Happy summer selling season! This last weekend marked the “unofficial” start of summer with Memorial Day – but was quite possibly the least-exciting Memorial Day any of us can remember. Semi-lockdown continues in many places, and if you were able to be open, you probably had restrictions on how you could operate. Usually we’re all busy this time of year with the start of summer travel and – for the stores located in tourist destinations – a big increase in sales from out-of-town folks, not to mention the opportunities for outside markets. This summer, maybe not so much, given that there is still so much uncertainty on how COVID-19 and the lockdown will keep affecting us all.

On that note, we thought we’d take a look at sales data in Quail to see how shelter-in-place orders and mandatory closings affected antique stores, and how re-openings are going. For a start, take a look at the average weekly sales per store in all stores using Quail:

Our read of this chart is that even if you stayed open between mid-March and mid-April, you weren’t really making much – or conversely, if you closed your store to stay safe (or in response to a shelter in place order!) you probably didn’t miss out on much. Stores that did stay open (or ran online or curbside sales) still lost more than 70% of their income. And that chart doesn’t even take into account stores that closed entirely. On the other hand, I’m surprised (and pleased!) to say that this really does look – at least in the short-term – like a V-shaped recovery. The average weekly sales on Quail for stores that are open is back to where it was in February. Even better, it looks like sales are growing for stores at the same rate they were pre-COVID. Aside from two months’ lost revenue (which is certainly not nothing), it looks from here like antiquing could come roaring back this summer! That being said, let’s look at when stores have actually been closed during lockdown:

Interestingly enough, it looks like stores started closing about a week after sales dropped off. My best guess is that antiquers were already staying at home a week or two before official shelter in place orders forced stores to shut down. Which, given that antiquing skews toward a somewhat-older demographic on average, is pretty much what you’d expect. Of course, lots of these stores that appear open in our data were really doing online or curbside pickup sales so this is only a rough estimate of how many stores were open during the coronavirus lockdown. This also doesn’t account for differences between when different states & cities started or ended their lockdowns – which, since we didn’t get a nationwide shutdown but left it up to mayors and governors, are way too varied for us to account for!

If we look at the number of items sold, though, we see a different story. The average value of a sale more than doubled during the lockdown, from around $45 up to more than $100. It looks to us like that surprisingly strong rebound in sales toward the end of the lockdown has mostly come from big-ticket items, which makes some sort of sense – fewer browsing customers means fewer impulse sales, and those stores doing curbside or online sales were (sensibly!) focused on higher value-for-effort items like furniture or jewelry.

So, what have we been doing during this shut down? We have a handful of new features in Quail, a new Quail Register made specifically for our clerks, and a YouTube channel with some helpful videos showing how to use different features.

First up, we made some feature changes in Quail specifically for admins and owners. The Store Reports have been updated with options to view “Items” or “Totals”. The Items will display every item that has been sold in your store for the selected time period, while the totals will display totals for the store and each vendor. We added a date picker so that you can customize this report for a specific period (not just months anymore!) and as always, you can export this data to Excel.

Next up, you can now request an audit trail for your store. Lost a sale or misplaced an item? Quail can comb through your store’s history and send you a report containing every action that we’ve recorded. This report is then emailed to the administrator.

We have mentioned it before, but the Quail Register is here! This is a dedicated register for your clerks matched with a rock solid receipt printer, ready to go out of the box. All you need to do is connect a few wires, add a monitor, a keyboard, and power it on. This is one more step in becoming the best complete solution for your antique mall or consignment store. If you would like more information or would like to order one for your store please email us at support@quailhq.com. Reminder, existing Quail users save 20% on a register.

Lastly for this month, we have launched our YouTube channel. You can find our videos here: QuailHQ YouTube Channel, be sure to subscribe to get updates on new videos. We will use this to demonstrate how-to tutorials on the functions of Quail and explain features that will allow you to follow along versus reading an online instruction manual. We have a few loaded already, unfortunately for our current stores, you have already completed these tasks. However, more videos are coming and we want to hear what you think would be the most helpful to you and your clerks. Send us recommendations on future videos!