Dissolving our physical store and focusing on online sales next year

If the trend now continues, we will soon close our storefront and focus on getting customers online. Nowadays, most of the customers look for products in the internet first before they actually visit the store – and this is probably true for most businesses. Online selling has become the fashion. This year we have been planning to dissolve our storefront and move to an isolated location where rental fee is 50% lower. Initially, we are planning to expand our small computer room in the house but we lack the space for production. Unlike many of the balloon decorators, we inflate 90% of the balloons prior to bringing them to the venue, avoiding the electricity charge, which is usually charged to the customer after the event.

Cebu Balloons Building

Most of the clients that visit our store have seen our balloon decoration packages online already. They are just there to get ideas on what to add to their upcoming party or pay the bill. Because this is usually the case, we can just schedule to meet up the clients in a much convenient place such as the malls or coffee shops. Based on experience, customers no longer need to go to our storefront and transact. They can just communicate with us through our FB messenger, or send an email or contact us through cellphone or landline. For the payment, they send it through remittance centers such as Palawan Express, M. Lhullier, Cebuana Lhuillier, RD Pawnshop, LBC and Western Union. Some clients also prefer to “bank transfer” or “bank deposit” their money; we have BDO, BPI and UnionBank.

CB Payment Options

Having a storefront gives the customer the confidence on who they are transacting. Trust is very important in any business. Giving the clients the option that they can ran after you if ever you do not fulfill your duties as balloon decorator gives them the confidence to get your services.

We have been in the industry for almost 5 years now and a number of customers have known us already. Most of them even do the selling for us by recommending us to their friends. We have also gained a number of corporate clients who continue to trust us with their balloon decor needs.

Because we think that most of the customers prefer to transact online and just do meet ups for big events, we will soon dissolve our storefront and focus more on online selling. We are thinking of putting up an e-commerce website so the clients can transact 24/7. The money that we will save from the store rental will be for online operations and additional budget for advertisements.

The dissolution of the store could have been this year. Upon talking to the property owner about going out, he enticed us to continue with the rental at a discounted rate. We decided to stay for one more year and reassess the situation early next year, a few weeks before our end of contract. If we continue to get low sales from pure walk-ins, we will close the storefront and focus on online sales.