In six years I’ve logged more than a hundred and fifty storefront installs across Northern California. A while back I lined them up by the month they happened, just to see. The calendar wasn’t flat.
Some months I’m buried. Others the phone barely rings. And the shape of it says something a little uncomfortable about how most storefront owners handle security. They handle it late.
What the calendar shows
My busiest stretch is the summer. The quietest is the end of the year — November and December are the two slowest months in the whole book, by a wide margin. And there’s a bump every spring.
One honest caveat before you read too much into that: this is when people install, not when they get broken into. I can’t pull break-in dates off my install records, and I won’t pretend to. But install timing is a shadow of trouble. Most people call me after something happened — to them, or to the store next door. So when the installs cluster, they’re usually trailing a stretch when trouble ran through the area a few weeks or months earlier.
The quietest months are the ones that should worry you
Here’s what bothers me about that shape.
The end of the year is when a store is carrying the most — the most cash through the register, the most inventory on the shelves, the most distracted staff running a holiday rush. If there’s a season a storefront is exposed, that’s a strong candidate. And it’s exactly when the fewest owners are doing anything about it. They get through the rush, the damage lands, and the phone starts ringing in the spring. That spring bump has the shape of a reactive wave — people hardening once the season had already taken its cut.
Half of everyone waits until after
My job book splits almost evenly in a way that explains the whole thing. About half my installs come from someone who already got hit. The other half come from someone who saw it coming — a remodel, a new block, a neighbor’s break-in that made them think.
The reactive half is the late half. And here’s the part the data makes plain: I can’t forecast a reactive job. Nobody can. It shows up when someone’s already had a bad night. The proactive job is the only kind you can plan — the only kind where you get to choose the timing instead of the timing choosing you. Which half you’re in comes down to a decision you make before anything happens.
The install takes longer than panic allows
There’s a practical reason to care about all this, and it’s the one reactive owners run into.
A shutter isn’t same-day. From the day I measure to the day it runs on your store is usually a few weeks, and most of that is the shutter getting built. So getting ahead of a season doesn’t mean calling the week before. If you want to be covered for the holidays, the call goes out well ahead of them. The owner who waits until after the break-in is now waiting on a build too — covered a month or two after the night it would have mattered.
What I’d do with this
Don’t try to time the exact week your block gets hit. You can’t, and neither can I.
Pick the season your store is most exposed — the holidays if you’re a cash-heavy market, the busy months if you’re on a tourist block — and be covered going into it. That’s the whole lesson in the calendar. The installs cluster after trouble because most people react. The ones who sleep through the season are the ones who called before it. Being in that half is the entire move.
Where to start
If you know your store has a season — a stretch when you’re carrying more, busier, more exposed — and you’d rather get ahead of it than react to it, give me a call. I’ll walk your store, tell you what I’d install, and be honest about the lead time so you’re covered going into the window rather than chasing it. And if your setup is already handling it, I’ll tell you that too.
— Jessie Bajwa
Owner, Affordable Security Shutters
Fairfield, CA · 707-840-3435
