Although last weekend was the 2nd Annual Christmas in July celebration on Union Street, it was Zoe's first experience with the event! It was a fun process with lots of new lessons learned!
Friday, July 15 was the start of the event with most of the scheduled activities starting that evening. Friday was a fairly typical Friday for Zoe and we had about the same amount of traffic as we normally do on a Friday with decent weather. Since so much of the activity started at around 5 or after, I would probably plan to keep the store open a little later on that first night to take advantage of the increased number of people on Union Street. One of the cool highlights of Friday evening was having the Marines set up at different points on Union Street to collect for Toys for Tots!
Saturday contained the bulk of the action! Zoe had more people come into the store (and fill out cards to join the mailing list) than we had had any Saturday with the exception of the Grand Opening Saturday. At one point, the store was a little overwhelmed with people! The bands performed on the terrace outside Zoe and were so loud on Saturday that I had to close the door in order to converse with my customers! The Christmas Attic had lots of great activities going on throughout the day including the Summer Santa and Mrs. Clause, a Balloon Artist, a Paint Your Own Nutcracker station and Pooch Pictures with Santa! We also were serenaded with at strolling Santa playing bagpipes and one of the local bike co-ops providing free Pedicab rides (complete with Christmas wreaths on the back of the cab).
We had a number of members of different media outlets in the area. One news photographer took this picture of me with Zoe's tree and then printed it out for me.
Sunday was actually a little quieter than most Sundays. The bands on the terrace were not as loud so I was able to keep Zoe's door open. Many friends came by on Sunday including Mike and Maggie, Claire, Janice, and Karen! Janice commented that it felt like Christmas in Miami! (She would know, having lived there for a number of years)
Although some people were able to take advantage of Zoe's promotion (20% off all regularly priced items), I don't think it did anything to drive people to the business. I've already got some ideas for a promotion for next year and some events in the store as well! I thought that the event was very well organized and managed and any glitches could be easily resolved in the future. Maurissa invited us to provide our feedback on the event. When I told Jim that I needed to do a Post-Mortem on the event, he just shook his head. I guess you can take the girl out of IT but you can't completely take the IT out of the girl.
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