Flipping Birds

Ever wonder why I keep blathering on about kite season?

Bird kites are my last product line that still sells reliably at full price, because they really work, and because there’s not a ton of online competition. People buy predator kites to scare birds away from their gardens, orchards, boats, or wherever birds are a pest (many parks and golf courses report that the Bald Eagle effectively repels geese, when nothing else works). Far and away the biggest market, that season runs from April through August. Hunters buy goose and duck kites as decoys; this smaller market gives me a bump in the fall. Ordinarily, Christians get the ball rolling when they buy dove kites for church plays at Easter and Pentecost. The manufacturer ran out of doves last fall, promising to have more “in the spring,” but they missed Easter. (When they run out of a style, it often takes them a year or more to replenish; I don’t know why). The smaller Create-a-Bird covers that same niche, and the other “small birds” are used in school plays and community theater productions. Some businesses buy kites as marketing gimmicks, and (finally) some people fly them for fun, or as decorations. 

Curio City will stay open through the summer if bird kites sell well enough to pay its expenses. Anything else I can move is just the gravy for that meat. If kite season doesn’t materialize for some reason – and without doves this Easter, it’s already late – then I’ll close down my store earlier than I had planned. One cannot live on gravy.

The very first product that I bought in 2005 – SKU 1, still available today – was the Canada Goose. I eventually added the other birds, but they languished until I made two conceptual breakthroughs. First, Jackite offered to dropship. That meant that I could offer poles as an add-on without having to stock and ship them myself – something I had found to be impractical because they don’t fit in a standard-sized kite tube. Second, I found some third-party YouTube videos of kites in action and learned how to embed them in my pages. Video sells. After years of barely hanging in there, bird kites finally took off. 

How many kites are we talking about? I’ve sold 105 Canada geese since that first one. The more popular falcon and osprey kites have sold 345 and 520, respectively. That’s nearly 1,000 kites right there, at $40 a pop. I’ve moved 243 top-of-the-line eagles at $70 apiece. Christians have bought 452 doves. Create-a-bird only fetches $13, but 857 of those have flown out of here. I won’t go through all the lesser kites – Snow Goose, for example, has only sold 18 pieces – but I’ve sold 3,000+ bird kites, and most of those were in the past five or six years. Add in add-ons like poles (roughly 322 sold), line rigs (1,100 at $4), and pole mounts, and – well, you can see why I’d like to milk one last kite season, and why it has to materialize to keep me going.

That business is late, as I keep saying, but I won’t give up on it until Memorial Day. Eventually someone will come along with a better website or lower prices or a “free shipping” gimmick, because someone always moves in on successful products sooner or later. One cannot fend off competitors without money and talent, neither of which I have in abundance. But AFAIK nobody else is eating my lunch yet. 

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I finally removed my phone number entirely from Curio City’s website. It will cost me some sales and save me some aggravation. The days when I’d do anything to maximize sales ended long ago. The volume of junk calls dropped after I deleted it from the “Contact number” heading on my contact page and re-recorded my voicemail message to mention only Blue Hills Editorial Services, so this last move should get rid of the few calls. Shoppers have to work hard to find my phone number now.

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%.

Fidgety Trends

A few weeks ago my nephew asked if Curio City had thought about selling fidget toys. It was the first I'd heard of them. Apparently they're the current rage among brainier Millennials and their children, the Marshmallows. Some people claim that they are therapeutic for some autistic types, and there might be something to that. Last Saturday they even garnered a Boston Globe story -- the kind of mainstream media attention that usually means that a trend is peaking or on its way out.

Some of my best-selling products over the years were recommended by people I know, so I always take their suggestions seriously. Googling "fidget toys" turns up a huge range of sizes, shapes, and materials selling for $5 up to $40 or more. These odd assemblages of gears, buttons, ball bearings, and switches that don't do anything are being sold everywhere right now. I don't know how to tell a "good" fidget from a "bad" fidget; wholesalers' descriptions generally provide little to no detail. One of my existing vendors is hawking some cheap ones, so it would be easy enough to test demand. If I had any cash on hand I'd place a few small orders with a few different vendors to figure out what my customers do and don't like (or if indeed I have any customers for these). Then I'd buy bigtime for Christmas when I think I've nailed the market. Since the fad is either cresting or still rising right now, selling the test orders is a reasonably safe bet. 

However: 

Fidget spinners and cubes violate most of the guidelines that define a Curio City product. They aren't useful, leaving aside the dubious claims about their therapeutic value. As a ubiquitous trend, they aren't unusual; I'd be competing with Walmart, Amazon, and eBay, among others. If you buy one, you're unlikely to "need" another, so they'd generate little to no repeat business. The cheap ones look breakable and, well, cheap. At a $10 retail, they wouldn't bring in much money. The target demographic (Millennials and below) skews lower than my usual customer base (Gen-Xers and above). There aren't any batteries to expire, but fads are time-limited by nature, and this is the greatest unknown -- is this a six-month fad or a three-year fad? These are all warning bells.

Mostly, though, instead of cash on hand I have a mountain of debt. So I really can't afford to experiment. Sorry, Aaron. You did motivate me to look for my old 1970s-vintage worry stone, though. I know I still have that somewhere.  

Down to (Metal) Earth

I've written about Metal Earth before, and I'm going to keep coming back to it until I reach a useful conclusion.

From my point of view, Metal Earth is the perfect product. The models are all one of two standard sizes, and they weigh next to nothing. They take up virtually no storage space and cost very little packaging and postage. They're unbreakable. They don't have batteries to wear out and they don't become outdated. An ample supply of new designs keeps the line fresh while targeting a wide range of interests. I can create new product pages by simply cloning and editing old ones. The vendor supplies good images and doesn't screw up their billing or shipping. Their website is easy to order from. In theory, they should be as collectible as Switchables and hence drive repeat business; in practice, I rarely see a customer come back for a second order. 

Those are all good reasons to pour money into making this line succeed. And yet, it stubbornly doesn't. I have several ideas about why that is so. 

So many new models come out so frequently that it costs a fortune to even try to keep up. Shoppers will naturally gravitate to the site with the biggest selection, and that's never going to be me.

They only ever sell for Christmas. I typically move $1,000 worth in four weeks, and then never sell another one all year. Apparently lots of people think they're great gifts for someone else, but very few people ever buy their own. Advertising trends support that conjecture: During the holiday rush, Metal Earth keywords go for at least 40 cents a click, and even lowball bids draw 25+ clicks a day. Then the competition for keywords crashes immediately after Christmas. This month I spent $22 to buy 136 clicks (just 16 cents a click) that brought exactly zero conversions. Cheap clicks and steady traffic...what's not to like? Well, paying $22 for no return, that's what. I assume that the rest of the retail world sees the same thing, which is why a click is going for just 14 cents this week. If nobody ever buys, those clicks aren't worth anything.    

Competition is probably the real killer. Other retailers can surely see the same appeal that I do, and big-name, deep-pocket sellers like Target can afford to Hoover up all the business. The only advantage I might have is staying power. A mainstream store like Target won't give shelf space indefinitely to something that only sells four weeks out of 52. (I wonder if they sell year-round in bricks & mortar stores.) Curio City is supposed to be about unusual products that one doesn't see everywhere, so maybe Metal Earth is fatally flawed that way. 

  
Shipments can be "dollar-dense," meaning that very small packages can easily bring in $100 or more. Yet my shipping charge for multi-piece orders is too damned high. Models weigh 0.15 lb. on average. But if I set a weight below 0.25 lb the USPS server returns first-class letter rates instead of the higher first-class package schedule, forcing me to overcharge by .1 lb per piece. That discrepancy doesn't matter much for one- or two-piece orders, but it adds up rapidly when you get to four or more pieces (1 lb). I can ship 10 models in a flat rate box for $6.20, but my software sees 2.5 lb going to the West Coast and charges $13. Without going any deeper into these weeds, there's no good solution. I can either optimize shipping for the vast majority of tiny orders, or for the much smaller number of more desirable large orders, but configuring for one end screws up the other. It's probably not as big a factor as the ones I mentioned previously, but shipping overcharges are certainly another competitive handicap.

Metal Earth is never going to be the next Switchables, despite their many similarities. Over the past three years I've put a lot of money into building a 125-model lineup. I can't afford to throw good money after bad, obviously, but neither can I abandon something I've cultivated so carefully for so long. Instead, I need to acknowledge that these things are only ever going to sell during the Christmas season and I'm only ever going to sell about $1,000 worth. Ideally, I'd scale back my advertising and inventory buys so that I can eke out a profit as a niche player without falling so far behind in selection that I can't compete at all. 

There must be a just-right balance there. I haven't found it yet.    

Yeah...Not Going to Happen

I won't miss the complaints about fixtures not being included with Switchables covers, or the ensuing orders for a single fixture (costing me a 50-cent box, a 5-cent label, and my time to process a $7.50 sale). Every single nightlight cover's 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. You can also use your Switchables cover as a suncatcher, a Christmas ornament, or with any other kind of light source. To display your Switchables cover in a window, add the optional suction cup. Switchables make gift-giving easy: Start your recipient out with a fixture and one or two covers, then buy him or her new covers on future gift-giving occasions.

The category page repeats this message in slightly different wording. Additionally, I added "Light fixture sold separately" text to most (but not all) of the product photos. Plus, all of the product names end with the word "cover." And yet, around 10% of customers still think they're buying a complete nightlight. People just plain don't read. 

Because I had found Switchables at the Boston Gift Show (a.k.a. The Cavalcade of Crap) 10 years ago, I faintly hoped that I might find a replacement for them there this spring. I should have registered for that by now, so I Googled the date. Turns out that the 2017 Boston Gift Show has been indefinitely postponed (why not just say canceled?), with suggestions to attend trade shows in Philadelphia, Atlantic City, Gatlinburg (the capital of tacky...didn't Gatlinburg burn to the ground?), or Myrtle Beach. Hah! Nope. The Boston show was of dubious value when it was free, and it died for good reasons. I'm sure not going to travel far away to browse tacky souvenirs, mass market junk, and handicrafts.  

As glad as I am for the excuse not to roam that sad and deserted convention floor this year, it does leave me with no plan for finding a Switchables replacement. I might overcome my hatred of travel to consider a road trip -- at my own expense, obviously; Curio City sure doesn't have a travel budget! -- if I thought that any of those other shows might be worthwhile. New York's Toy Fair (Feb. 18-21) is the only one that could be worth it. "Toys" are not a great fit for my store since I don't cater to children at all. But Toy Fair is enormous, and it defines "toy" very broadly. Admission is free to retailers, but of course staying in NYC is not. Even with free Amtrak tickets, meals and a couple nights' lodging would approach $500.

But behold their online component called shoptoys365.com. I found a lot of my opening products on the Toy Fair website back in 2005, so I have requested access. That it is a gated community encourages me. 

Now I just need to grit my teeth and shop it. It's hard to get motivated when one has no money.