A little more math...

just in case your head wasn't spinning from the last post...lol

Our first month of business, we sold .37 items per day.
Our second month in business we sold .66 items per day.
Our third month in business we sold .43 items per day.

4th - 4.13 items per day (it was november... holiday shoppers abound)
5th - 6.9 items per day (it was december... more holiday shoppers)
6th - 2.5 items per day....

Obviously this isn't enough information to extrapolate accurately how quickly we'll grow as a business... that's going to depend on too many outside factors (like, are we really in another "Great Depression", because, contrary to some peoples opinions, what we sell can be considered a luxury item).

But lets say for the sake of argument...that every 6 months the number of sales we have per day will grow 7 times.

we started out making .37 items per day. After 6 months we should be selling 2.59 items per day (that's fairly accurate as it goes, since I rounded up from 6.57 to 7)

12 months = 18 items per day
18 months = 126 items per day

Nifty. i didn't even plan that... lol. but according to that, if we maintain a steady growth over the next 12 months, by sometime next year we should be making enough sales to open a retail shop...almost exactly... since the previous posts calculations put us at needing 126 sales per day in order to hire people to work in our shop. :-)

Obviously, I don't think it will work that way, because I'm sure there will be slow periods in there, and definately some periods of tapering off, where we hit plateaues (how the hell do you spell that?!?) and level off on the number of new customers we gain. But it gives me something to work with plan wise.

When I take into consideration that I can't really plan anything until we know where we're moving to after The Hubby retires...which is at least 3 years from now... 30 months into this little business venture.

So according to the math, 18 months is what we need. According to life, I'll plan on 36 months.

So my new goal is to open a retail store front by no later than August of 2011... :-D

happy sales ya'll

Retail Sales and living expenses

So I was curious about things tonight. I should never get curious. On nights like tonight its bound to affect my sense of self. But I do. I digress.

I went looking at the cost of retail shops. Average cost around Suffolk, Va $14 a square foot, per year - at least so far as I can tell that's what it was looking like - and we're looking at 500sq foot space (which, by the way, doesn't exist in Suffolk, they start at 1200 sq ft, but I digress again). Doesn't sound too bad does it?

That's only 21k a year in rent. Which works out to $1750 a month. Add in half that amount again to cover electricity, gas, property taxes and such, and we're at $2625 a month.

Factor in a good salary, for both of us, say... $20 an hour = $40 per hour x 48 hours a week x 4 weeks per month = $7680

Decent pay for the hired help (I refuse to pay anyone the laughable minimum wage) = $8.00 an hour x 20 hours per week x 4 weeks = $640

Right there we're at a monthly expense of $10,945

Making approximately $6.60 per item (average of all items across the board deducting for supply costs - this is a fairly high estimate)....

that means we'd need to sell a minimum of 1659 items, just to make ends meet.

This of course, does not include annual tax fees, business licensing fees, inspections, permits, advertising, signage, store appliances, storage, shelving, displays, or anything of the sort. We're talking ballpark figures though... so lets say that adds another... oh... $1000 a month..its a nice round number.

To cover those miscellaneous things, we'd need to sell another 152 items per month.

So we're up to 1811 items per month...

and we haven't even covered profit for expansion or whatever else companies use profit for... (what do companies use profit for besides company expansion... lol)

So lets say... we want to make... oh... $500 a month in profit to reinvest in the business...its another nice round number.

that's another 76 items.

1887 items per month. 63 items per day.

This is how much we'd have to sell to make our little "at home" business into a profitable venture that would allow for expansion.

at 126 items per day, we could officially hire people to work in the store, leaving us to creating things and cutting back our hours to something resembling "normal" working hours.

Fun huh?

The Holidays are winding down.

Ok, so we haven't made it to Christmas yet, but as far as retail goes, the holiday season is coming to a close. Especially for online retailers.

Today is the last day to order from our shop and still have orders out by December 20th, which is the last day the post office says it will take packages and get them there in time for Christmas. We've had a couple wind up taking 8-10 days to get to their destinations. Everyone cross your fingers for us that our packages get to their destinations, in tact and in time for gift giving.

We were swarmed this year. Hopefully we'll be better prepared next year. But given the economy's recent troubles, the fact that we were a new shop (only active since August 1st), and we were relying almost solely on word of mouth, I don't think we really expected to be this busy. Merry Christmas to us. LOL.

So the calender is turning, as it is apt to do in retail life. Your landmarks are the Holidays. Christmas holiday is more or less finished. Next comes Valentines Day, then St. Patricks Day, then Easter, then Summer break...the dead zone of retail. Then we start the calender over again.

The tricky part of this I think, is that unlike other niche businesses, there are only so many holidays where bath and body products are good gifts. Christmas and Valentines day being the 2 big commercial ones (though anniversaries are spread through out the year). The rest of the year its all about matching the scents to the seasons. Trying to stay ahead of what people want, and giving them something new to try about every 2 months or so to try to keep things fresh.

So there will still be some playing with the other minor holidays, to see if we can find a niche market.... (maybe some beer soap for St. Patty's day?), but for the most part, I think our next move after Valentines day will be working out whether we want to continue changing our line up each season, or create a line of specialty signature scents that are ours and ours alone to keep our customers coming back - with periodic new product lines, and special short term scents to round it all out.

So what are your business plans for the new year? Are you still developing your brand? Do you know what your goals are for your business?