Comfortably Broke

Well, spending that money didn’t take long. A long-postponed Panther cap reorder left me enough money to bring in just one new product. I’ve had many requests over the years for lighted visors, and Panther doesn’t ordinarily sell them wholesale, so this one has to be money in the bank. I won't sell a lot of visors, but they should be steady.

I could easily drop another $1,000 on reorders and $2,500 on new items right now. Since my open-to-buy is now hovering around $600, I’m back in my old familiar holding pattern – I can easily blow $600 in 10 minutes. On the plus side, I have sold four Corn-n-Tater bags, which isn’t too shabby for a new product. I was starting to worry about my instincts.

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International sales really took off when I revived the First Class Package International service option. I had discontinued it years ago because USPS didn’t offer package tracking with that service. However, as of January they started offering tracking for shipments to Canada, and that was supposed to roll out to something like 40 other countries this month. On the downside, the weight limit was cut from 4 pounds to one and the rates went up.

Supposedly. As of this week, the 4-pound weight limit was still in force and tracking was not available on packages sent to India and Australia. Should I disable the option again? Shipping untraceable packages is asking for trouble…but a few extra sales each week are hard to turn away. I shall continue to offer it until I lose a package or the USPS follows through on its “advertised” service change.  “Advertised” is in ironic quotes because I got that from the Endicia newsletter at the beginning of the year. I suppose that you don’t have to tell anybody your plans changed if you don’t announce them to begin with.

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I don’t think I’m going to get much done today, what with Boston and environs completely locked down while an intense manhunt for the surviving Marathon bomber goes on. I’m comfortably out of the way here in Braintree, but it’s hard to pay attention to anything else. I sure do hope they will snag that kid this afternoon…preferably alive, so that we can get some answers, although I expect that he will go out in a blaze of glory.