HELP! Opened a store and needing soe advices

[matiasmarinaro]

Hello everyone! My name is Matías, I am from Argentina, and came to Miami Beach, Florida to open a Gifts Shop.

The store offers exclusive gifts and gadgets, and is located at washington avenue, a high transit street.

The thing is that, as usually happens, when starting up the business, some extra costs appeared, and now that the store is working I have a very limited budget.
I opened a week ago, advertised on google ads, social media, flyers in lots of hotels, stores, restaurants, etc. And this week, until today, we have sold less than $200 (And Miami always have a high transit on halloween weeks). I know that no business will start producing just after starting, but as I mentioned, my budget is REALLY low at the moment, and my question is, being a so touristic city, and being working in a busy week, Should I wait to the sales rises or just stop investing and consider it a "Dog" business?

Hope you can give me some ideas, and thank you in advance!!
Have a nice week!

[Paul]

Do you mean high transit as in foot traffic or vehicle traffic?

A gift/gadget store isn’t ever going to be a destination store or even a repeat/loyalty customer opportunity like a restaurant or clothing store. It is an impulse store. You have to live or die with the traffic passing your shop and the impulse sale.

Forget about media advertising, put it all in your store front window display. Banners, lights, sale signs, grand opening signs etc. Put a clown or character outside in a costume, run a ridicules sale on popular loss leaders. Don’t worry about profit margin on them, just get customers off the street and in your door for now!
Inside use plenty of point of sale signage, beautiful filled displays and super service.

Retail is an art and a science. Too many think that just loading up shelves and opening the door will be successful…you MUST GRAB THEM right off the street and design and strategize your selling area to get them to buy.

[matiasmarinaro]

thank you Paul, you are right, we started to give more attention to the passing thru market and really gives better results than spending o online ads. Almost the season is rising since last week.

Our next plan is to start developing E-Commerce to reach other markets.

Thank you for your help!

[BusinessBySusan]

A gift shop is not the type of business that has constant recurring customers.

It's earmarked for tourists and that's about it.