Gas Prices Got Your Bottom Line?

If you’re a small business or entrepreneur you can bet your bottom dollar that the high gas prices are affecting you.  It probably will be your “bottom dollar” too!

Regardless of what the politicians are telling us, and regardless whether you deliver your products to the client or not the price of fuel is affecting you. It’s affecting your business because it’s affecting the consumer – your consumers.

In a recent survey done by the National Retail Federation they state, “Whether gas prices pose a fiscal or psychological concern consumers are affected regardless of income.”

Some interesting stats show that from the number of adults nationwide16.4% delayed a major purchase such as cars, TV, or furniture. Dining out has been reduced by 25.2%, 31.2% decreased vacation travel plans, 17.3% are spending less on groceries, and 23.7% are spending less on clothing.

That equates to the fact that restaurants, travel agencies, motel/hotels, car dealers, furniture stores, and retail clothing stores are all going to be affected by gas prices.  If any one of those listed is the business you’re doing, then your bottom line of profits is definitely affected.  The interesting part of all that is that it didn’t matter if those polled were in the $50K+ income bracket or less than $50K, the results were the same.

The only distinction seemed to be that adults in the age bracket of 45-54 years of age had the highest percentages but with the same outcome.  For instance of the 25.2% of adults that reduced dining out, 28.6% of them were in that age bracket, and so on down the line. The survey also noted that 70% of the consumers of that age group were impacted by higher gas prices.

As you might have guessed, when these survey figures were broken down by region the West was higher in all categories than the NE, Mid-West, or Southern regions. Still only 5.7% of us have increased carpooling.

It’s a fact, whether we like it or not, that every penny spent on gasoline is a penny kept from retailers.  Looking beyond just the retail industry, what about the service business.  The cost of doing business for a repairman is going to increase as the expense for gasoline increases, and ultimately his prices will reflect that increase.  It doesn’t matter whether he’s doing electrical, roofing, renovating, plumbing, whatever service drives up to your home is going to cost more in the long run.

Ultimately, as the domino effect goes into play, those who can least afford price increases will be the hardest hit.  Seniors and retirees on fixed incomes just have to suck it up and bear the price increases.  As the survey pollsters have said income levels didn’t vary results of choices, it still varies the ability to handle the domino effects.  If income remains stationery but prices rise, there’s definitely an affect on those with fixed incomes.

For the entrepreneur to overcome the situation it requires some really extreme methods.  Following are some tips to keep your expenses down:

• Order supplies online, anticipating a price increase, and have them delivered to you.
• Research your competitors online and save the gas.
• Group doing an errand or two when they’re in the vicinity of a scheduled client meeting.
• Do more of your business by mail, email, or on the internet.  You can do just about anything from paying a vendor to transferring funds from one bank account to another on the internet, and you don’t use any gas.  The only time you have to go to the bank is to make a deposit.
• If you conduct business at Trade Shows and have to travel find ways to cut corners.  Carpool to the airport with a colleague or even a nearby competitor. (You’re both going to be doing business at the same show anyway.)  Perhaps, you can combine two trips with only one return home after the second trip.  Perhaps putting an ad in the Trade Show program can save you making a trip. (You could use that plan for the less important trade show.)
• Consider whether media advertising for your business would be cheaper than what you’ve been doing in person considering gas prices.

That’s just a few ideas to get those little gray cells working.  After all, as an entrepreneur you’ve done marketing on a shoestring before.  I’m sure you can come up with at least ten more ideas than I’ve given you.

At that site you can find the cheapest gas prices in your area.  I’d venture to say that these rankings change daily, so check it out when you need gas.