It’s been the poorest week of sales of the whole year. As usual, I have no idea why. Everyone gets them, there’s always some terrible weeks in a year but usually they’re in January or February, so if you wouldn’t mind, get your hand in your pocket.
As you might know, next month will mark our 24th anniversary of being in business. There have been peaks and troughs, many times over and I don’t think we’ve worked out why any of them happened, good or bad.
This is partly why we gave up advertising. At one time we spent a fortune on it, taking ads in the NME at £800 a go, and spending a small fortune on Google Ads and then Facebook. We always knew that some worked and some didn’t but could never work out in advance how they’d perform. Basically it took all my time keeping on top of it and it was a constant gamble and still there’d be terrible weeks, as if there was an unseen immutable force controlling it all that we couldn’t control.
We worked out that without any ad spend, turnover would shrink by 80% but profits would be about the same but it’d be much less stressful. ‘Turnover is for vanity, profit is for sanity’ as the old saying goes and it’s so true. As soon as you really grasp that, the better. The trouble is, so much is emotionally invested in your turnover as a measure of success and much less in your profit. This can get so silly that turning over a million but only making 40k profit feels more successful than turning over 100k and making the same profit. But it’s not, obviously.
We’ve ridden the rollercoaster for over a third of our lives. It’s currently probably the most difficult period because of all the new tariffs and duties raising prices. Along with the plain stupidity of Brexit, it’s as though governments want to make it as hard as possible to trade.
But we’ll get through, like most small businesses, we’re very resilient and used to tough periods. Much of it is an attitude you develop over time. You grow big balls to get through.
I’ve never had a waged job, so ups and downs is all I know. Insecurity is my security. It’s been that way for 44 years since I left college aged 21. But even so, do buy some-shirts.
