Letter from the General Manager

We had a great month. We saw the tax money arrive. Unlike many in the past, the clients went through their money quickly this year. For the month of April, we trended with loan growth above $67,000 for the month. We are seeing this trend in other operations as well. Typically, we prepare to increase our loans in May & June, but this year started a little earlier. We have also noticed a decline in retail sales as well. While we like to compare months to the previous year’s numbers, I couldn’t help but notice the comparison from March 2023 to April 2023. Between March and April, our sales shrank $44,000. This issue is short-term, but we must stay vigilant by hitting our daily sales goals.

The top three salesmen for April are Dominic T. in first place, Paul Molina in second place, and Tony M. in third place. Congratulations gentlemen. We have a few holidays in the near future to help move more of our inventory. We look forward to closing the gap in our sales and securing more layaway sales.

One thing I wanted to highlight is the continuous scams that are ongoing in our communities. We have been doing an excellent job qualifying our clients. We like being involved in other pawn forum groups to stay updated on those traveling from city to city to sell fake items like diamonds, Rolexes, coins, comics and more. I encourage you all to socially get involved online through Facebook, Instagram, tik tok and more to help develop contacts within the industry. Our first form of defense has always been in the qualification process to help avoid costly mistakes. Please engage and involve your manager if something doesn't feel right so we don’t accidentally fall for one of these trending scams. If there is anything we have learned as a company, people will try courageous things to take advantage of you. Thankfully, we have many excellent customers to compensate for the bad apples.

To conclude, we have been steadily adding new team members to the company. This is great to see us operate in a more normal environment. We plan to have busy months ahead of us and we’re happy to have new team members on board to be active participants and help celebrate our continued successes.

Sincerely,

Wayne Silliman General Manager

“Even if you’re on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there.” -Will Rogers