Not Today

I woke up this morning in one of those sleep-deprived hazes that made me want to go out and grab a cup of coffee just to make it through until noon despite the fact I don't drink coffee. And, in this state, what is the very first email I open up? A rather strongly worded email from a publication editor essentially screaming at me for only donating 5% of my sales to a specific charity. WTF?

Maybe I am wrong and someone here can set me straight. We donate 5% of sales - not profits - so the total sale cost. That means that unless there's a little fairy who lands on my doorstep and drops the product off I first have to pay the raw ingredient cost, pay to have the product made (which I do myself and don't take a salary), package up the product (packaging's not cheap). Then I make a sale and rather than just giving 5% of the profit (sale price minus my costs) I give away 5% of the total sale price. Just for the record, my sale price is not so incredibly high as to make this an easy give.

Honestly I'm totally confused here. Sure, I wish I could give 10% or more away but then I might as well become a 503C as this business definitely wouldn't be making any money.

After sitting on it for about an hour I sent her an email back saying that I apologized for offending her and then tried to quickly layout things like the fact that this was sales price, that I'm not drawing a salary and nor are we renting office space so it's not like I have a bunch of fixed costs that have to be paid which is why I'm limiting the donation amount.

Truthfully, of everything that's hit me with running a business this one caught me totally offguard. I NEVER thought anyone would take offense at the fact that my company donates 5% of sales to a specific charity (for the record, they weren't offended by the charity but by the amount). At this point I'm not sure if I want to laugh or cry.

Office Space Is Out

I did go and check on the office space that's available in my workspace building but it's not going to work for a couple of reasons- the biggest being temperature issues and my products. Oh well, the dream was nice while it lasted. I'm hoping this means that really in a few months - when the business is flush with cash (dream big!) - a spot will become available in that little neighborhood a 5min walk from me. In the meantime I'll continue to work from the dining room table.

Thinking About Office Space

Office space has been on my mind lately (not Office Space as in the movie but office space as in location/real estate - though the movie is fantastic and perhaps should be added to my NetFlix list just so that I can watch it for the laughs). To first explain - I do rent workspace for 15hrs a week but it's actual "work" space and not so much really office space. For example, if I were a carpenter - which sadly I'm not becuase the floors in my house need to be redone - the workspace would be where I kept all my carpenter tools and did all my carpenter work but it's still my dining room table that acts as the administrative, hr, shipping and receiving, accounts receivable, accounts payable, communications-hub. With what I'm hoping is going to be a pretty successful new product launch come May 1st I was thinking that perhaps it would be nice to move just a little bit of that off of the dining room table and into some place other than my house which, while I love it dearly, at 1200sf doesn't have an extra room that can act as as office space other than the dining room table and a small corner of the second bedroom.

The other day my better half and I were driving down near my workspace and I told him that one of these days I was going to rent space in some loft space that's right nearby so that I could be close to the workspace and yet still have the chance to get all the product and packaging inventory out of our small basement. Plus I love loft spaces so I thought it would be enjoyable to go to work there. Then another friend - who also owns a small startup business - and I were talking about how it would be even better if we could get office space in the small little neighborhood that's literally a 5 minute walk from both of us. We could even set up a little retail section to serve all the many many many passersby.

But then today, while working in my workspace, I realized that there is actual office space in that same building that's up for rent. It's not a huge space but it is climate controlled, has it's own door (and windows) and I might be able to talk the landlords into letting me bring the dogs to work with me. On the one hand it would be great to rent it - even if it were just for the month of May and June as I can do monthly - to get this inventory out of my house, do all packaging, shipping, billing, etc there and keep my home as somewhat of a "home" as opposed to a workspace of it's own. But then on the other hand I'm not sure it makes sense to spend the money to rent the space not knowing if this new product is actually going to be a hit or not. I've already spent a fair bit of money getting the packaging ready to go, building a small inventory (which I fret about constantly), and creating a marketing campaign around the launch.

Plus then I remember that the home office has some snazzy new french doors which, as the weather continues to get nicer, I can open and let the dogs play in the backyard while I continue to work from the dining room table doing all that shipping, receiving, billing, etc, etc, etc.

Quick Update

My friend who was leaving her business actually ended up selling it - for her full asking price - in just about two weeks. The ink is still drying on the papers but she is obviously over-the-moon!

You Catch More Flies With Honey

Ok, I can't lie - I'm incredibly excited right now. But first the backstory:

Yesterday was a super busy day trying to get a bunch of things done here at the home office (aka - the dining room table) so I didn't actually go collect the mail until around 4:30. In the mail there was an envelope from one of the two big fall tradeshows I'm going to with my booth assignment for the show. Two years ago, when attending my first tradeshow, I learned that booth placement is a pretty important thing as I received next to no foot traffic being tucked back into the far back corner. So this is now something I pay a lot more attention to and send in the applications way in advance to try and secure good space.

I opened up the envelope to find that while I was given a corner booth like I requested (and paid more for), I was still back pretty far and only two rows from the back. I was not pleased. It would be fair to say that I was livid but it being 4:30pm here made it 6:30pm there and no one was answering the phones.

So instead I sat and stewed and identified which of the open booths I would want since I was going to call in and change. That's when I noticed that there is a PRIME booth in a FANTASTIC location that wasn't taken. The only catch - apparently it has some sort of pole or something in it.

Regardless, I called this morning and figured that rather than flying off the handle I would just be as sweet as honey as someone once told me that you catch more flies with honey. So I chatted them up, commisserated with them about all the work they had to do, sympathized that they had to deal with callers like me calling to complain about their booth positioning, and lo and behold they were more than happy to not only switch my booth assignment for me but also send me the booth skematic so that I could look at the booth layout and figure out if it would work for me. My thinking being that I can be creative and work around anything for this space - not to mention that my product is small so it's not like I have a huge display I have to worry about setting up - and I am now the proud owner of the 10x10 booth (minus the space taken up by the pole).

I just looked at the diagram again - it really is a killer location. I'm so happy. Guess what they say about real estate is also true in tradeshows: location, location, location. Now I'm eagerly anticipating the news on booth assignment for the other fall tradeshow.

Insomnia

There is one thing to be said for a bout of insomnia - it gives you a lot of time to think about the business! In truth it wasn't an actual bout of insomnia but the fact that I was tempted by a piece of dark chocolate that was coffee flavored (real coffee - not extract). I don't drink caffine and am apparently uber-sensative enough that just a little bit of dark chocolate sends me into an insomniac tailspin.

Regardless, it kept me up and as such I was thinking about work.
Pretty much my mind was racing between two scenarios: 1. What if this new product is a total flop and 2. What if this new product is a wild success. I don't know which actually makes me more nervous. If it's a flop then I'll have to eat the packaging costs I've already incurred which while not pleasant wouldn't necessarily break the business - though not having that new product income into the business will hurt. But I think I may actually be more nervous about what happens if it's a huge success as I'm totally stressed as to how much inventory to have on hand. I'm trying to have 50 orders worth ready to go by May 1 but with my direct mail pieces going out to 12,500 retailers i have no idea if that will be enough or not (I'm assuming that maybe only 30% of the direct mail pieces will be read and then even out of that only a small fraction will be interested in the product and, sadly, only a fraction of that will actually ever get around to ordering. Since I did put a promo code on the direct mail pieces I will be interested to see what the response rate actually ends up being).

One good thing did come from the insomnia though. Despite managing to work myself up into a tizzy I did realize that in addition to trying to trademark the product name (which the trademark guy is working on), I should also buy the domain name for the product and have it direct to my main website just to prevent anyone else from going in and grabbing it out from underneath me. I'm sure if I owned the trademark I could probably fight someone else buying it but this way is a heck of a lot cheaper by simply getting it outright from the start for $9.99.

Now if I could just find my web guy to get my website redesign underway it would all be good!

Buying Ad Space

I just pulled the trigger and am signing up to advertise in an upcoming edition of one of the B2B publications for my industry. I've always been a little skeptical of print advertising (well, all advertising really) but this particular trade publication has been really good to us and is giving us a ton of free press. Plus, from talking to other small businesses in my industry I've heard that they get pretty decent ROI on their trade publication print advertisements so I figure it's worth a try. Heh, it's certainly cheaper then what I spent on PR last year and that didn't exactly pan out as planned!

So while part of me is conservative on the adversiting front another part of me feels like I'm actually way behind on getting on the ball with this one given that my biggest competitors all do advertise in said publications. I don't exactly want it to sound like I'm trying to keep up with the Joneses but I also know that many of the small retailers are so busy they almost need some sort of constant reminder to get them to order and reorder and reorder.

If it all works out this first print ad should actually coincide with when an article that will feature/mention/highlight (I have no idea which if any of those it will do) will be run in the magazine so I'm hoping that the combination of the two will get our name out there and possibly result in orders.

So now I have an April 21 art deadline and am trying to pull together a print ad that is similar graphically to the direct mail piece we have going out at the beginning of May to 12,500 retailers. My thinking is that if all my advertising/direct mail uses similar graphics and then I utilize those same graphics at the tradeshows it will hopefully build brand awareness and trigger folks to come and order when they come see at the tradeshows. Though if nothing else at least we're getting great usage of our new professional photos!