Wednesday, 16 February 2011

Busy, busy, busy

What on earth have I been up to for over a month? It's mid-Feb, the snow's long gone, replaced with the more standard Scottish winter and we're up to our eyes in our webstore project and placing orders with lots of new brands for Spring/Summer and Autumn/ Winter. Isn't it fun placing orders when you don't have to spend the money?

Yes and no. It's fun looking at all the funky clothes and trying to work out what we could, should and will order but it's a lot of hard work trying to make sure we have enough of everything we think we'll need based on 3 or 4 months of trading.

I then need to try and control our enthusiasm by using the projected sales forecasts to tell us how much we need to order in order to hit those targets. And those forecasts are of course based on best guesstimates. By next Autumn, we'll be coming up to our first year in business. We'll also have opened a webstore (coming in March), so the growth of that also needs to be factored in. It's all a tad nerve-wracking!

One very pleasing thing is that much of our Autumn/Winter stock from this year is almost depleted, so by some miracle of good planning, Anne managed to get many of our first orders (based on absolutely no experience!) pretty much spot on. It means we've got a good amount of the cash flow required to pay for the Spring/Summer orders which are all arriving in the next few weeks.

It's now that I realise that quitting big corp wasn't so much a pleasantry (although it certainly was!) but a necessity. We're both fully occupied running the business, our children, our house and our lives. I just can't see how Anne would have managed everything if I'd continued to work and travel as I was. Phew!! Good thing we made the right decision.

Another bonus is that I've become much more domesticated! For those who know me, that may come as a shock. I've always been pretty meticulous about "my" kitchen as I insist on doing most of the cooking but I've discovered the joys of laundry, hoovering, etc... very post-modern, haha!

Let's see how we get on with the next few weeks. There's a lot going on and a lot more money going out but there a small light with the faint word "salary" on it at the end of the tunnel. And at least the tunnel is our own creation and lined with bright, funky clothing!

No comments:

Post a Comment