Noticing winter a-settin’ in got me a-thinkin’ about Christmas merchandise. First I attacked three piles of old catalogs and recycled all but half a dozen serious contenders. (I threw away at least 100). Then I started plowing through my six-month backlog of marginally relevant and mind-numbingly dull trade magazines. Once I’m done with that I’ll whip up some dummy orders/reorders to cost out everything. Then I’ll forecast how much I can spend, and finally pare things back until those numbers match. If this year is typical, I won’t find the best stuff until October anyway. I must resist the impulse to shoot my wad in September. It’s a small wad, after all (sing that to the tune of "It's a Small World After All").
Trade magazines aren’t written for one-man, work-at-home, technologically naïve souls like me. The articles often make me glad that my life doesn’t involve mainstream, high-stakes retailing. A few make me despair that my website lags behind the tech curve, and I’m helpless to change it. I am always at the mercy of Sunshop.
Speaking of which: On Sunday my new, post-Eric developer is scheduled to perform his first job for me, upgrading Sunshop from version 4.1.7 to 4.2.0. I’ll write more about that after the deed is done. The new version contains one major new feature, and Turnkey has promised to add some new templates that could offer me a whole new look.
I want to figure out social media before I get sucked too far into Christmas. I need to link this blog to a Facebook page and a Twitter account (both of which I have, but don’t understand), and then figure out how to use it all in concert with my email newsletters. Social media are as much about attracting media attention as actual customers. I do know how to provide a personality -- an often disagreeable personality, yes, but at least genuine.
Finally, I started using Google’s keyword tool to broaden my ad campaigns for a few products – casting a wide net for obscure but effective search terms that I’ve overlooked. I’ll have to winnow out a lot of crap in the process. This is driving up my ad costs in the short term.
Reasons to hate myself: I always log into my bank account to schedule payment immediately after reconciling a credit card statement. I’m sure that I ordered last month’s check as per my routine. But I must have forgotten to click the “Finished” button on Citizens Bank’s crappy interface, because last week I got a late-night overdue payment notice. I logged onto my Amex account and paid them online within minutes. Alas, they’d already extracted their pound of flesh. Forgetting to click that stupid “Finished” button cost me a $38 late fee and $42.81 in interest. So much for the $100 windfall I got for my old computer.
Why hate myself, rather than Amex or Citizens? Because we all know the sleazy games that card issuers play to “earn” fees nowadays. Before the Great Recession, I’d have begged Amex for mercy due to my stellar payment history; post-crash, I know better than to even ask. And the Citizens Bank interface just plain sucks. They are rolling out a redesign next month.
Reasons to hate QuickBooks: The eighth major patch for QB 2009 came out. Number of my previously tagged reasons to hate QuickBooks that were addressed: Zero. I can’t believe Intuit deliberately left the transaction-list sorting bug intact.
Welcome to Curious Business
Every Friday, I post a small insight into running Curio City and/or Blue Hills Editorial Services. My most recent posts are directly below. You can also start with the first post, or use the subject labels to the right to home in on particular topics. Feel free to comment on anything that interests you.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Friday, August 07, 2009
Winter's a-Settin' In
Thursday morning I awoke in an uncomfortably cool room. Every year at about this same time a cold front blows in a crystal blue sky...and my pollen allergies. The shadows reach some critical length, the quality of sunlight changes, my tomatoes and peppers reach a certain ripeness, and when I put that all together somehow I just know. Fall is bullying summer in the back yard. Pretty soon summer will run home crying and fall can start its annual killing spree.
“Fall blew in last night,” I told my wife. “Winter’s a-settin’ in.”
That last phrase always riles her up. My mom used to say it. She could detect those same subtle cues that I pick up on, and see the same thing. Yes, it’s still August. Yes, several more weeks of summery weather lie ahead. But the fix is in.
Naturally, Anne thinks I’m nuts. And I am nuts. But I’m right about this.
Imagine my righteous delight, then, when I came home to find an order for the LED Peace Sign tree topper waiting for me. And imagine how a subsequent order for the Recycled Motherboard Christmas Tree compounded my smugness. And then, to top it off, I got an unrelated order from somebody whose surname is “Christmas”. I’m not clever enough to make this stuff up.
Winter’s definitely a-settin’ in.
A jolt of anxiety is probably a good thing, because for the fourth year in a row I have no marketing plan or holiday strategy. Maybe lightning will strike like it did last year. I need to zero in on a few good products, erect some lightning rods, and pray to the gods of greed for a miracle. Without one, I won’t match last year’s phenomenal sales and 2009 will go down the toilet.
At least my open-to-buy is in the black and I’m well-stocked on my major lines. By mid-September I’ll have enough cash on hand to bring in a few of the products I’ve been wish-listing since spring. None of them excite me, but neither does life in general.
Something new to hate about Quickbooks: Each day, I match individual transactions in the “make deposits” window to the day’s actual bank deposits. This window used to sort transactions by date, as you’d expect. In QB 2009, it sorts them alphabetically by deposit type (so all cash transactions, then all checks, then all Discover, then all Mastercard, then Paypal, etc). Since the bank doesn’t discriminate between MC and Visa I have to combine and re-combine mixed charges until I reach an amount that matches the deposit – a minor nuisance now, but it’s going to become a real time-sink come December. The standard Windows sort-by column header doesn’t work. Intuit deliberately broke it. Intuit’s customer service/help desk board has dozens of complaints about this bug and one official reply saying (in effect) “We changed this in 2008. It works the way we want it to, so it’s not a bug. Deal with it.” Users accuse Intuit of breaking this so that we will subscribe to their payment processing service. Intuit might just be the most arrogant software developer I’ve ever encountered – and I used to work in the PC games industry, where contempt for customers is legendary.
Something else to hate about Quickbooks: The 2009 desktop has new icons for “Intuit.com Services”, “Accept Credit Cards,” and “Learn About Payroll Options.” These are advertisements, and they cannot be removed. Here’s a clue, Intuit: Do not spam paying customers.
More hatred for Quickbooks: During a routine backup QB waved its scrawny arms around and shouted “Danger Will Robinson! Your data file is damaged! You need to run Rebuild Data! Danger!” Trying to do so triggered more dire warnings – “don’t try this unless instructed by an Intuit technician!” Screw you; that costs money. You know what the repair utility found? A duplicate template. Now, *I* certainly didn’t create a duplicate template…. And of course QB won’t let me delete a template.
A new reason to hate Yahoo: As soon as I paused my campaigns, I started getting daily emails saying: “There is an issue with the analytics tag for account 'Kraken Enterprises, Inc.-US' [xxxxxx]. Data has not been received since xxxxxx. If analytics data is not received for 46 consecutive days, your analytics will be temporarily deactivated. Please verify your analytics settings and check the tags on your web site(s).”
Of course, my tags are unchanged. I re-enabled Yahoo ads for a few top products; I’ll shut them down permanently after I use up my last $70. Data is flowing, but I’m still getting the same email warning every morning, with the date incremented by one day. Of course, Yahoo’s analytics are useless anyway.
Oh well. Microsoft bought Yahoo’s search business. I hope they nuke YSM from orbit.
An even better reason to hate Yahoo: No sooner did I reactivate those keywords than I got a notice that some are being deactivated because the minimum bids have increased. Yup, they’re raising prices again. My account doesn’t tell me which ones, if any, are endangered.
Something new to hate about my Vorlon (and I really hope I won’t need a tag for this!): The headphone/speaker wire jack is in the front of the machine. Grrrrr. Maybe iPod zombies appreciate having easy access to that jack, but for those of us who keep external speakers plugged in it’s just one more thing that’s constantly in the way. The Vorlon is a great machine functionally, but the ergonomics are really screwed. You’d think Dell would know better.
Oh, and when I run a graphics-intense game, the heat output is phenomenal. I wish I’d known that before I bought the video card upgrade.
“Fall blew in last night,” I told my wife. “Winter’s a-settin’ in.”
That last phrase always riles her up. My mom used to say it. She could detect those same subtle cues that I pick up on, and see the same thing. Yes, it’s still August. Yes, several more weeks of summery weather lie ahead. But the fix is in.
Naturally, Anne thinks I’m nuts. And I am nuts. But I’m right about this.
Imagine my righteous delight, then, when I came home to find an order for the LED Peace Sign tree topper waiting for me. And imagine how a subsequent order for the Recycled Motherboard Christmas Tree compounded my smugness. And then, to top it off, I got an unrelated order from somebody whose surname is “Christmas”. I’m not clever enough to make this stuff up.
Winter’s definitely a-settin’ in.
A jolt of anxiety is probably a good thing, because for the fourth year in a row I have no marketing plan or holiday strategy. Maybe lightning will strike like it did last year. I need to zero in on a few good products, erect some lightning rods, and pray to the gods of greed for a miracle. Without one, I won’t match last year’s phenomenal sales and 2009 will go down the toilet.
At least my open-to-buy is in the black and I’m well-stocked on my major lines. By mid-September I’ll have enough cash on hand to bring in a few of the products I’ve been wish-listing since spring. None of them excite me, but neither does life in general.
Something new to hate about Quickbooks: Each day, I match individual transactions in the “make deposits” window to the day’s actual bank deposits. This window used to sort transactions by date, as you’d expect. In QB 2009, it sorts them alphabetically by deposit type (so all cash transactions, then all checks, then all Discover, then all Mastercard, then Paypal, etc). Since the bank doesn’t discriminate between MC and Visa I have to combine and re-combine mixed charges until I reach an amount that matches the deposit – a minor nuisance now, but it’s going to become a real time-sink come December. The standard Windows sort-by column header doesn’t work. Intuit deliberately broke it. Intuit’s customer service/help desk board has dozens of complaints about this bug and one official reply saying (in effect) “We changed this in 2008. It works the way we want it to, so it’s not a bug. Deal with it.” Users accuse Intuit of breaking this so that we will subscribe to their payment processing service. Intuit might just be the most arrogant software developer I’ve ever encountered – and I used to work in the PC games industry, where contempt for customers is legendary.
Something else to hate about Quickbooks: The 2009 desktop has new icons for “Intuit.com Services”, “Accept Credit Cards,” and “Learn About Payroll Options.” These are advertisements, and they cannot be removed. Here’s a clue, Intuit: Do not spam paying customers.
More hatred for Quickbooks: During a routine backup QB waved its scrawny arms around and shouted “Danger Will Robinson! Your data file is damaged! You need to run Rebuild Data! Danger!” Trying to do so triggered more dire warnings – “don’t try this unless instructed by an Intuit technician!” Screw you; that costs money. You know what the repair utility found? A duplicate template. Now, *I* certainly didn’t create a duplicate template…. And of course QB won’t let me delete a template.
A new reason to hate Yahoo: As soon as I paused my campaigns, I started getting daily emails saying: “There is an issue with the analytics tag for account 'Kraken Enterprises, Inc.-US' [xxxxxx]. Data has not been received since xxxxxx. If analytics data is not received for 46 consecutive days, your analytics will be temporarily deactivated. Please verify your analytics settings and check the tags on your web site(s).”
Of course, my tags are unchanged. I re-enabled Yahoo ads for a few top products; I’ll shut them down permanently after I use up my last $70. Data is flowing, but I’m still getting the same email warning every morning, with the date incremented by one day. Of course, Yahoo’s analytics are useless anyway.
Oh well. Microsoft bought Yahoo’s search business. I hope they nuke YSM from orbit.
An even better reason to hate Yahoo: No sooner did I reactivate those keywords than I got a notice that some are being deactivated because the minimum bids have increased. Yup, they’re raising prices again. My account doesn’t tell me which ones, if any, are endangered.
Something new to hate about my Vorlon (and I really hope I won’t need a tag for this!): The headphone/speaker wire jack is in the front of the machine. Grrrrr. Maybe iPod zombies appreciate having easy access to that jack, but for those of us who keep external speakers plugged in it’s just one more thing that’s constantly in the way. The Vorlon is a great machine functionally, but the ergonomics are really screwed. You’d think Dell would know better.
Oh, and when I run a graphics-intense game, the heat output is phenomenal. I wish I’d known that before I bought the video card upgrade.
Friday, July 31, 2009
I'm Back
Our Berkshires break was wonderful. The weather cooperated for a concert on the lawn at Tanglewood and our garden tour of Naumkeag, the former summer home of the Choate family (no direct relation to the late actor Tim Choate, better known as Zathras). We went to an exhibition opening for the Williams College Museum of Art, saw the O’Keefe show at The Clark, visited MassMoCA, and even saw a play at the Berkshire Theater Festival (good lord, theater is expensive! Not as bad as going into Boston for a play, though). We walked our customary three miles on at least half the days that we were there, had a day or two of down time at our rented mountain cabin, and still managed to visit most of our favorite restaurants. Behaving like employed people was refreshing while it lasted. Now I’ve got a year to recharge the vacation budget before we can go back out west.
On our first night in Williamstown two customers who received the wrong orders called me. Yes, I carelessly switched two mailing labels again – the third time I’ve done that, I think. Being 150 miles from home made solving it nearly impossible. But I got lucky: Both customers cheerfully agreed to send their misdirected packages to each other. I reimbursed them for their expense and refunded their original shipping charges, leaving everyone satisfied. Or at least not angry, which is the best I could hope for in that situation.
I’m seeing tentative signs that the economy has bottomed out. After going nowhere for six months, my wife’s job search produced several leads last week. Curio City’s traffic is up slightly and I’m averaging 2-3 (small) transactions per day again. Maybe I’ll see reliable (small) paychecks again next month.
Apples & Oranges
Calendar drift moved LY’s first week of August into this year’s end of July. Since we also changed our summer vacation from August to July, comparisons between the two months are whacked. I should probably change my spreadsheet from full weeks to straight calendar-month accounting. My Excel file would need a drastic overhaul, but I’d only need to do it once, rather than shuffling weeks between months every couple of years. It’s a silly statistical niggle of interest to nobody but me. Anyway, this July has one more week than LY (34 days in all), but also includes 10 vacation days during which Curio City did a whopping $95. Those two factors ought to roughly cancel out.
Total income: -15.7%
Total COGS: -20.4%
Payroll: -45.5% (ouch!)
Net Income (Profit): +363%
The YTD numbers:
Total income: +6.4%
Total COGS: +7.0%
Payroll: +16.9%
Net Income (Profit): -91.6%
Higher payroll is harming profits. My personal bank account likes that trend on a week-to-week basis, but I’m going to miss my year-end bonus. At least the YTD bottom line is slightly in the black.
I don’t know what to expect from August. The month has one less week than Aug. 2008 did, but no time out for vacation. I hope those factors cancel out.
On our first night in Williamstown two customers who received the wrong orders called me. Yes, I carelessly switched two mailing labels again – the third time I’ve done that, I think. Being 150 miles from home made solving it nearly impossible. But I got lucky: Both customers cheerfully agreed to send their misdirected packages to each other. I reimbursed them for their expense and refunded their original shipping charges, leaving everyone satisfied. Or at least not angry, which is the best I could hope for in that situation.
I’m seeing tentative signs that the economy has bottomed out. After going nowhere for six months, my wife’s job search produced several leads last week. Curio City’s traffic is up slightly and I’m averaging 2-3 (small) transactions per day again. Maybe I’ll see reliable (small) paychecks again next month.
Apples & Oranges
Calendar drift moved LY’s first week of August into this year’s end of July. Since we also changed our summer vacation from August to July, comparisons between the two months are whacked. I should probably change my spreadsheet from full weeks to straight calendar-month accounting. My Excel file would need a drastic overhaul, but I’d only need to do it once, rather than shuffling weeks between months every couple of years. It’s a silly statistical niggle of interest to nobody but me. Anyway, this July has one more week than LY (34 days in all), but also includes 10 vacation days during which Curio City did a whopping $95. Those two factors ought to roughly cancel out.
Total income: -15.7%
Total COGS: -20.4%
Payroll: -45.5% (ouch!)
Net Income (Profit): +363%
The YTD numbers:
Total income: +6.4%
Total COGS: +7.0%
Payroll: +16.9%
Net Income (Profit): -91.6%
Higher payroll is harming profits. My personal bank account likes that trend on a week-to-week basis, but I’m going to miss my year-end bonus. At least the YTD bottom line is slightly in the black.
I don’t know what to expect from August. The month has one less week than Aug. 2008 did, but no time out for vacation. I hope those factors cancel out.
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