However, I do know what's going on in our business. Things are really hopping--even with my husband's two week vacation in June. We have fulfilled many orders and my husband has had appointments with very large potential customers. We have been reordering for many clients, and we have some P.O.'s being sent almost every week.
My husband has been considering phasing out some of our local souvenir items. These would be products that we developed in the earlier days before they were sold. They are the few items that we carry in inventory. The promotional products that we sell now are specially ordered and all items are sold before they're shipped, so we don't have to store anything or pay for it up front (except for the balance that's due from the customer).
Also, we are increasing our "minimums" on many products. Some of our smaller clients only order a few of something, like shirts embroidered with their logos. This is very time consuming and the profit is small. Now these clients will be told that the minimum they must order has been increased. If they want to follow through, that's great. If not, then it won't effect our bottom line. They will make the decision for themselves and we won't have turn them down. We enjoy working with them and hope that they will continue to do business with us.
As for our structure, we hired one son to develop our new web site after work. His full-time job is a web designer--go figure, he graduated with a liberal art's degree. My other son revamped the logo to our new business name by adding a very cool blurred background that matches the name. We're trying to incorporate it on to the web site, but there are some technical difficulties that I don't understand.
Once the web site is up and running, it will be so much easier to market our company. The site will be hooked in to a promotional products association that has access to thousands of products. Clients will be able to peruse these at their leisure. Since we don't want end users to stumble onto our site, parts of it have to be password protected.
We also
It takes my husband many hours per month to keep our books in order, and, since he must balance to the penny (it's a good thing that the task doesn't fall to me!), it's very time consuming and takes his focus away from sales. There are other bookkeeping responsibilities that he needs to pass on, also.
He just informed me that our new system will work like this:
1) He'll take all orders and be the liaison with the client--I wont communicate with them at all. He's the face of the company--and a very handsome one at that (he reads my blog, so I was obligated to throw that in--Hi, Honey!).
2) The orders will come directly to me with the artwork. I'll place them with our suppliers and follow through until they are fulfilled on or before the deadline (again, that's why I am the "Order Fulfillment Department"). If I have any questions for the client, I will submit them to my husband and he will contact the customer. On it's face, this appears to be a needless step, and we have been eliminating it so far. However, this keeps my husband in the loop and, more importantly, doesn't make the client feel like they've been "handed off" and are no longer valuable just because we've made the sale.
3) All invoices will be paid by our accountant, my sister. If a purchase order doesn't match up with the invoice, she'll notice and call us. My husband doesn't have to spend his time inputting this information or making payments. She will also be paying all the bills for the company through our bank online. It's a perfect system of checks and balances for us at this point in time.
The best news is that our sales have increased every month! We have the infrastructure now to accommodate many more customers. We want to make sure that our service is always top-notch and the clients are happy.
So increasing our client base is our number one goal.
