations.

[billbenson]

I'm slow from nov through feb. Both due to the holidays and a lot of the products I sell I used by workers outside. They delay projects in snow country to the warmer months when they can.

[orion_joel]

Steve B - I think having a second business for seasonal businesses is probably the key to slow season proofing you business, and is also a good start towards, getting yourself multi streams of income.

When i was operating my business in full swing the middle of the year seemed to be the highest season for me, mainly because of the lay or the financial year for businesses in Australia, and also being the time that most businesses allocated their new budget. The one thing i was always trying to figure was how to level out the business a bit more, from high months of $50K turnover in the middle of the year to 4 or 5 months over just $5K turnover around December and January, it makes for major difficulty in planning anything really.

[vangogh]

There's nothing inherently seasonal about my business, but I have noticed that the summers tend to be slower for me. It's possible it's because my client's businesses tend to slow at that time of the year I catch their seasonality to a degree.

In general my business does come in waves. Some months my clients have more work for me and I'm busy non stop and other months it could be a week or two without hearing from the majority of my clients. I think it's just the natural ebb and flow. The more clients I have the more busier times and the less down times, but it always follows an ebb and flow that's not entirely predictable.

What I've started to do is develop my own projects so during the times when I have less work I can spend my time as my own client and ideally create a variety of revenue streams.

[ErinWrites]

My business is busiest after the New Year, each winter through the spring.

Then, I get another push around August as the "back to school" year starts.

I'd say mid-summer and early winter (holidays) are slowest.

I think small businesses are inspired by the back-to-school and new-year's-resolution times of year, to revamp their existing copy/marketing or beef up their advertising and push promotions.

That, or they tend to allow for more marketing budgets in the 1st and 3rd quarters???

Looks like we all have times of the year that suit our business best.

:-) - E

[orion_joel]

No matter how good the months were or how consistent they were up to about October or November, the month of December was always a slow month followed by January. With Christmas and such there often seemed to be little activity for me in B2B IT Sales.

Although if i operated a retail store i would actually expect the complete opposite because people love buying electronic things for Christmas presents.

[Ad-Vice_Man]

What about?

Have any of you ever tried expanding into a related but different industry to offset the seasonality... for instance... landscapers i know also do snow removal during the winter.