Mooloo's little tapestry of life, 2016

Savvy_sewing

Everything stops for the day.
I have a cold, sneezing and spluttering and eyes hurting so I was out the door dead on 4pm and collected DGD from after school club an hour early so I can take paracetamol have a cup of tea and a lie down!
Tomorrow I better feel better as I am teaching and I have plenty to do at home as well as at work.
For now DGD is on her kindle and I am in bed with the heat pad on!
I hope I am not becoming a whimp these days!

Savvy_sewing

Morning.apart from heating up dinner, all I did last night was read.
Lights were out by 9pm
DGD watched a video and you tube Minecraft!

I woke many times in the night for the loo! Urine infection? Or something else I wonder.
I woke at 5 to 5, struggled to get my mind to stop playing leapfrog or doing the hurdles, finally fell into a fitful sleep and had a nightmare. Woke up crying!
As I had been awake and binged up I had drank most of my water I had brought up to bed, so my cup of tea is actually only half a cup. But half is better then none.
EBay tell me two pieces of my jewellery have sold, at the starting price of 99p. Looks like I will have meagre spending money on this holiday then!
I may leave it in the account to "grow" haha.
Today is Parents Evening. I am not looking forward to that.
DGD is currently hating school, me, and herself by the sounds of her.
I need to find a way to turn her frowns upside down and to drop the 't' at the end of can't into a can!!
Reverse psychology needed then!
I don't remember my lot being so down on themselves but maybe time has faded the memories.
We have two weeks left of this financial year and the social are coming back to review our income- means test me every year, and usually drop the income as a result although I have not had an increase in income from anywhere else.
I will be on tender hooks for the next month while every Monday I hope to still see funds in my account. It pays for the After school club, uniform, trips and fuel to see DGDs Mum. Usually I pay their fuel or they could not come to see her.
I am not sure selling off my surplus on EBay is going to make up the difference if I have it cut again.
I also promised myself that I would start to pay myself a wage from the shop, but looking at the accounts that also seems a long way off.
There is nothing left after I paid the Thread Suppliers.
I think I need to be doing more number crunching and get on a course on how to sell my business as well as how to cost etc and get it right.
I have worked long enough now that I want to see results and not just scrape by on my Tax Credits and Guardianshipllowance.
I love sewing but there has to be a way forward for me to do more than just pay the bills and the staff or I will not be able to sustain things past the 3 years of my lease. I have 18 months maximum to turn it around.
Perhaps I need a marketing course, website course, and an accounting one!
I will have to see what is available in my area.
I need some expertise in things other then handling sewing machines and fabrics.
I should be creating a nest egg not a white elephant!
And on the shoulda, coulda, woulda note I better get up and get the school day started and get off to my work too.
Have a good day everyone.
I hope to turn my own frown upside down this morning!

Slinky

Hi Mooloo

Sorry you're feeling a bit down. I've just read about Futurelearn on another thread, there are some free business courses on there which may be of use to you starting in April.

https://www.futurelearn.com/

Edit, there's also a course about innovation in the fashion industry.

Savvy_sewing

Oo goody I will take a good look at them.
Just finished teaching and am shattered. This is not good as I am not getting much work done.
On the plus side we have had £130 cash and £60 on the card machine.
I am just having a reviving cup of tea.

Savvy_sewing

So parents evening was not so bad. Personal issues aside if DGD would have some self esteem ( lost when DGS was born ) she would succeed. In one project about 3dimentional shapes most of her class made cubes. Not my monkey she made a dodecahedron! New teacher (male), said if she could actually bother to work on other subjects she would 'fly' and that he doubts the diagnosis of dyslexia, however what ever she is he thinks she is highly intelligent but just has no confidence or self worth. - most say that this has arisen or been more noticeable since mum was pregnant and moved away. I certainly have seen that myself but thought I might have been over analysing the situation.
Anyway that's workable I hope.
The shop is seeing new faces all the time and work is coming in.
I studied some marketing hype (American ) and then a business cash flow part of a course from the link above. The American got my goat a bit with his hyper sell, but also found an interesting spark (reluctantly),
However the English delivery was do flat and boring no wonder we don't enjoy seminars and webinars and the like here!
Tomorrow I have taken the day off as I have a lot to do at home and with my Mum.
Time for bed. Night x

dangers

Are the school doesn't not anything to help with her low self esteem? Learning Mentor or another adult that dgd trusts?

dktreesea

It's still early days for your business. You are building up customers and will get repeat business. The main thing is to make a profit. I realise you will have days when you have to use all your takings to pay the rent/suppliers/staff, but it's on the days when you don't and you have good takings, that you need to take the opportunity to transfer £10 or £20 to yourself. I used to plough most of our profit back into the business, but now realise it is more important to get paid, even small amounts, even if I am just going to save it for a rainy day (in your case your Portugal holiday?) and just build the business up slowly rather than do as I did in the early days, trying to expand it quickly, enough to be able to pay us both full time living wages. It didn't work. We just didn't have, and haven't had, enough of our own capital. Fortunately we had a lot of support from our bank, especially through the recession. Now we don't need to depend on their support - I expect to be completely debt free before the year is out, - but we wouldn't have needed that support if I had just done as you are doing, grown the business organically without using any debt.


Keep in mind too, you have caring responsibilities. You're a full time, or near enough to, grandmother and you have caring responsibilities for your Mum.


I hope what the government is bringing in , if you save £50 a month they will top it up by 50% after 2 years, and a further 50% if you manage to save this for 4 years, will not just be for employees but also the self employed. £600 a year to save doesn't sound much yet so few people seem to manage it.


And like you say, in one day you took £130 in cash and £60 on the card machine. I've been an accountant now getting on for decades, and even now, in the 21st century, there are so many businesses out there that don't have takings of £190 in one day. And certainly not when the business hasn't been open yet for two years.


On some days, the antique dealer in our row of shops tells me he has no customers at all. The fishmonger does well. He closes when he is out of stock, usually by 2pm. The florist also does well, partly because they have the contract to supply the customers of the nearby funeral parlour. The three corner shops (yes, 3, - a ridiculous number for the amount of surrounding housing) all limp along, especially the two that don't open late.


One of the barber shops, run by a lady barber, does okay, though she also, she tells me , has her days when she only takes £30. The other one is in a bad way, and has changed hands 5 times in 4 years. Not sure what is wrong there, the wrong side of the road maybe?


The dressmaker also has a dress exchange in a different shop near to hers, but it never seems to be open. I see there is a sign now in the window to enquire at the dressmakers if people see something through the window that they want. Very strange. She obviously can't afford to staff it.


We also have three coffee shops. The one that is old fashioned and long established does okay. The other two limp along. One is making a loss, so the neighbour who knows the owner well tells me, - she said he appreciates how one of our children is a regular customer (more money than sense?) but wonders why we never go in there (I'm married to a chef who makes wonderful cakes; why would I go in there?). I think she was hinting we should be neighbourly and grease his palm with silver and help him to stay afloat. He's had it on the market for ages. Wants to recoup his investment but has no takers. Food is hard. Unlike thread or books, it goes off. I don't know the owners of the other coffee shop. I knew the original owners, who sold up and relocated to another area, where their coffee shop also failed. It was a much busier street but in a relatively poor area where people, if they want a coffee, go to the pub (Wetherspoons) instead. This I understand. They have some of the nicest tasting and best value coffee in Edinburgh, imho.


And the most profitable business is....Lothian Buses. Someone said to me as a joke they take more money from our stop and the nearby stops than half the businesses in our shopping street. Mmm, buses that run every 8 minutes during the day and are always packed. He said it jokingly but I actually think it's true.


I think you and your business are doing awesomely (probably not a real word, lol). You employ people, people who might not have even had any work were it not for you taking the plunge and risk and opening your shop. As you say, your takings are good and you have lots of new customers. Alterations are a repeat business. So is dressmaking. Have faith, you're doing well.

dktreesea

Yikes! Sorry for the looooong post! I'm in a reminiscing mood, lol.

Feral_Moon

Dktreesea what you say about coffee shops rings a bell with me. I love coffee but it's got to be good quality coffee, especially if I'm buying it out. I've got a Tassimo at home and regularly use the Costa coffee pods so to pay the extra to drink out I want a good quality barista coffee, not a cheap cup of instant that so many greasy cafes seem to churn out.

But lovely encouraging words for Mooloo. I think I read recently her annual turnover was more than £25k last year which is amazingly good for a new business. She should be extremely proud of herself.

Savvy_sewing

DGD was coughing a lot in the night, and had been saying at school she didn't feel well. Indeed yesterday Morning she had told me she didn't feel well, so I think I may be naughty and keep her off today with me. Hopefully a slower day and keeping warm will help. All the Mum's at the school gates are saying their 7/8 years old are struggling and tired, I think the yuk weather has been a contributing factor in it.
Also as I am under par, it means that I don't have to rush her to school and me to work, arguing over the table etc.
My nephew is going to go and visit my Mum today ( clever but a bit of a recluse), he's going to clean up her computer for her. So she will at least see people today, and she tells me Biggest of Mooloo's mowed her lawn for her. Good to know that I don't have to do it!
And that she's being looked after by grandchildren too.

On the business front, with the overheads etc the business cash flow is my main concern at the moment. I am hoping that the introduction of the fabrics and ribbons etc will help bring in extra cash regularly as the mark up is reasonable and I can not increase the alterations unless I work longer and harder or employ more staff. I don't want to do that until I see an income for me. Currently I realise that I need to put more effort into the accounts, and the Marketing of the business. I don't think the two advertisements that I paid for last year brought me in any work at all. I did ask Staff to chat to customers and find out where they heard about us, and if they were repeat business. She was going to mark it somewhere on the carbon copy of the invoice/booking in sheet, but I have to remind her, and me to do it.
Sometimes I notice that it is a repeat customer only when I text them to say that their items are ready for collection and the previous message from 2014/2015 comes up on my phone. Some customers are so regular that they feel like friends!
When I feel I am loosing confidence in my abilities it is the knowledge that they keep coming back that reminds me that I can.
I believe that I need to learn more about the website and how to get my pictures up better. I also need to learn about keywords and the things search engines do.
But my priorities are to study the accounts, get them updated, accurate and then use them to try and establish the cash flow forecasts better.
It will be a bumpy ride through April as we close for the holidays but it will be interesting to see how July/August will be as we will not follow the same pattern as the dry cleaner and baguette shop who close when Mercedez have their factory fortnight.
I may be very quiet, or I may be busy.
I want to get my head around the next lot of workshops, advertising them, and maybe do a summer holiday lessons.
First I need to check where and what everyone else is doing around me.
Mum will be in France.
Just told DGD she doesn't have to go to school today, and that we don't need to rush. She looked so relieved.
I better get a wriggle on and utilise my time to the best.