Locking Down Christmas

It's officially time to start panicking over my slumbering Metal Earth models. Just because I'm compulsive about such things, I'm going to keep a running tally. Complete sell-through would bring in $3,400; realistically, earning just $1 more than I spent on them will be a win. Amount spent: $1,833. Total sales: $0. 

I spent a week creating all the new product pages. Then I updated my Google Shopping product feed so that they'll appear wherever Google Shopping stuff appears. Then I raised my pay-per-click bids on Google and increased my daily spending limit from $35 to $41 (compared to $15-20/day during the summer). Then I whomped up an email newsletter and updated my mailing list. The newsletter ships tonight. 

Then I discovered that my template was resizing the main image on each product page to thumbnail size. Crap! Well, tiny pictures could explain a lot. Dimly recalling a forum post complaining about Sunshop's image resizing feature, I backed up all 3,833 of my image files before running it for the first time because I didn't relish re-uploading 50+ images one-by-one. The backup took so long that I decided to do it manually after all rather than run the risk of using that Sunshop tool. Then I discovered that one of the old pages that I had cloned for a template still had giftwrapping options...so I had to manually delete all of those. And with that, another full day was lost to Metal Earth. 

All of my Christmas merchandise is here now (although it's not all on display yet) save one order from the vendor that I put off until last. I won't name them because Google sees all and public criticism has come back to bite me before. This vendor was once one of my biggest suppliers, and dealing with them was always a struggle. They take orders through an independent sales rep who was always indifferent to my tiny account and usually screwed up my orders. More often than not the company would then screw up the billing or packing and I'd have to go through the incompetent sales rep to fix it. Then there's their products: They've discontinued most of the successful ones. Over the years they have moved more and more to prepack assortments. You cannot order a dozen black widgets; you must take four black, four red, four green, and four blue widgets -- if you want the successful variant you have to take the unpopular ones with it. Since I already have enough unpopular stuff in the cellar, I've been buying less from them each year. 

Having put that headache off as long as possible, I tried to bypass the sales rep (who never bothered to contact me) and order direct this year. After all, the company sends daily special-offer emails; they must want orders, right? Well, not through their website. I found an annoying Flash version of their catalog online (they stopped mailing me paper catalogs a year or two ago) but their order form is nowhere to be found. They ignored my email to the address in their promo emails. My second attempt got forwarded internally twice by people who didn't want to handle it before someone finally sent me an Excel stock list, which I promptly filled out and emailed back. Finally they sent my little order to the damned sales rep, who called me for my credit card information. :eyeroll: After hearing nothing for several days, I emailed for a status update. After a couple more of days of silence I got a reply saying that their end-of-month inventory had backed up shipping and the order will go out this week. Yesterday, their shipping department called for my credit card information, which the sales rep had screwed up. I haven't received shipping confirmation and still don't know if my order's on its way from Rhode Island (just an hour's drive away) or not. Assuming they don't charge my credit card for an order that's never forthcoming, I am done wrestling with this company. Their stuff just isn't that important.

Google says this company has just 11 employees. I either dealt with or was spurned by five of them. I'd punt them to the curb if some of their products weren't proven holiday hits. Not that they'd notice or care....

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.