2,000 Steps Forward, 500 Steps Back

October was shaping up as another decent month, especially given that I've ceased all marketing efforts and cut advertising to the bone. And then stuff happened. The numbers (which include some Blue Hills income) look fine:

October

Total income: +82.3%
Payroll: +1,132%

Marketing: -69.4%
Net Income (Profit) vs LY: -1,889.1% (-$1,849)

Actual Profit/Loss: -$1,751

2017 YTD

Total income: +72.3%
Total COGS: +15.6%
Payroll: +267.6%

Marketing: -33.9%
Net Income (Profit) vs LY: +307.9% (+$6,897)

Actual Profit/Loss: +$4,656

Excel says that Curio City by itself beat LY by $34. Those big red numbers are there because I somehow screwed up my accounting. Blue Hills payroll is being reported differently than Curio City payroll. I pay my CPA the big bucks to fix stuff like that. 

Whenever I'm idly tempted to rethink my store closing plans, I remember that virtually everything that's selling now is steeply discounted, it's still a lot more work than it's worth, and I have to deal with the public:

A lady ordered $162 worth of Switchables and provided an invalid shipping address. Even though I could take a Google-informed guess at her correct address, I'm not going to ship $162 worth of stuff into the void, so I emailed her for clarification. Days passed, and I ultimately re-sent the email six times. Days became weeks, and now it's been a month...still nothing. She didn't leave a phone number.

Speaking as someone who only pockets about $300 in a good month, I find it hard to imagine spending $162 on something that one doesn't need, and even harder to imagine not missing the order when it doesn't show up. Even if this lady doesn't know how email works, she could leave me a voicemail (yes, this is one of those extremely rare instances where I would welcome a phone call).  

Her order is still boxed up and ready to ship. At some point I'll have to unpack it, return all the stuff to inventory, and refund her credit card, but I'm kind of morbidly curious to see how long this can go. I'll give her another month. Maybe she'll contact me when she sees the charge on her credit card statement, if she's still alive and mentally competent.

Then there's this other Switchables customer who leaves an angry voicemail because she can't figure out how to use the cover that she bought. Every single Switchables product page includes this text:

This is not a self-contained night light. Switchables stained glass night light covers are designed to be used with the Switchables Nightlight Fixture (sold separately). Switchables are "switchable" because you can easily swap any one of our covers onto the same simple fixture.

...and yet 25% of Switchables customers either don't read it or can't understand it, because they buy a cover or two and then come back to get a fixture separately later on. The lady in question returned her cover, so that's another $17 refund. I fully expect it to arrive in unsalable condition.

And then there's the guy who ordered two lighted caps without specifying which color he wants. A lot of my cap customers screw that up, and I have to email them. This particular fellow responded promptly with his choice, which is always nice; often it takes several attempts over a week or more. Then I discovered that he also gave me an invalid shipping address. I'm still waiting for him to fix that.

Come on, folks. The internet isn't that hard.

Then there's the guy who placed a $300 dropship order. After a week he emails to ask where it is. Tracking shows no activity. Turns out the vendor never shipped it; they apologize and send it out that day. The customer is silent until it reaches him a week later. Then he asks how he can return it because it arrived too late for his hunt. Three emails asking the vendor to issue a call tag are still unanswered after three days. Ultimately I'm going to have to refund the guy his $300 and then nag the vendor to refund my purchase.

$500 worth of refunds on $2,000 in sales remind me why I hate this job.   

Lowest Common Denominators

A few vendors try to support their retailers and fight the evil discounters with minimum pricing agreements. You have to sign one to do business with them. If you violate it by selling below the minimum, they'll cut you off from future shipments. As someone who's seen way too many good products ruined by discounters' race to the bottom, I approve. 

Even fewer vendors actually enforce their Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) agreements. When one manufacturer's crawler found Curio City in violation on some of their products, I got a polite email reminder. Ordinarily I would grumble and comply, and that would be that. This time, though, I pushed back. I told the sales rep that I'm liquidating my inventory with an eye toward closing my store and retiring next year, so I won't be ordering any new stock. If you're serious about supporting your pricing, I will gladly sell you back your merchandise at the prices I paid for it. Otherwise everything is getting marked down to cost next week. Because I'm online-only, customers can't paw over my stock; it's all in mint condition, and most of it is still in its original shipping packs. And if most of the batteries are somewhere between low and dead, well...I'm sure you guys must get batteries wicked cheap.

After some behind-the-scenes discussion, they agreed to take everything back, dead batteries and all. That was a much better response than I had hoped for; some of those products have even been discontinued. I just paid UPS $80 to ship out three large, overstuffed cartons. I should receive a check for $950 in a couple of weeks. I processed it as a sale so I'll get 15% of that as payroll; the rest will take a healthy bite out of the ol' Amex bill, which has been stuck at $2,500 for two months now. 

This represents the first bridge that I've burned beyond repair. Even if I change my mind and decide to resuscitate Curio City next year, I can't do business with this vendor again. 

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Despite that stubborn debt, I just raised my pay from 10% of net sales to 15%. That's still 50% below what I used to pay myself, and I need more money in my pocket right now -- Blue Hills jobs are too irregular and I never know when the revenue will arrive (one small check is currently 45 days overdue). I also want Kraken Enterprises to show as little profit as possible when tax time rolls around. Sales are so small that the 50% bump makes very little difference to the bottom line anyway. So...abracadabra, bitches! If I ever do get out of debt I'm going to set payroll back up to 20%.