Credit cards & Seasonal Businesses
by Charles MacGregor

The ability to accept credit cards can offer a healthy increase in sales for a small business, but it also has expenses. When we started our business, we priced our product with the idea that there were enough customers with cash burning holes in their pockets for us to avoid the investment needed for a credit card service. During our first year this was an important consideration. My wife and I both had "day jobs," so we weren't yet dependent upon the business, but cash was tight since we were purchasing and remodelling our first Renaissance festival shop. Our other consideration was that it would be a very seasonal business until we started expanding. We did not want to pay monthly fees on a service that would only be used at one major Festival, and just a handful of other weekends during the year. We hadn't even dreamed about a web site at that point.

Our first year went well, but we had a few customers who asked if we could accept credit cards, and so we were aware of a number of sales we lost because we could not. There were probably more who didn't bother to ask, and simply assumed we did not accept plastic since we did not have the typical Ren-fair signs saying "Lady Visa & MasterCard welcome." One of our theories is that there are a number of patrons who make even small purchases with their credit cards in order to save their cash for buying food and drink.

So for the '96 season we started shopping for a credit card service (including the major banking firm that is my wife's day-job). We finally found one that seemed a reasonable option for our situation. We explained up-front to the salesperson that we wanted the account in time for the festival run, but that it would be an experiment to see how much it might increase our business. He explained that we could rent the phone equipment used for registering our transactions. Most of the other companies we spoke to leased the equipment to the retailer so that seemed to be the normal set-up. The fees would be deducted up front and the balance of our transactions would be electronically deposited into our bank account. If we had no transactions, they would deduct a monthly fee of $35.00 from the account. We thought his was small enough for us to risk during months we did not have events. Moreover, by the end of the festival run we had created a mail order brouchure that we hoped would bring in a few sales off-season, and help cover the credit card fees. The best thing that we were told, was that we could cancel the credit card account with 30 days notice.

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