(Marketing) Score, Once More!

Today’s post is short, this being a holiday weekend. Blogging will take a back seat to sales from now through New Years Day.

That crazy USB Computer Fan is up to 137 units sold. I learned yesterday that the Washington Post’s Travel section will feature it in their Dec. 3 gift guide. Amazing! I have added a USB Mini Vacuum and a USB Light to appeal to the same customers. The vacuum is actually the coolest of the bunch.

Media kits went out last Monday. It cost me about $400 to send out 48. My fingers are crossed.

Today is “Black Friday” – so named because it’s the day that tips most retailers’ balance sheets into black ink. It is supposedly the busiest shopping day of the year (in my bookselling experience, that was never true, but it was undeniably a busy day). I don’t know what to expect for online sales. I hope that plenty of my customers will take to the internet in an effort to avoid the crowds, and it will be a big day for Curio City, too. We shall see. I have had two sales by noon -- an encouraging start, when you consider that many people are sleeping in and starting their day late.

Other Forthcoming Topics:

• What Does Success Look Like?
• Credit Card Processing
• Possible Futures
• Planned features

Happy Birthday to Me, Part 2

Curio City recorded its first sale one year ago this weekend, on November 19, 2005. I held a stress-test party that night. Those who could come in person had a drink or two and some snacks, and shopped from the several computers we set up around the house. Those who couldn’t be here logged in from their own home. My friends and family bought about $850 worth of stuff that night.

Then, nothing happened for weeks as I sat back and waited for the search engines to index my pages and send the masses my way. Finally I bumbled into pay-per-click advertising the second week in December, and managed to pull off one decent week just before Christmas. That makes last year’s sales laughably easy to beat; in fact, Curio City really didn’t ramp up until Valentines Day.

In the past year, I learned (which is to say, "taught myself") how to set up a new business, how to run a website, how the gift business differs from the book business, and how online retailing differs from running a store. That's a lot of progress in one year. I feel like I have the foundations in place now.

My goals for Year Two are more modest: I will double Year One’s sales, I will record a profit for 2007 as a whole, and I will take out as much in salary as I invest as startup money. In other words, Curio City has to break even in 2007 after taking a substantial loss in 2006.

My next post will use Year One’s actual sales numbers to extrapolate what success looks like.

Other Forthcoming Topics:

• What Does Success Look Like?
• Possible Futures
• Credit Card Processing
• Planned features

(Marketing) Score! Revisited

When I last wrote about our mention in American Way magazine, we had moved all of 37 USB Computer Fans. Since then, we’ve sold them out, reordered, and sold out the reorder. Now we’ve shipped an astonishing 101 of these little buggers and cleaned out our supplier. It will probably be a couple of weeks before I can get more. I am gambling that demand will hold up through Christmas. Several customers bought as many as 6 or 10 fans at once. Many more bought additional items besides the fans.

Thanks to this one hit item, November is coming on strong – even though the magazine went out of distribution a week ago. We had 23 consecutive days with at least one sale, easily our longest stretch without a shutout. We haven’t broken any daily or weekly ydollar records yet, but have set all kinds of quantity benchmarks -- such as eight sales in one day.

On the downside, we haven’t had a single sale since I posted the out-of-stock notice 36 hours ago. I was hoping that general Christmas shopping would keep it going. My pay-per-click ad costs have started creeping upward into the $10 per day range as general traffic picks up; I need to make $150 per day just to cover those PPC costs. Last night I ordered a USB Computer Vacuum and a USB Computer Light, hoping to capitalize on the same audience that’s coming in looking for fans. I have thrown my open-to-buy budget out the window for the next several weeks. Christmas comes but once a year.

The media kit that I mentioned last time is finished. This weekend, I need to assemble and get the first batch into the mail. I also need to figure out how to post the materials on my website -- that damned php template problem again; everything is harder than it should be. It will cost me a few hundred dollars altogether for materials, labor (I hired my sister to prepare the mailing list), and postage. If the 50 or so packages that go out in this mailing result in even one mention comparable to the USB fan, it will be worth the cost.

Other Forthcoming Topics:

• Happy Birthday to Me, Part 2
• What Does Success Look Like?
• Credit Card Processing
• Possible Futures
• Planned features

O, Canada!

I ship internationally. Not because I'm a cosmopolitan globalist, but because it gives me a competitive edge. International shipping is complicated, time-consuming, expensive, and a little bit risky, so few retailers offer it. Being still hungry for every sale I can get, I welcome overseas orders.

I’ve sent packages to Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Great Britain, Brazil, and (most frequently) to Canada. Of those destinations, Canada is the worst. I think the North American Free Trade Agreement is the reason.

NAFTA requires an extra customs form that declares the product’s country of origin – which is almost invariably China, of course. However, listing any origin other than the US subjects the parcel to additional scrutiny. One customer complained that he had to pay an import duty that was almost equal to the value of the product. The guy who runs my local UPS store said that because it’s just a formality, he never, ever, lists any country other than the USA. Being honest on the NAFTA form is just asking for trouble.

I thought that NAFTA was supposed to simplify and streamline North American commerce. Instead it creates an additional form. I cringe every time I take a Canadian order.

You’d think it was a foreign country or something.

Other Forthcoming Topics:

• Happy Birthday to Me (Part 2)
• What Does Success Look Like?
• Credit Card processing fees
• Possible Futures
• Planned features