Seasonal businesses are as much a part of summer as trips to the beach. But in south Louisiana, “summer” is long and ill-defined, as Business Report reports in its new cover package.
Tulane University business professor Peter Ricchiuti is from Boston, where warm-weather businesses really need to make hay while the sun is shining, as the proverb goes, because summer weather tends to be limited to the actual summer months. But here, a snowball stand can open months before the official start of summer and stay open months after.
“You don’t get those crisp edges to the seasons here,” Ricchiuti says.
Weather can be an unpredictable wild card for many seasonal businesses. In south Louisiana, the warm weather months largely overlap with hurricane season, notes Kent Smith, director of the Small Business Development Center at Southern University. Many seasonal businesses also contend with rapid workforce turnover, he adds.
But Smith says such businesses still offer several advantages for new entrepreneurs. During the offseason, business owners have time to prepare budgets, systems, processes and inventory before their busy season. They also can begin marketing early to maximize and focus on their target markets.
For the purposes of this collection of business profiles, Business Report defines a “seasonal” summer business loosely. It can be a waterpark like Blue Bayou Water Park and Dixie Landin’, open only on specific dates; a crawfish stand like Crawfish on the Geaux, where the length of the season shifts from year to year; or a landscaping and pest control company like GreenSeasons Lawn & Pest Services, which is open year-round but does the bulk of its business during the warm-weather months.
For all three companies—as well as Makaira Landscape + Pools and SnoMan Snowballs, which are also profiled in the cover package—it’s important to “get while the getting’s good,” says Nenette Gray, founder of Lemonade Creative Marketing.
Gray divides the life cycle of a seasonal business into three periods. Before the season, a business should be generating buzz among its hoped-for target market, which can include paid advertising and organic social media engagement. Companies might also want to consider planning a splashy event to open the season.
During the season, the business is focused on working with current customers and, hopefully, attracting new ones. The postseason can be a time for evaluating how you’ve done, possibly with the help of customer surveys.
“While you’re hibernating,” she says, “innovate.”
Read the full cover package. Send your comments to editors@businessreport.com.
