You can also listen to this editorial. The audio version is just below.
Maybe you raised your prices recently. Fifty cents on the large machines, maybe a quarter on the modifiers. The math was not complicated. More per cycle, the same number of cycles, more revenue at the end of the week.
Then the week ended, and the number had barely moved.
Maybe you chalked it up to a slow stretch. A few rainy days, a competitor's grand opening, a holiday that landed wrong. You had raised prices, the increase was real, and the top line was flat. So you filed it under noise and went back to work.
One owner/operator I admire did not file it under noise.
He had raised his prices, and his revenue per cycle came in flat, and something about that did not sit right with him. The increase was real. He could see it on every machine. So where was it? Instead of explaining the number away, he pulled his data apart cycle by cycle to find out. What he saw was intriguing enough that he shared the insights with me.
This is one store, in one market. The specific figures are his, and they are not the point. The pattern underneath them is, because it is almost certainly running in your store too, and it is built to be invisible.
Here is what he found.