Cazmanian_minx's MFi3 diary

setmefree2

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

Hooray - IF updated my online balance today instead of waiting until Monday and I'm delighted to see that we've tipped over the £2k paid off mark. Just another £143 and a bit thousand to go....

for that :T

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

Shop sales utterly, utterly dire this weekend. Hoping they pick up again soon - I'm wondering if eBay has tweaked its search algorithm again.

Caz

Hope things pick up soon

gingababe

:jwow..... wish I was doing half of that!!!!!!!!!!!


Any top tips???

cazmanian_minx

gingababe wrote: »

:jwow..... wish I was doing half of that!!!!!!!!!!!


Any top tips???

One very good one someone told me quite early on is that profit is as much to do with how much you buy for as how much you sell for and don't expand too fast too quickly. If you're trading in something you love, it's really, really easy to go "Ooooh, SHINY!!!!" when faced with a catalogue full of lovely stuff at wholesale prices! With eBay, keep it simple, don't swamp people with Ts&Cs, just lay out the information for each listing in a clear manner that makes it easy for people to see what they're buying. For example, I have a grid template for beads which has Quantity in pack, Stone type, Colour, Shape, Size, Threading hole, so a quick glance shows customers exactly what they're getting - although I've had a few problems in that I photograph the beads strung and a couple of people have thought they're getting 2 whole strings of AA-grade fluorite beads for 99p rather than 2 beads - it does say 2 beads in the quantity box! So my lesson learned there is to photograph them strung and unstrung and to use the unstrung photo as the eBay pic and just put the strung one into the listing with some HTML.

Weekly update - sales have picked up a little, thank goodness. My ship is docking at Southampton a day early and I should have that order with me within 7 days of it arriving, which is great. I've had a pricelist through from a supplier in India - went through it and put a prospective order into a spreadsheet only to find when I added it all up it was $17,500 :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek: Since I don't think my bank manager is going to approve that kind of overdraft just yet, I've cut down on the colour options rather a lot and got it down to $7,000 - so after Easter I shall be going to see her with a copy of my last two years' accounts (I don't have three years of full-time trading yet) and asking her for a £5k overdraft to provide me with some working capital space.

Caz

StuartGMC

Caz
Best wishes in securing the funding from the bank and maintaining/growing sales this year.

cazmanian_minx

I took a deep breath and emailed my business manager at the bank on Tuesday to ask for a £10,000 overdraft facility, reckoning that asking for more than I needed gave me room to negotiate down! It's a 1.5% annual charge with a minimum of £150, so if it was approved the annual fee would be the same as for a £5k facility anyway. I gave her my results for the year just ended, compared them to the year before, told her what my expected results would be in this financial year if the overdraft was granted and told her exactly what I planned to spend the money on.

One nail-biting day later I got a reply that said 'This sounds OK to me, but I'll need to key it through the computer system - I'll let you know.' So it's looking promising and now I'm just itching to send off the orders, but I've got to wait until the o/d has definitely been granted. I did, however, place a small test order with a Peruvian bead company - they make the most wonderful ceramic beads which I've been buying via the USA, but now I think I've managed to track down the source. Getting freight shipped from Peru could be tricky though - this is only an 8kg box, so it's coming EMS, but it's still going to cost $168 to get it to me.

The ship with my order on it is now in Southampton and my 750,000 findings are being cleared through Customs as I type :j:j:j:j My import agent says they should be with me within 7 days of docking, so that's next Wednesday. Think I'm going to be spending the next fortnight glued to the sofa bagging up headpins!!

Caz

SmlSave

Good luck with the overdraft!

setmefree2

cazmanian_minx

After a couple of phone calls yesterday afternoon, because it got referred to the underwriters and they needed more information, I've had an email that says 'I've sent you out a form to sign for the overdraft' - I'm assuming that's a YES! :j:j:j

Importing bill has arrived and my estimate was nearly spot on; I guessed £1000, it's actually £1042. Unfortunately they don't accept credit card payments, it's bank transfer only and I'm £200 short in my business account at the moment. Fortunately both my personal account and the import agent's account are NatWest, which do same-day internet transfer clearance, so I can transfer £200 from my current to my business, then transfer the whole amount from the business and it'll still get there on Monday. Result

Caz

gallygirl

Which is all great news, glad things are looking so good. However what we all want to know is: how's the dog

cazmanian_minx

gallygirl wrote: »

Which is all great news, glad things are looking so good. However what we all want to know is: how's the dog

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Absolutely full of himself He's still supposed to go swimming twice a week and since we've not had rain for a while and our burn's a bit low, we took him down to the Halladale river last night instead:





According to his schedule, he's not supposed to go off-lead for another 3 days, but last night he had a 20-minute swim followed by a 20-minute walk and this morning he's literally bounced all the way round his 30-minute morning walk and would quite happily have done all of the above again! He hasn't limped once in the past three weeks and his leg muscles on the operated side are now very nearly equal to the ones on the good side - we just need to do some hill work to even up his bum a bit! - so tonight we're going to give him 10 minutes loose on the beach for the first time

Caz