Working In a Coal Mine

This week is noteworthy for what didn't happen: Today should be the second day of my traditional summer vacation. We opted not to take a vacation this year after dental bills siphoned off thousands of dollars. Besides, we didn't want to abandon two young cats who have never been alone for more than a few hours. On the plus side, Curio City could pick up a few hundred dollars of revenue by not shutting down, and that would put an extra $40 or $60 in my own pocket (there's no such thing as "paid time off" for a one-man business). On the minus side, profitability will take a $75-100 hit from not suspending those ads. 

I'm not really fond of vacations anyway, and we are going to celebrate our anniversary with a four-day weekend in August. 

You'd think that would give this July a leg up on LY, but not really. A $600 golf ball sale and a $300 Switchables sale plumped up last July. This July will come up short by around $400 without at least one similar lucky strike.  

Golf balls used to be a solid summer staple. Then, a few years ago, my supplier launched a new consumer-direct website. They also raised their wholesale price from $5 to $5.50 on half of their designs, making me choose between raising my retail from $9.99 to $10.99 or swallowing a smaller markup. Since profitability is already on the ropes I went with the price hike...and for good measure I raised the price on all styles to give myself a little extra markup on those that still cost the original $5. The vendor held the line at $9.95, which search engines had already recognized as lower than my $9.99. Their shipping charge is also lower than mine and a buck or so below the actual cost of shipping. I still sell a few golf balls here and there, but not like I used to. Because of their cost advantage, a vendor who decides to sell direct will outcompete retailers every time. 

Switchables, OTOH, are as random as always. I'll sell scarcely any for a couple of months and then enjoy a nice run on them over a few weeks. These hiccups come without any pattern, but they do happen fairly reliably.

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I successfully imported my 157 "good" email addresses from Constant Contact into Mailchimp yesterday, and tentatively started the long and tedious process of learning a new interface and creating a newsletter template. Learning new things at my age is bullshit.