We Have Achieved Mediocrity!

Excel says March was a black month. QuickBooks sees red. Just a couple of average sales in the remaining day and a half would push grouchy old QuickBooks' $69 drop into positive territory. As the seventh-best (or fifth worst) March ever, it was comfortably average. Mediocrity is about the best that I can expect, considering how little money I can devote to fighting the headwinds that I'm facing.

March

Total income: -2.1%
Total COGS: -1.8%
Payroll: -66.6%

Marketing: -67.8%
Net Income (Profit) vs LY: +61.4% ($1,094)

Actual Profit/Loss: -$689

2017 YTD

Total income: -5.5%
Total COGS: -4.3%
Payroll: -62.7%

Marketing: -43%
Net Income (Profit) vs LY: +78% (+$1,436)

Actual Profit/Loss: -$405

Excel shows a $145 gain over last March despite that $160 kite return and the day's business that I lost to the Russian hackers. My CPA's hefty tax-prep fee and another year's rent on my UPS box turned the bottom line especially nasty; without those two confounding factors it would be within a few bucks of zero. I confess, though, to being disturbed at seeing red ink despite cutting payroll to almost nothing. Theoretically, the "actual profit" amount should be what's available for debt reduction; in reality, the variance to LY more accurately reflects what I've paid down. I wonder if profitability is even possible for Curio City anymore, or if its income has fallen so far that it can no longer cover its baked-in costs. We'll see if the next few months can bring back the black.

Prospects for April: Kite sales perked up nicely this week, which bodes well. Jackite's promise to restock poles "in late April" could provide a minor boost, since the six months that they were gone might have created some pent-up demand...but the real impact of that will be on May and beyond, and even then it will probably just mean keeping up with LY, before poles went out-of-stock. Kite season is starting to fly and I think Easter is somewhere in there, too (churches buy a lot of dove kites). With my biggest expenses out of the way, I hope that April can be a turnaround month.

Blue Hills didn't affect March at all. If the huge chunk of income that we're expecting comes in April, next month's QuickBooks numbers will go haywire, and these reports won't normalize again until next February, when I can run apples-to-apples comparisons on the classes that I created this February. As far as QuickBooks is concerned, it was all just Kraken Enterprises up to that point.