The big order from the bigger company came through on Wednesday morning. It's about 50% of what my company made in 2007. It also needs to ship the first week of November. Yes, I know that it's already October 16th...I'm choosing not to realize how close the first week of November is. So I've been spending the past few days ordering in all the packaging (and a few pieces are backordered so please please please let them come in in time), renting more workspace time and the office in the workspace because if I have to do all the packaging in my house my husband will leave me - and I won't blame him, and I've been scheduling in employees to help with the load.Thankfully yesterday I had the foresight to tell one of our online wholesale partners that our products were going to be backordered until Nov. 10th. In addition to this big order, I still have to fill all the orders that came in at the tradeshows so my hands are pretty full as is. Then this morning a decent sized order came through the wholesale site so I'm so glad I don't have to worry about it (or, realistically, even think about it) until after this big order ships.
So I'm basically going to be working around the clock for the next three weeks but it's all good. I just need to figure in a way to hit up the HUGE Title Nine sale next week. You know, the important things.
1 comment:
Have you read the 4 hour work week by Timothy Ferriss? I've been following your blog for a while and am glad to hear some bigger reps are taking an interest in your products. The book is essentially about automating the process of your business to allow you to step back and focus on either 'living'...growing the business or growing another product/business. It seems like you spend a lot of time making the product and then packaging things yourself. I read you've hired part-timers when things get really busy. What if you were to contract out the packaging (fulfillment) to a kid for $8 an hour, then you could focus on marketing and new accounts, or designing more product lines, or improving the current one.
If you were to contract out the production (teach an employee how to make your hand-made items), same thing.
Just a couple thoughts, happy to read about the growing success - at the moment the business seems to own you, rather than vice-versa.
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