Still Crippled

This week I wanted to wish my customers into the cornfield because my back is still so messed up that I can scarcely walk, let alone work. They were undeterred. One potential customer dangled a $1,200 golf ball sale in front of me for a couple of days before backpedaling. He might still come through, but it's probably just another false alarm.

Back pain becomes fair fodder for a blog post when it affects my business for weeks (and, what's worse, makes me lose a week of perfect gardening days). Earlier this week I felt better and thought that exercise might do me some good, so I finished my weeding (actually hoeing, since I can't bend over). That was too ambitious; I re-injured myself and set my recovery back by at least a week. 

When I was 20 years old I jumped from a sand dune in Charlevoix and landed stiff-legged on the beach, unconsciously expecting it to be soft and fluffy like snow. Of course, sand is more like concrete. I messed up my sacroiliac and had to be carried from the field. I didn't have insurance and I didn't want to inconvenience my friends, plus I was young and invulnerable, so I never saw a doctor. The old sacroiliac has failed in a major way at least half a dozen times in the decades since then.

I assume that's what happened, although I'm not completely sure. Heat, ibuprofen, and stretching help a little, so that's probably muscle pain. I'm going to have to see my doctor if I'm not mobile again by Monday. I don't like doctors; doctors are for sick people and they cost money. Maybe he can refer me to physical therapy or acupuncture or cortisone shots or a heavy-duty anti-inflammatory or a back brace or medical marijuana or something. 

Now I must try to get dressed so that I can attend to my chores -- go ahead, try to put on socks without bending at the waist and see how long that takes you. But the orders must go out. It's not like I can call in sick.

Christmas Week 2: In Which I Dodge a Bullet

I raised my Corn-n-Tater price by a buck and shut down my ads in anticipation of the big Dr. Oz promo that was scheduled for this Wednesday. Nothing happened. Minutes ago I learned that the appearance is never going to take place. Lawyers are involved, so I’ll restrict myself to saying that Steve was scammed by Dr. Oz’s production people. After traveling to their headquarters and sitting in the producer’s office for two hours, he got sent away empty handed. To make matters worse, Steve had told QVC about the Oz thing; when they found out that it was canceled QVC pushed his November spot into next spring.

So he is out thousands of dollars and his media plans are in ruins. As you might recall, a few weeks ago I mulled over making a bet-the-company investment in expanding to handle acceptance and distribution. If I had reached for that star I’d be looking at bankruptcy right now.

If my aversion to risk keeps me from success, it also saves me from failure.

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I went into this week $566 ahead of LY. Right now I’m down by -$1,400. I needed a stellar week; I got a mildly good one. Veterans Day weekend was surprisingly slow -- one order on Monday, seriously? It’s like shoppers didn’t get the memo that they’re supposed to start frenzying over Christmas this week. They’re going to be in for a rude awakening if they try to cram it all into the three weeks after Thanksgiving.

I’ve pulled out the budget stops on my Google ads; paying $40 per day for 250 clicks that produce just two or three sales is disturbing, to put it mildly. I’ve been hammering Facebook with at least one post a day and sometimes as many as three, but those only ever reach about 30 people (out of nearly 200 “likes”). Even my own wife never sees Curio City’s posts. I assume it’s because I won’t pay Facebook’s “boost” fee. 

Rushing in where angels fear to tread, I just dropped another $1,200 this morning to replenish MetalEarth (formerly Metalworks) models and add a few new designs. Last year one customer bought up nearly half of my stock and I never quite found the money to replace it, making it very difficult to judge the real demand. This might turn out to be a stupid mistake.  

At least I was able to carve out 5.5 hours for raking. Another couple of hours ought to finish it off. So far, I’ve filled 14 bags, two barrels, and two compost bins…after running the leaves through the mower. The mower gave up the ghost this morning, though. The internet says that I can replace the pull cord myself. Just what I need: another project. The fall yard cleanup is on hold until I can fix my mower.

Operational Crises

I should have had my existential crisis a couple of months ago when things were slow. A mysterious operational crisis hit during a busy sales period last Friday and preempted last week’s post. (Yes, I said busy; sales are picking up.) The existential crisis is postponed until next week because I’m too busy to deal with it.

I still don’t quite understand what happened. Two emails announce every order that comes in: One from my website and one from the payment processor. On Friday morning I received a credit card payment notification without an accompanying order notification email. Email can be a little flaky, but the order email usually arrives ahead of the payment email. There turned out to be no order in my transaction list corresponding to the small payment. 
 
This happened once before, many months ago. I never figured out what caused it then, but it wasn’t repeated so I chalked it up to a server hiccup and moved on. This time the customer promptly gave me the info I needed to reconstruct her order. A test transaction went through normally. A couple of hours later a real transaction also came through without incident. Then, late in the afternoon, I got a PayPal email with no corresponding order notification, and again the transaction itself was just plain not there.

Now that’s worrisome. I logged into my MySQL database to check the Orders table…and couldn’t find the table! In fact, there were a bunch of empty new “Mobicart” tables that I don’t use and a lot of my real tables had disappeared. My site was working normally, so the data obviously had to be there, but the strange-looking database sent me into a full-blown panic. The first thing I do in a panic is pause all of my advertising. I then contacted all three potentially helpful parties – MDD Hosting, Turnkey, and my contract developer – and sat back and worried, since I don’t have the technical skill to do any more than that.  

If it’s not already too late to make a long story short: The database had merely undergone an interface change. My web host said that their server was solid. My developer said everything looked dandy to him. Turnkey made a couple of guesses, but as I hadn’t updated Sunshop in many months I had no reason to suspect the shopping cart. We never did figure out what caused the two dropped orders, but the situation has not repeated. 

I’m convinced that Google punishes customers who pause their AdWords accounts. Even though the ads were only offline for a couple of hours, business died for three days after that. But Google’s over its snit and sales are picking back up.

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This second one isn’t a crisis, although I could turn it into one if I'm not careful. On 8/23 one “Icuriocity (lastname) don’t share info” ordered a couple of small kites for $23.11. I filled the order normally two days later and forgot about it despite the confrontational customer “name”. A few weeks later the customer complained that she didn’t get her order. 

Delivery confirmation showed it arriving two days after I sent it, so I made a routine response: Your package was sent on this date and arrived on that date, here’s your delivery confirmation number, go to usps.com to see for yourself. And btw here’s a link to our missing package advice. The important thing on that page is this paragraph:

After a package is confirmed delivered, or when you are notified of a delivery attempt, that package is no longer the responsibility of Curio City. We aren't responsible for packages that are lost or stolen after they're confirmed delivered. Our ownership of that package ends when your carrier scans the label to prove that the package was left.

Some customers argue with me about that; most just go away. I figured my weird-name customer was in the latter camp until I got a letter from American Express a couple of days ago: “Our mutual customer claims that s/he did not receive the order and requests credit.” 

If that confrontational customer name had already raised my defenses, this development kicked them into high gear. Contacting Amex instead of me indicates that they have been down this path before. I’m probably dealing with a common thief. (It's also possible that the package was undeliverable due to the weird name on the label, but in that case it should have been returned to me.)

Fortunately the Amex letter is not a chargeback. It gives me the options of providing proof of shipment and delivery (both of which I have) or refunding the purchase. I’m naturally inclined to fight it because I’m in the right and the customer is probably pulling a scam. Amex’s instructions for resolving disputes are encouraging. But past experience with Mastercard and Visa disputes taught me that they are invariably resolved in the shopper’s favor at the expense of the merchant (you don’t think the bank is going to cover the loss, do you?). If Amex doesn’t consider my documentation adequate – which they might not because delivery confirmation doesn’t include a signature -- they’ll escalate it to a chargeback and I will incur fees beyond the refund. Meanwhile, because I didn’t find Amex’s “online dispute tool” until just minutes ago, I have to respond to this complaint by FAX…and since I no longer have a FAX machine or landline, those cost money and inconvenience. Issuing the small refund to avoid further costs and headaches is the logical response, so that’s what I’ll do. But I don’t like it, not one little bit. 

I did block the customer’s IP address so that they can never buy from me again, at least from that computer. That makes me feel a little better. Now I’m trying to decide whether to send an email explaining that even though they got their refund, I consider them thieves and their business is no longer welcome…or just try to forget about it. Since this shopper apparently is a habitual pain in the ass, reason says that I’m better off dropping it.  
   
Letting Bad Guys win really pisses me off, though.

Frankenstorm!

Hurricane Sandy’s tropical storm-force winds barely brushed the Boston area. My office roof didn’t leak and our cellar (Curio City’s warehouse) didn’t flood. We didn’t even lose power in Braintree. The only consequence of the storm was a slight shipping delay caused by no mail service on Monday…and a disruption in my holiday merchandise strategy (more on that below).

Sales have been so poor for so long that I don’t know if I can attribute this week’s sluggishness to Sandy or not.

Yeah, October extended my long string of flops despite a couple of large sales that staved off complete disaster. The numbers:

October:

Total income: -19.9%
Total COGS: -18.9%
Payroll: -38.6%

Marketing: -13.3%
Net Income (Profit): +111.1%

Year to Date: 

Total income: -7.1%
Total COGS: -8.1%
Payroll: -1.3%

Marketing: -3.0%
Net Income (Profit): -326.3%

The spin: October’s double-digit sales decrease was a little smaller than September’s and costs fell by almost as much as sales. Advertising still cost more than it should have, but the bottom line was a tiny profit vs. a small loss LY. 

The YTD numbers speak for themselves. 

Christmas is just not materializing. As much as I’d like to believe that that monstrous quasi-religious holiday is fading into oblivion, I have to blame two things: Tired old merchandise and tepid cash flow.

All of my old mainstays are waning. Switchables don’t justify the huge inventory that I have to keep on hand; Panther Visioncaps are nowhere near the star that they used to be; bird kite season is over; the usual tournament-driven surge in golf balls didn’t come this fall; and I had to stop or scale back advertising for earbuds, keyboard stickers, and 3D puzzles. Even some bestselling standalone products like Whisky Stones and Fuzz Scarves have dropped off to almost nothing.

Cash flow won’t let me place holiday orders until my credit card statement resets on November 12. Those orders will arrive just before Thanksgiving’s official starting gun for an extremely short holiday season of scarcely four weeks. This new line of Metalworks models is my big gamble for this year. I hope they’ll be a bright spot, but I don’t expect them to save Christmas.

I did have just enough cash to place one major order before the 11/12 reset. Since I had a customer requesting one of their products, I decided on 10/21 to go with (a Vendor Who Shall Remain Nameless) despite some misgivings based on their checkered fulfillment history; half of the orders I give them get screwed up in one way or another and they’re extremely slow under the best circumstances. Their sales rep emailed me the next day to get my updated credit card info. Yesterday I still didn’t have my stuff. The Vendor Who Shall Remain Nameless had lost the updated payment info and the order was never placed. When I asked the rep to please make sure that it goes through today, I got this reply:

Our warehouse was closed due to the effects of Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy. The power is still out at our warehouse and they’re currently using a generator in their offices. We are virtually unable to ship at this time. As of today, we are still unsure if UPS will be able to reach our facility to pick up shipments that we are able to pack. Also, the port of New Jersey is closed; this will effect the inbounds of items into our inventory.

Translation: I gambled on the wrong vendor, and I might never see this order. I'm wondering if I should just cancel it outright.

Me, Myself, and Irene

Maybe the titular movie wasn’t the greatest romcom of all time, but how often do I get an excuse to depict Rene Zellweger's sour face?

Hurricane Irene is coming! Aside from imperiling my vegetable garden, it threatens to flood the cellar again…and that’s Curio City’s warehouse. Yes, all of my merchandise is at least a few inches off the floor. But I don’t have enough room to raise up my shipping supplies, and we have 22 years worth of personal detritus piled up down there. A flood would be a massive inconvenience at the very least. We raised our water heater a few inches off the floor after the last flood, so perhaps that won’t go out again. I’m hoping that most of Irene’s rainfall will run off the surface. Our cellar only floods when the water table rises too high.

Heavy, wind-blown rain eventually saturates our chimney and leaks through my ceiling…and that’s Curio City’s office. Ordinarily that only happens after several days of sustained storms, and Irene should blow through here in 24 hours or less – not enough time to soak through bricks. Capping, lining, and re-pointing the chimney is too expensive to ever happen. So I have a bucket.

I’m mostly worried about power outages. Curio City is hosted elsewhere, so business won’t be interrupted. My ability to monitor and process sales, OTOH, would be. My laptop’s battery is worn out, so I can’t use it at all without a cord…and we wouldn’t have Internet access anyway. The prospect of being housebound without any electronic entertainment is much more frightening than being cut off from Curio City for a short time. The state’s main utility is warning that some areas could be without electricity for up to a week. Fortunately, my town’s nonprofit municipal power company only has a few thousand customers and can respond very quickly. Even if the lights do go out, I don’t expect them to stay out for long.

When Worse Comes to Worst...and Back Again

July began with this message from Host Gator:

“I apologize, but I was forced to suspend the script "index.php" as it was causing a high load on the server, and due to it affecting all of the other accounts on the system, I forced to take immediate action for the health of the server.”

A text log that would freeze your brain followed, but all I needed to know was in that sentence: They shut down my store.

Brad the support guy said it’s Turnkey’s problem. Turnkey invited me to file a support ticket, which brought some general advice about optimal server configurations. I shut down all my advertising and threw myself on Host Gator’s mercy. What else could I do on the Fourth of July?

Now, it’s good that Gator monitors their server performance. I’m glad that they shut down scripts that degrade service for everyone else. I’m a lot less glad that they shut me down with no warning on Sunday morning of a holiday weekend -- at the beginning of the week that I’m leaving for vacation, no less. With my anemic cash flow and payroll taxes due by the end of the month, I was dangerously close to insolvency. Downtime could push me over the edge.
I persuaded them that my backup scripts might have been to blame and that they should revive me after I removed them. Curio City was back up by afternoon.

Imagine how my heart sank when I received the same email on July 11, while I was vacationing in the Berkshires. There was no way I could bluff them into changing their minds a second time. I had to demonstrate that I’d taken steps to solve a problem that I couldn’t even analyze without a functioning store and direct access to their server. Either there was something wrong with their server configuration, or there was something wrong with my Sunshop script (possibly introduced during the transfer from Mocha). I had to figure out whether Sunshop or Hostgator was at fault, and I had no idea how to do that. They helpfully suggested that upgrading to a VPS for a mere $105 per month would make it all better.

Switching hosts again was the only way to break the impasse. It took a couple more days to make that happen. So much for vacation.

Curio City finally staggered back up on Saturday, July 16, after five days of downtime. Right now it’s running fine at MDDHosting, a small company that I chose for their personal service and their expertise with PHP scripts. I want to believe that this is all behind me at last. But because I was never able to figure out what went wrong at Gator, I have no confidence that Sunshop won’t go rogue at MDD at any moment and send me right back to oblivion.

If that happens, I will have to upgrade from a shared server to a semi-private one. That would double my hosting cost, but it would also solve the problem without needing to understand it first.

When Hostgator eventually followed up on the dormant support ticket, I tersely informed them that I had moved to another host, and got this: “We are sorry to hear that. Is there anything that I could do that would convice you to change your mind? “

Heh. I answered:

“Well, let’s see…

You locked my store twice in one month, costing me >$1000 in sales…

Then you tried to sell me a plan costing over $100/month…

No, I don’t think you can change my mind. Sorry it didn’t work out.”

The week ending 7/16 was my worst ever, barely topping $100 and sending me deep into the hole vs. LY’s pathetic vacation sales. My cash-flow crisis became a rout. Last year I had managed to stash $2,000 in a savings account earmarked for site improvements and emergencies. Now I expected to need all of that money to cover operating costs, and thanks to payroll taxes coming due it still wouldn’t cover my entire July credit card bill. For the first time ever, I was contemplating going out of business.

And now this week is on track to become my best since March. I’ve made up most of last week’s shortfall and I even have a realistic shot at matching last July (with one less week!). I can probably pay my taxes and pay off my credit card using only half of my emergency reserves – even less if last month’s purchase-order customer sends me a check on time.

There’s life in the old girl yet.

The Great Migration

The worst-case scenario that I laid out last week came to pass: Curio City got lost in the move. So much for “You should not experience any technical difficulties with your site after the upgrade.”

Curio City Online went offline at midnight on Friday. I didn’t verify that everything was working properly and restart my advertising until Wednesday morning. Today’s blog post started as a day-by-day (almost hour-by-hour, actually) log of my frustration with MochaHost. I had little else to do except rant at my blog and wait. Now that it’s over and my resolve to nuke their offices from orbit is fading, I can abbreviate this entry considerably.

The culprit turned out to be a custom .ini file on my site. I don’t think it should have taken them four days to figure that out. I still have their email from February 2010 stating (in response to an old complaint) “You can create your own php.ini file which you can include in your main xxxxx folder or any folders within your xxxxx. You can specify any necessary settings which you need to alter within this php.ini file.” I won’t take the blame for this file’s existence after they gave us their blessing and it worked fine on the old server. But I’m backing down from savaging their server setup skills.

Sketchy communication made this the worst customer service I’ve experienced in the 54 years that I have stalked this earth. Apparently the techs can only respond by updating the actual trouble ticket, so most of my email inquiries were ignored. The few answers I did get were in a cryptic, staccato style devoid of information. Forty-eight hours into the ordeal they said “Currently the migration is still in process. In a couple of hours it should be done and then your application should be fixed.” A herd of elk could migrate across North America in the time Mocha was moving data from one server to another. Sixty hours after they killed my store they said “Your site is up and running at our end.” Bully for them! The rest of the world only saw an error page, but it was Mission Accomplished as far as they’re concerned. Two more urgent emails got no response at all.
For two of those four days I didn’t even know if anybody was working on my ticket; I still don’t think they did anything at all on Sunday. Not until I used Live Chat on Monday morning did they escalate my complaint for higher-level investigation, and even then I got no feedback all day. A second chat session Tuesday morning brought the reply “Your ticket has already been escalated,” as if that was all I needed to know. I was in the dark, growing more anxious and depressed with every passing hour, for most of those four days. You see, nobody works on Curio City except me, so when something goes horribly awry I have to take it personally.

The consequences of being offline for four days are surprisingly light. I can only speculate about sales I missed, of course. I only did $210 worth of business on the corresponding days LY. I saved roughly $70 on ads I didn’t run and I didn’t generate $42 worth of payroll (which is nice for Curio City but less nice for me). Having no pending deposits was frightening. But three people somehow managed to place orders on Tuesday despite my store winking in and out of existence all day. Wednesday was better than average. Yesterday was a shutout and I’ve had no sales yet today either. Now I’m nervous again even though everything looks normal; one small sale this afternoon would put me at ease. I had originally deemed this the worst disaster to befall Curio City in its 5.5-year life. Yet unless something unknown is causing my current drought I should easily make my plan this week. All of that drama adds up to a minor blip that won’t even register, statistically.

On Tuesday I was desperate to move to a new web host ASAP. But I’m getting cold feet now that Mocha’s stable again. Moving is perilous. A new IP address would destroy my site’s search engine rankings, for starters (if the Mocha move didn’t already do that). It would require more downtime for at least part of a day. And one never knows what one is getting into until the first time one actually needs support from the new host. The host that I’m courting has a free transfer service and gets stellar reviews for support, so I’ll likely engage their services to test their expertise (while avoiding paying my developer to do it). After the ordeal of getting Curio City back up on Mocha, I’m inclined to leave it alone until we go on vacation in July.

BTW, this is my 250th post. There are 249 others like it, but this one is unique.

A Flood of Memory

Pause with me for a moment’s reflection on Curio City’s disaster days. Several days of historically heavy rains flooded our cellar last March 14 and destroyed hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise and supplies. At the same time I was unknowingly racking up big fees by challenging the unfair chargebacks generated by three fraudulent sales; the bank would ultimately get more than the thieves did. A week later a smaller flood drowned the month’s bottom line. This March should look a little better simply by virtue of holding no disasters.

“Disasters?” I use the word deliberately. Curio City’s trials pale in comparison to Japan’s earthquake, tsunami, volcanic eruption, nuclear meltdowns, and the return of Godzilla. But Curio City doesn’t have a powerhouse economy and the sympathy of the world on its side. All it has is me, and that ain't much.
Still, I'm essential enough that I didn’t lay myself off last year (although I did put a stern “Needs Improvement” review in my permanent record). Massachusetts rewarded my largess by cutting my unemployment tax rate by nearly 1% of payroll. That will add a (very) few more bucks to the Net Income line.

While I’m nickel-and-diming…has anybody in the history of the world ever really used a “.biz” internet address? Why do I keep paying $16 a year to renew mine? Well, to prevent anyone else from buying it, of course. But who would do that, given that I own the US service mark?

Nickels and dimes are all that I’m bringing in as yet another sales disaster unfolds. I only broke three digits once in the past 10 days. I’m paying more for traffic than I’m making in sales. In hopes of liberating some of the dollars imprisoned in the cellar, I cut the prices of all of my old marked-down stuff this week, but most of that dead stock will never move at any price. I wrote off $138 worth and might wipe out a bit more before the month ends, since it doesn’t cost me any cash. Of course, it doesn’t free up cash, either. I’m flogging the Panther Vision cap changeover as hard as I know how to do with new ads, new keywords, and increased bids. It's not making much difference.

This month’s early sales spike made me hope that I could revive two spending priorities: Buy a video camera and buy a smart phone, in that order. The camera might be a small revenue-booster, but it’s also a time sink that comes with a learning curve, and I probably won’t be any good at using it. The smart phone, being expensive and of no practical use, is just one of those things I feel like I ought to have; it’s only on the list because my old flip phone barely works. But both of those are back on hold now.

Hmm, I wonder if smart phones have acceptable-quality video cameras these days.

I almost wrote that “It couldn’t be much worse,” but just like life, business can always get worse. In fact, zero isn’t even rock bottom: A damage claim and a lost shipment turned this week briefly negative on Monday. It’s on track to set another record low.

You must be tired of reading the same lament week after week, if anybody’s even still reading this blog. I’m sure sick of writing it. Other than month-end numbers, I’m not going to post anymore unless I have either good news or something interesting to complain about. All I've said for the past six months is “sales suck,” and I am out of ways to phrase that.

You're a Mean One

Week Five of the Seven Weeks of Christmas was the high water mark of 2009. This year’s Week Five is breathtakingly bad. Superlatives cannot convey just how bad things are going. 2010 is almost certain to see my first-ever year-over-year decrease as this week single-handedly wiped out the gains of the previous 11 months.

On “Cyber Monday” I spent about $70 to lure an astonishing 474 visitors who placed 17 orders, yet sales still didn’t reach half of LY. Tuesday delivered a still-respectable 13 sales, but they were only worth $299 versus a benchmark of $650 – again below 50%. And so it goes, with each day finishing at a third to half of LY’s sales. Today I’m already at nine sales by lunchtime (which rocks) worth $161 (which sucks).

I am not quite ready to open a vein yet. Divorced of context, those wouldn’t be bad sales numbers. Money’s coming in, product’s going out, and I’m busily taking things out of big boxes and putting them in small boxes. Christmas isn’t over for two more weeks and it’s supposed to be a time for miracles, right? What’s lacking is the usual sense of panicked urgency. I am not as frantic as I should be.

So…who stole Christmas? I’m too busy for nuanced hand-wringing, so these thoughts are raw and unsorted.

Too many small sales – or rather, too few big ones. While the problem really is this simple, the solution eludes me. Where are all the people who should be putting half a dozen things in their shopping carts? I don’t think bottom feeders are the problem; I’m not selling more discounted merchandise than usual. I wonder if it’s cell phone shoppers. People’s IQ drops at least 25 points when they use smart phones. They are distracted and rushed and their reading comprehension nosedives. It stands to reason that they would only buy the one item that led them here, especially on a text-centered site like mine. Whatever the cause, this dearth of big orders is my big downfall. In a few minutes I’ll take 15 orders downstairs to pick, box, and ship. If those 15 orders averaged $50 I’d be feeling smug. Fifteen orders averaging less than $20 is unambiguous failure.

I can’t blame the economy unless there’s an inverse relationship at work. My sales were strong while the economy was in the dumper and they’ve been fading ever since it started to revive in September. Maybe big-ticket mass-market items are crowding out the cheap novelties that people contented themselves with when times were harder? It would be comforting to believe that forces beyond my control are to blame…which probably makes it wrong.

I did make some bad product gambles. I’ve written about the infamous Buckyballs several times, but at least those are selling a little bit and I can understand why they’re disappointing. Why is nobody at all going for Jumbo Magic Christmas Trees or Christmas Boots? People ordinarily love holiday novelties. I haven’t even sold a single set of Peace Sign Ornaments, which did pretty well last year. But I always bring in some turkeys every season; it’s just part of the game.

Old standbys are disappointing me, too. Panther Vision caps are doing OK, but not nearly as well as they should be given my advertising spend. Fuzz Scarfs are moving at about 25% of the pace I expected. These things should be sure bets. Are they just too old and familiar now?

Thank the gods for Whisky Stones. At least one product is approaching my sales expectations.

My bush-league marketing efforts are failing – pay-per-click ads have grown too expensive, the competition is too crowded, and – for the first time ever – I didn’t get any serendipitous media this year. Usually at least one product enjoys a gift guide recommendation or a review with a link. This year the media has passed me by.

Trying to milk “Small Business Saturday” instead of Cyber Monday was a really idiotic tactical blunder. Nobody ever heard of Small Business Saturday and it’s meant for B&M stores anyway, whereas Cyber Monday has gained traction in the popular mind. Two shoppers contacted me on Cyber Monday (a first) to ask about sales or discounts, and I had nothing to offer. Even if it was the same shopper twice, that’s an opportunity foregone.

I don’t have the time to work through these thoughts methodically. I’ve just got to get through the next two weeks. I’ll try to make sense of it later.