September Wrap-up

I was ready to give up on the random act of media that I’ve been writing about since late July when their online gift guide finally came out on Wednesday. I haven’t sold any of my three Science Quiz Clocks, or anything else that I can trace to that ad. That was unexpected. Maybe the print version will do better, if and when it comes out; for now, I’m very glad the manufacturer’s stock outage prevented me from ordering a big pile of doomed inventory. I have never seen a media mention fail completely before.

Someone who inquired about $1,000 worth of Switchables fixtures didn’t return as I had expected this week, but she might still come back. It will be a very nice boost for October if so.

September:

Total income: +13.4%
Total COGS: +11.8%
Payroll: +29.6%
Net Income (Profit): +39.8%

YTD:

Total income: -3.4%
Total COGS: -6.3%
Payroll: -0.8%
Net Income (Profit): -253.9%

Two black months in a row set me up for Q4 in decent shape. If the country club that owes me $850 pays up on time, I can pay my payroll taxes without destroying cash flow. The way I count my beans, 2011 is running only $300 behind LY; Quickbooks insists that I’m down by $1,425, and of course QB has the last word. The crucial bottom line is $839 behind LY (I am still slightly in the red, where I should have tipped into the black).
That’s an incredibly long way from the 10% increase I had planned, but given the economy’s return to recession this year I’ll settle for breaking even. Just getting back up to zero makes me feel pretty good.

October's targets are a little more formidable as Christmas starts to ramp up.


**************

Sunshop evolved through three version upgrades this morning. That didn’t go as smoothly as one might have hoped -- in fact, it still isn't completely right -- but the worst is over. The new Flash image viewer is probably the only difference most customers will see…and the 15% of my visitors who get here with Apple devices can’t see that. Some good stuff under the hood made the expense worthwhile (especially fixing the bug that limited how many photos I could upload for a single product).