Last month was another record breaking month for The Eureka Room. Revenue was up 36% and visitors up 44%. I haven’t done the books but I suspect we might have had our first profitable month.
Our best day was Veteran’s Day, which was a rainy Friday. We seem to get the most people on Saturday, followed by Friday, and then Thursday. Sunday is frustratingly slow.
I finally got the google ads thing fixed, so I’ll stop throwing (as much) money down a hole. I also put some ads on austincityguide.com and visitaustin.org. The bird shirts mostly sold out. Definitely more popular than the logo. I ordered more shirts today. One of an improved bird shirt and another of the robot. I think the robot will be pretty popular. He’s much cuter than the bird. We’ll see.
Hopefully I can continue the lease in the current place instead of hustling to move it elsewhere. Either way, I can make it work but it would be nice to have the option to go month to month. I suspect with the interest rates rising that the landlord is less inclined to invest in improvements when they have a low maintenance tenant paying the rent on time. We’re going to discuss this month.
I’ve really not made the most out of the road traffic out front. I’ll be working on a giant sandwich board that is also a chalkboard. Hope we can get that out in the next couple weeks. There’s a lot of things that have to go right and unfortunately I’m sure I don’t know what they all are.
I’ve been working on a four page overview of the business to give to investors and sources of loans or credit lines. I don’t exactly need the money (the best time to ask for it), but if a great opportunity comes up I don’t want to miss out because I haven’t lined up the funds. In particular, I’m thinking of the opportunity of a larger building. If I could find one that was what we have now plus two larger rooms, I think that would be ideal. One could be a lab and the other a second room. At that level (assuming customers, of course) the business would be comfortably profitable and I could get back to the creative side of things.
Chelsea and Christina continue to be great. Polly was also great but got swamped with her holiday business, so she’s on hiatus for now. It’d be nice to have a backup besides myself, but I couldn’t promise many hours so we’re just doing it as we’re doing it now.
I’ve observed that when I’m there I’m very successful getting people to leave reviews. It’s the owner effect, I suppose but might be my tactics. Wish I had time to figure it out. We do have a lot of reviews now so it’s not a priority to address.
Seems to be an endless list of things to buy and do at the room, but I think we’ve just about got it now. We’ve gone through the seasons and lots of scenarios so hopefully the operational changes will slow down. I’m probably kidding myself, though.