Fall Book Sale Tanked

Just a follow up to the Fall Book Sale. I was cleaning out my desk and noticed a few *saved* frantic upper-management emails that Stepzilla printed out for reference:

Stepzilla reports book sale numbers:

Total sales for this year were $31,288.52 which is less than I had hoped. 2005 and 2004 totals below.

2006: $31,288.52
2005: $53,372.31
2004: $42,459.12

Online sale totals were actually less this year than last, $4,900 vs. $4,225.75.

CEO Lady responds:

Wow—that's a big dip! ... This is such a massive drop, we certainly have to analyze things and get to the bottom of it. I wonder about the timing. I think it's a month earlier than last year. I wonder about length and notice and number of notices last year compared to this year. also....any differences in who we sent mail to; how often and who we advertised to. Something really took the wind out of its sails....the offer? the timing? the targeted notices?? ...or books are dying fast???

Stepzilla replies:

The drop seems really high to me as well which I would find almost unbelievable... I'll have IT double check those web numbers just to make sure we haven't missed something.

CEO Lady responds:

This is such a big drop that we want to be sure to analyze it from all angles: (she proceeds to list everything except the design). We definitely want to know what worked/didn't work between last year and this year so we have some guidance.

Hmmm... maybe it was the sinister feeling every time someone looked at the postcard and website--like something EVIL was staring at them and they would suffer a painful accident if they went to the sale. NAH, couldn't be...