Mooloo's little tapestry of life, 2016

supermezzo

Just an idea, Mooloo, but I wonder if creating a very specific 'job' for DGD at the shop might give her a sense of achievement and therefore improve her self-confidence? Obviously it needs to be something appropriate and without any pressure, but doing something which she could organise (ribbons, buttons, stock etc) and see an improvement for her input might well serve to help her believe in herself. You can ask the staff to leave her specific tasks to her, and ask school to encourage her to talk about and explain to them what shes doing and how shes helping.
I know cash is tight, but you could pay her a token amount to save for her holidays?

Edit - Is she at brownies? Do they still do badges to work towards? Small steps to let her see she can achieve all mount up.

Savvy_sewing

DGD doesn't currently come to the shop very much once in a blue Moo really. I try to keep the business seperate from my home life, which was why I moved from a home based business to a premises.
DGD no longer goes to Brownies alas, she said it was boring!
But I will think of something to engage her.
I have spent most of the day doing the accounts up to date. Cash flow is a bit of a problem at the moment but I have my beady eye on it.
This afternoon it was Aldi shopping and then visiting Mum and then Biggest of Mooloo's, she'd been out all day helping her brother in law move house so she was exhausted. It's her daughter's parents evening tonight.
I have done dinner but I am struggling with a headache so doubt that I will get much else done.

Savvy_sewing

Facts and figures analysed!
Big plans will need to be implemented to allow me a wage this coming financial year.
Turn over looks to be about £30,000 only problem is expenses were £27,000 ish
Profit before tax appears to be around £2,700, bearing in mind final figures for month etc still to be sorted.
I estimate that I need to target £41,000 next year and that £11,000 of it needs to come from sales of stock rather then services, I.e. Alterations.
As I can not physically sew much more with out it impacting on my family life etc

greenbee

well done for crunching the numbers Mooloo!

The issue with business is always scalability. As you say, you can only do so much. Realistically you can only sell one hour of your time once. So put a value on that hour, and price accordingly.

* An alteration or making something uses time exclusively, so that's expensive.
* Lessons are scalable, up to a limit, so you should make more money from those as you are selling the hour to more than one person - price them accordingly.
* Stock takes up space (but you have that) and can be sold by staff, not just you (and ideally, while you are sewing/teaching).

Selling your time needs to cover the overheads and wages, unless you can find other things to do that - so how can your staff make you money rather than simply being there to facilitate you making the money to pay them?

Obviously if they have sewing skills they can do alterations as well, but again, they can only do that when they're not doing something else. They can sell stock - can they also help with online sales, updating the website and processing postal orders? And maybe doing some facebook/twitter advertising for you?

There is also the question of whether you could rent out your teaching space to other people to teach in. Actually, there are two options for that - one is that you pay the teacher and take the money (and obviously you need a minimum number of people to sign up AND PAY before confirming that the course will run), the other is simply renting the space. The first will make you more money but require more admin (do your staff have the capacity to do this?). The latter will make less money but (should) be less hassle.

What stock do you have, and what is selling well? You need to look at both margin and turnover, as sometimes you do better turning over a lot rather than relying on high-margin stock. My cousin sells furniture, and he reckoned that if they sold one item a month they were OK, as the profit on one item was enough to see them through till the next month. But if they didn't, they were in trouble. Now they have lower margin, higher turnover stock as well, and life isn't quite so precarious!

Hopefully this is helpful...

dktreesea

Mooloo wrote: »

Facts and figures analysed!
Big plans will need to be implemented to allow me a wage this coming financial year.
Turn over looks to be about £30,000 only problem is expenses were £27,000 ish
Profit before tax appears to be around £2,700, bearing in mind final figures for month etc still to be sorted.
I estimate that I need to target £41,000 next year and that £11,000 of it needs to come from sales of stock rather then services, I.e. Alterations.
As I can not physically sew much more with out it impacting on my family life etc

Would dressmaking, as well as alterations, be profitable? I haven't sewn for many years but a friend of mine can knock up a pair of trousers in two hours. I know this because I sat at her kitchen bench supping on coffee and chatting to her while she made them.

I'm fascinated by your turnover. OMG, well done you. It took us five years to have that kind of turnover, five long, hard, years, learning what sold, what went too slowly for cash flow, having money tied up in stock for too long, - the learning curve at the time seemed endless - and there's two of us! You hired people and still made a profit?!

In the 2013/14 tax year, (latest statistics available) HMRC statistics show that around 40% of self employed people declared self employment profits of less that £3,000. Many of those businesses would have been established for a lot longer than yours. You should be proud of yourself.

Savvy_sewing

2014/2015ended up being a loss, somewhere around £1,800, so I don't actually see the money of this years figures, but my first year was changing from home start up, 0.00 in April 2013, to 173.88 in 2014 and £2,340.55 takings in April 2015!
So from a spare room to a shop the difference is high,
But costs are high too!
Not one April did I make a profit! But then I won't this one either as we are closed for the first two weeks.
Stock is building of Hemlines products and we replenish it every month.
Fabrics are the most expensive following fast are the Dressmaker patterns- because I have to rent the cabinet full of patterns, pay for the books that accompany them and the replacement patterns.
Ideally I should forget patterns but want to give them until June to see again what they are bringing to the shop!
Like the second hand clothes- they had to go!
GreenBee I really appreciate what you are saying and will go into it in more depth over the next few days.

greenbee

Mooloo - just an idea, but if the patterns aren't profitable enough and there is still a demand for patterns, have you thought about selling vintage patterns? If you bought in batches, would your staff have the skills to go through them and make sure they were complete and label them appropriately? Incomplete/damaged ones could probably be sold for craft projects.

I guess you need to know which patterns are selling in order to work out whether modern or vintage is what people want.

dktreesea

Patterns are a fairly core part of sewing. It is hard though, not to mention expensive, to be all things to all people. Are you maybe able to offer a service where you have the catalogues out and you can order in a particular pattern for people if they would like one? Could you also sell them online, maybe through a craft online platform (etsy?) Vogue patterns are also a reasonable price on Amazon, i.e. not hugely discounted.

dktreesea

At least you are now at the point in growing your business that you pretty much know, going forward, that all the fixed costs like rent, electricity for the shop, and core staff costs are covered so fingers crossed 2016 will make you a half decent income.

One thing for sure, and I found out this the hard way, if you do not, religiously, transfer some amount, however small, every week to your personal account, you will probably end up feeling like you are not being paid. Businesses are like little children. They just love having money spent on them.

Plus you make a lot of effort to still have a life as well as running the business. That has to be a good thing. One of the guys in the corner shop is up every morning at 4.30am, is in his shop by 6, leaves at 7pm, and tells me this year he'll be lucky to walk away with £2,000 "salary". He feels trapped. He can't sell his shop and he can't afford to close it down.

I have a business which would consume me 12 hours a day 7 days a week if I let it. It has a voracious appetite for my time.

Savvy_Sue

Mooloo wrote: »

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!

I don't know how old your nephew is, but is it worth 'encouraging' him to visit your mum regularly and see if there are odd jobs he could do for her? I wondered about cutting the grass: you don't want to be lumbered with that job if you can help it, and although I know Biggest did it this time I really think it's worth getting someone else to take responsibility for it! Failing that, if your mum can afford to pay a gardener I think that would be money well spent.

Whenever I visited Mum there would always be a few jobs for me: changing lightbulbs / batteries in smoke detectors (she couldn't hear them beeping!). If I had the boys with me she'd generally find something bigger: moving or assembling furniture, one time we defrosted all her fridges and freezers (don't ask why someone living alone needed two fridges and freezers ...)

If we'd lived locally I'd have sent a boy round at least weekly!