Merry Christmas from our family to yours!
[whohit]2015-12-24 Merry Christmas[/whohit]
After we publicized Stormy Marmot’s Groundhog Day prediction in 2014, Stormy kept us on his distribution list for weather predictions.
While last year’s prediction was for a long winter, for 2015 Stormy is predicting an early spring. As retailers who don’t carry winter clothing, we are perfectly happy to hear that winter will see an early end. More sunshine and more warmth is good for pretty much everyone except the winter Olympics.
Looking at the news feeds, it looks like the groundhogs across the country are fairly evenly split when it comes to how much winter is left. Weathermen tell us that technically, because Groundhog Day, is a cross-quarter day, there is unconditionally six weeks of astronomical winter left for the northern hemisphere, but this is independent of warm and cold phases in the climate.
Climatologists are predicting 2015 to be an El Niño year, meaning warming of the ocean waters, resulting in warmer and dryer weather for the year.
Historical statistics show that groundhogs are about 40% accurate in their predictions. Weathermen make the right call about 75% of the time. This of course reminds us that as retailers we are deeply focused on economic forecasts and traditionally the economists are only right when using a rear-view mirror.
We would be amiss not to mention that you can order a marmot or a groundhog from us and start your own weather prediction service.
Thank you for your prediction, Stormy! We’re hoping that good weather flows your way!
[whohit]2015-02-02 Marmot Predicts an Early Spring[/whohit]
As a small retailer we are always left to wonder how we compare to the rest of the country. How are our sales compared to similar stores? How are our sales compared to the regional average? Are we doing as well as the entire country? Are we managing to stay ahead of the big chains that can crush us if they simply roll over? Or are we falling behind in any of our critical categories? In a way being a small retailer is akin to “Keeping up with the Joneses”.
With National Games Week effectively over, a question that we received was how do the games we sell stack up against the list that we published. That’s a great question! And the answer is that we’re nowhere near being average. It seems that a lot of our sales are far more specialized and that’s probably a reflection of the many quirky and eccentric customers that we have the pleasure of serving.
Here’s our list of best selling games. While there are some striking similarities, there are also some significant differences and the order, without a doubt, is very different.
Rank |
Game |
1 |
Dice |
2 |
HeroScape |
3 |
Settlers of Catan |
4 |
Monopoly |
5 |
Apples to Apples |
6 |
Ticket to Ride |
7 |
Tantrix |
8 |
GURPS |
9 |
Dwarven Forge |
10 |
Uno |
11 |
Chess |
12 |
Chekit |
13 |
Arkham Horror |
14 |
Power Grid |
15 |
Carcassonne |
16 |
Railroad Tycoon |
17 |
Munchkin |
18 |
Trivial Pursuit |
19 |
Cranium |
20 |
Politicards |
Our goal is to serve the needs of our customers. Often we will will go on a hunt to find the right vendors to deliver the products our customers are looking for. After all, we are here specifically for our customers. Thank you for shopping with us on Small Business Saturday and on all other days of the year!
[whohit]2014-11-29 Small Business Saturday[/whohit]