tight as a gnat's...

business is picking up but NOT ENOUGH!!!


ok, i'll pipe down, but it's a tough time. we've gone into overload on offers. 10% off here, 15% off there, now a prize draw, next a loyalty card... but that's retail life. what i'm realising is that there is a reason certain 3 and 4 letter high street brands can offer these prices all the time: because their inital prices are so pumped up.

those 3-letter and 4-letter clothing retailers, pump up their prices, so they can appear to offer great deals. we won't do that (i'd say we can't but we could... however, we won't!). but we also have far better clothing, so the gloves are off... we had a member of staff of the 4-letter retailer in the shop in mid-winter who said that their own winter jacket was rubbish, so she came to us. we didn't see her for months until she came back this week to buy some more of our outdoor clothing. that, hopefully, speaks volumes. brill!!

and that's what we're about. good quality, practical clothing that's fun, funky, cool and brilliant value for money. i'll not shy away, didriksons and maxomorra offer outstanding value for money. no, they're not the cheapest but then you can buy cheap and buy twice or buy what we've hand-picked and hand it on to the next child/ cousin/ friend... and the next... and...

we don't just believe in our clothing, we love it. pass it on, they'll thank you ;-) www.funkyrascal.co.uk

motivation

a little over 6 months ago, i thoroughly resented my working day stretching to 12 hours, sometimes more. today, i got into the shop at 9.15am and left at a little after 8.30pm and walked home feeling overjoyed. why?

in fact, i was thinking about work from the moment i woke and i'm still doing so now. i'll continue to think about it, make notes (mental or otherwise), read about it and make decisions until i got to bed at around midnight. and do you know what? i'm STILL not getting paid ;-) well, we're not getting paid but that's not the point.

the point is that despite the almost incessent requirement to think about our business in one regard or another, i'm happy to do so. and the reason is that i can see what that will bring. not a lot, financially, in the short-term but in the mid- and long-term i can really see where this "project" is going. it will bring us financial "comfort" but much more than that, it will bring us far greater happiness as 4 people and a cat :-)

it's more than just a project, obviously. this is our future. however, we're trying something new and we're priviledged to be able to do so, i realise that. i now take liam to nursery school in the morning on his scooter. we talk about the plants, flowers, slugs, birds.... that we see on the way. i didn't get that when i drove furiously to work 20 miles away (ok, i enjoyed the cross country drive in my little car). however, i can now enjoy my commute in a way that i think most people simply can't imagine. if liam wants to stop and look at a caterpillar, we do it. if we want to look at all the new azalea blossoms in someone's garden, we do. and then i get to work...

how can you fail to arrive at work enlivened when that has been your commute? we'll take a salary one day soon but in the meantime, i take my recompense in being able to live my life in, i think, the way i'd always wanted to. and that means a lot.

we've made it!!!

it's been quite a tough few weeks but we've finally got all our stock and this morning, our webstore has gone live - http://www.funkyrascal.co.uk/.

even up until tuesday this week, it was a daily rollercoaster of emotion as we received first good, then bad news about our online merchant account and payment gateway. despite allowing plenty of time for the relevant security details to be checked and whatever else it is they do, it still came down to a narrow squeak as to whether we would be able to launch the site today.

however, it all worked out in the end and we even received our major everyday clothing line, maxomorra, yesterday lunchtime. which didn't really help to be honest! something like 2500 items of clothing needing sorted, counted, cross-checked, scanned, inventoried and hung in the shop when all we want to do is get the webstore up. however, since it's critical to the site, it's a good thing it did arrive.

so we're a multi-channel business now. better go and read some more of my new bible, "eMarketing eXcellence", and get on with the next phase...

the light grows stronger...

we now have the most gorgeous wall of colour in the shop! it's all due to one of our key brands and we'd always planned that the shades and hues would co-ordinate but i couldn't have imagined how well. WOW!! yes, it deserves an undeserved double exclamation mark.

as soon as i'd got the colour wall about sorted, our next delivery arrived... it is amazing the power that a bunch of brown boxes can hold over one.i had a reasonable idea what they contained but the excitement in slitting the tape and unveiling a plethora of new colours, shades, patterns, designs... yup, it's just like christmas, it really is!

so we're happier - definitely. we've got confirmation of all the other orders and we can really see the light at the end of what seemed like a very dark tunnel. when we had the UP of pre-xmas it was very hard to take the weeks (and weeks) of mid-winter consumer gloom in small-town cupar. it's still not fab but just putting a couple of new manequins in the window this afternoon got  3 or 4 people into the shop.


we indeniably need the webstore but it is heartening to see some of our regulars reappearing and still new customers discovering our oasis of funky! 2 more weeks of hard work, nailing down the webstore, getting the marketing programs sorted and if we're not buzzing by early april, i'll be one p!ssed off puppy ;-)

the first proper downer...

it's only when you encounter your first really tough period that reality kicks in. and it's only once you can see a glimmer of light that you can begin to put everything into perspective.

it's been a tough few weeks. we knew that jan and feb would be a bit bleak. couple the traditional down period of retail with the continued woe of the british consumer fueled by ken clarke's welcoming words about the "calamitous" outlook for the middle classes of britain and we weren't expecting a great deal. however, despite a bargain sale going on, we bottomed out last week with pitiful sales and a sad lack of any real progress in the prospective appearance of our spring/ summer stock from our 2 key brands.

so we've got no new stock, customers who've seen it all, delayed deliveries and a sudden hiccup in the schedule of our online store. in fact the hiccup was a blessing in disguise. i would have hated to have launched with a bunch of out of season stock - definitely not how to make an impact.

but a week down the line and things are looking brighter... we've got longer to get on with the webstore and make sure it's right (it was always going to be a big push); i've reworked the cashflow and revenue forecasts and we can still survive; and joy of joys, thelimited new stock we have received is going down well and beginning to draw customers back in.

we knew it was never going to be easy but coming from my personal background of big corp relative comfort and with anne's similar experience coupled with the fact it's still really her shop, we were feeling a tad sorry for ourselves. it's our first mini crisis of which i'm sure there will be more and larger ones. but when it's your own business, your own money, your own family then it all means so much more.

an experience to learn from and next season, we'll take all of this into account... and then something else'll bugger things up ;-)

Scary stuff and the woe of deliveries

Our plans are somewhat awry at the moment due to certain key deliveries of Spring/ Summer collections being late. The sale to try and clear as much Autumn/Winter stock and rake in cash to pay for the new seasons' stock has run its course with sales this week as low as any, so we could really, really do with new stock - everyone's waiting for it.

I remarked to a friend the other day that it's not the initial investment which is frightening, it's the second input of cash required to continue growth that can come as a shock. We're in a business which can only grow if you invest more each season. With residual start up costs eating most of the profit from the first few months, that second boost has to come from our savings. I'm very glad that one, I factored this into the forecasts and two, that we have what looks like just enough to invest for growth and have money to live off. Imagine a plane in a dive, pulling up just in time to skim the tree tops, that's our financial forecast over the coming weeks! If we can avoid borrowing anything from the bank I'll be a happy man and we should be able to draw our first salary before the end of the first half of this year.

I think once you've borrowed from a bank, you're no longer in total control of your business, not just financially but mentally. You're working every week with the thought in the back of your mind that a percentage, large or small, of your profits is going straight to the bank. The larger that percentage, the tougher I can imagine it is to motivate yourself, especially as a start up, when the light at the end of the tunnel can seem far enough away at times without added pressure.

So whilst things are a bit out of kilter at the moment, I'm confident that we'll eventually get our new stock, pay for it, and get the webstore going, all in time to pull out of the dive! Because we're different, we're carving our unique space in the plethora of children's clothing retailers and as the new strapline goes - because childhood's too short for pastel shades! Long live Funky Rascal.

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!