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mallorys_cameraA peculiarity of the small business owner's mind is that seasons come to be defined purely in terms of cash flow. Summer is not about landscapes lit by golden sunlight or great oaks casting restful shade, no. Summer is about foot traffic.
Guess what, folks? Summer's over.
Throughout July and August, the store averaged over a thousand sales per month but yesterday we did exactly four sales, maybe thirty combined for the two days before. Thus I tunneled into an ever deeper depression. I hadn't expected summer to end quite so abruptly. I hadn't planned for it.
We're performing the high wire act without much of a safety net so planning is essential. Planning in this context essentially means making up projections and graphs by interpreting coffee grounds at the bottom of a Starbucks cup. It doesn't have any more substance than, say, a psychic reading from Mrs. Laurie, Monterey's own gypsy fortune-telling franchise now telling past, present and future from four (count 'em!) sparkling new locations in the greater Peninsula area including one very close to me on Cannery Row. High overhead but no inventory and very low labor costs (assuming that Mrs. Laurie can ectoplasmically project herself simultaneously into all four locations.) Maybe I should have gone into the psychic reader biz.
Because when in a panic last night I exhumed several business plans from the most ancient partition of my hard drive, I found that the numbers I'd made up for the Cannery Row Company overlords (when I was trying to persuade them to rent me their overpriced storefront) were right on target.
Unfortunately my projections only covered one year. August 2003 to August 2004. The business plan needs to be updated. But there's so much minutiae to attend to, daily maintenance and upkeep, two-thirds of a web site yet to do that business planning can't be a priority even though it's all that stands between me and the great dizzying abyss of uncertainty.
Not much other news. Surrounded by people, I'm lonely; feel the need for some deep soulful communion though with whom or with what I can't say. I wish I still believed in God. But I don't. Ah, saudade…
Guess what, folks? Summer's over.
Throughout July and August, the store averaged over a thousand sales per month but yesterday we did exactly four sales, maybe thirty combined for the two days before. Thus I tunneled into an ever deeper depression. I hadn't expected summer to end quite so abruptly. I hadn't planned for it.
We're performing the high wire act without much of a safety net so planning is essential. Planning in this context essentially means making up projections and graphs by interpreting coffee grounds at the bottom of a Starbucks cup. It doesn't have any more substance than, say, a psychic reading from Mrs. Laurie, Monterey's own gypsy fortune-telling franchise now telling past, present and future from four (count 'em!) sparkling new locations in the greater Peninsula area including one very close to me on Cannery Row. High overhead but no inventory and very low labor costs (assuming that Mrs. Laurie can ectoplasmically project herself simultaneously into all four locations.) Maybe I should have gone into the psychic reader biz.
Because when in a panic last night I exhumed several business plans from the most ancient partition of my hard drive, I found that the numbers I'd made up for the Cannery Row Company overlords (when I was trying to persuade them to rent me their overpriced storefront) were right on target.
Unfortunately my projections only covered one year. August 2003 to August 2004. The business plan needs to be updated. But there's so much minutiae to attend to, daily maintenance and upkeep, two-thirds of a web site yet to do that business planning can't be a priority even though it's all that stands between me and the great dizzying abyss of uncertainty.
Not much other news. Surrounded by people, I'm lonely; feel the need for some deep soulful communion though with whom or with what I can't say. I wish I still believed in God. But I don't. Ah, saudade…
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Date: 2004-09-02 10:33 am (UTC)my two cents
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Date: 2004-09-03 08:17 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2004-09-03 08:18 am (UTC)saudade?
Date: 2004-09-02 04:49 pm (UTC)BTW, you are my new writing hero.
I worked at Starbucks for a minute and they have their business flow analysis down to a science, or at least they try to. I wonder how much of that business projection stuff is grounded in reality and how much wild-ass guesswork. As Yogi Berra said, "If people aren't gonna come out to the ballpark, we can't stop 'em."
When I was planning a party a while ago, I asked my friend who throws a lot of parties, "How do you throw a party so people actually come?" and he said, "booze. And music." It seems tangentially related to the question of "How do you predict the behavior of people buying hot sauce?", and maybe there's the germ of an idea in it for you. Or maybe not.
What is your business plan as it stands now?
Re: saudade?
Date: 2004-09-03 08:12 am (UTC)Saudade is a Portugese word that gets used a lot in Brazilian samba lyrics. It's a profound and melancholy longing. You feel it for your girlfriend or God but not for ice cream or your car. Supposedly, it's untranslatable. English is such a rich language I'm sure that's not true. But I don't have time to sit down with a dictionary.
Business projection stuff is pretty trippy. For my first year analysis, I basically parked myself for three days on a bench outside The Garlic Shoppe (which sells 40 kinds of hot sauce) and watched and recorded every transaction. Then I cross-referenced that against what little information is available about Cannery Row traffic flow -- basically aquarium attendance stats -- and came up numbers. I'm amazed at how accurate they proved to be. I should be able to use first year numbers to project second year numbers.
Biz plan for Year II builds out branded merchandise. We have a really cool sign, I want it on teeshirts. Also we want to do a line of California/Monterey-specific hot sauces with funky names & funny labels: Mission Combustible, Otter Inferno, Beast of Eden, Of Spice & Men. But I have to balance product build-off against paying down debt. Tricky balance!