Nearly all present and correct

Turns out that Heathrow were forwarding it on to Aberdeen, but I still got the freight forwarders to sort it all out for me. They couldn't believe that they got quoted MORE to courier it from Aberdeen to here than from Heathrow! Next time we'll just land it at Heathrow, less hassle all round. One of the boxes had split in transit - I checked the back of the courier's van and nothing was rolling around in there. As it turned out, there were only 3 reels of cotton missing and since that's about $6-worth, I'm not going to put in a claim!

So I spent yesterday afternoon working my way through six boxes of cord, suede and leather. The waxed cotton was a little disappointing - I'd hoped to be able to sell it on the reel, but it's arrived on cardboard reels with metal centres which aren't terribly clean, so it's going to have to be cut into 10m lengths and repackaged. The suede and leather, however, are FANTASTIC! It *is* the same stuff I used to buy from Supplier #1 and it's going to fly out I think.

Anyway, it being July, it's time for another scores on the doors versus my cashflow forecast.

-	Forecast	Actual
Sales	£6,500	£6,377
Stock	£6,395	£2,283
Postage	£350	£349
Packaging	£0	£0
Website	£23	£23
eBay fees	£486	£462
Paypal fees	£243	£280
Office supplies	£0	£166
Other	£0	£344

SPOOKILY accurate with the postage!! Not too far off with eBay and Paypal either, though I messed up by forecasting the fees based on the lower processing fee for going over £6k in sales - that won't actually kick in until this month. The office supplies were for a new toner, a shredder and a proper set of postal scales, which I needed because I've switched onto Royal Mail's Packetpost system, and the Other is a new computer because the old one was starting to make really worrying grinding noises and I thought I'd better replace it before it blew up.

Engage headless chicken mode

Remember a few days ago I said that I fully expected to be running around in headless chicken mode for 48 hours when I found out the shipping details of my Indian order?

Well, I chased it up this morning and 10 minutes ago received a very nice email back saying that they'd taken it to the airport yesterday and it would be landing at HEATHROW in about an hour and a half!

I'm good, but there is no way I can do all the customs paperwork and get a van to Heathrow personally tonight. So I rang my very wonderful freight forwarded, gave him the airway bill number and he is arranging customs clearance and delivery for me.

Yes, it'll add a couple of hundred pounds onto the bill, but if you add up hiring a van, the time taken driving the length of the country and back, hotel rooms, petrol and stress and I think it's worth every penny!

Thinking about the future

I've been pondering my beady future today.

I'm proud of what I've achieved with this business. I've built it from nothing into something I can (just about!) live off, but it's wearing me a little thin. I spent half of Saturday helping a customer via email who panicked if she didn't hear back from me within half an hour, I've spent this afternoon packing up orders because I know tomorrow is going to be a busy day and I'm going to spend this evening bagging jump rings.

I can't remember when I last had some proper time off - I did shut up shop for five days last year, but I was moving house at the time. Before that I think it would have been Christmas 2007 when I was away for 10 days at my mother-out-law's - not exactly relaxing chill-out time either!

I'm thinking back to that idea of passive and active income streams again. The way I see it, there are four different types of income: active limited (you work for it, but potential earning is capped - salaried employment, for example), active unlimited (self-employment - essentially where I am at the moment), passive limited (you do nothing, but it's capped - e.g. interest on a bank account or shares) and passive unlimited (struggling to think of an example - maybe licensing fees on intellectual property, something like that?).

Anyway, I think this idea came from the Rich Dad Poor Dad books and my hazy recollection goes something along the lines of if you want to be wealthy, self-employment is better than a job and owning a business is better than running one. I don't want to waste the years I've put into the bead shop, but I don't want to wear myself into the ground either. Maybe it's time to start thinking about scaling up enough that I can move into commercial premises and employ an assistant who will eventually become the manager and have an assistant of their own so that I can occasionally have a SODDING WEEK OFF!!!!!

Ooh, a little more stressed about this than I thought!

There's a suitable shop in Thurso that's been for sale for a couple of years at offers over £80k, but I'd need a 30% deposit for a commercial mortgage and at the moment I've only got £13k saved up. I'm not too far off though.

Beads, glorious beads

Can't believe sales for the first two weeks of June, they've gone crackers! £1800 in the first week alone, including my highest ever day of £545.

Yesterday I did my first ever posting with Royal Mail's online business account and it went pretty smoothly. 40 parcels (34 large letter, 3 packets, 3 European) cost me £25.52 as opposed to £33.51 stamp value. Now I just have to manage to a) spend over £5k in one year on postage to keep my business account and b) send over 5,000 large letters and 5,000 packets to keep my Packetpost discount. 5,000 packets may be an issue, but as long as that incoming suede and leather sells OK I should be fine, because all that will go out at packet rate.

Talking of which, I haven't heard anything from them yet and the estimated shipping date is next Monday. I shall probably be running around like a headless chicken for a few days next week while I try to figure out declaring an import to HMRC and arranging van hire to go and collect the stuff in less than 24 hours.

Seeing the future

One of the things I had to do to get my overdraft was a cashflow forecast, so I thought it would be interesting to compare my first forecasted month (May) against the actual figures.

Item	May forecast	May actual
Sales	£5,800	£5,300
Stock	£4,170	£6,590
Postage	£320	£245
Packaging	£0	£0
Website costs	£23	£23
eBay fees	£439	£417
Paypal fees	£245	£240
Office supplies	£0	£0
Other	£0	£0

The extra amount on the stock figure is because my Indian supplier offers the option of paying 30% up front and then 70% when the goods are ready to ship, but since they've advised me it's only going to be 3 weeks, the exchange rate was looking good (I got $1.38=£1 for the Hong Kong order, this one went through at $1.55=£1) and my overdraft rate is only 6%, I decided to save myself the second telegraphic transfer fee and pay for the whole thing up front. So this month's forcasted stock spend of £6,395 should be lower.

Quite where I'm going to put 2,300 reels of waxed cotton cord, round leather thong and split suede lacing, I'm not quite sure, but hopefully it'll sell through quickly enough :o)

Now that's service

I couldn't sleep last night, so at half past four this morning I switched the computer on, put together a first suede and cord order of $3,500 for the Indian supplier I'm about to use for the first time and emailed it to them.

A couple of hours later I got a reply from them to say that they had a revised price list to send me (cord's the same, suede's gone down) and that if I could up my order to $5001 or more then they'd air freight it free of charge to my nearest international airport. How good is that?? Fingers crossed we can get it sent to Inverness, otherwise I'll have to drive down to Edinburgh to collect it. I don't know if the Polo will be big enough - I'll have to measure up when the Bill of Lading with the box dimensions comes through.

Just waiting for them to email me through the cord colour card, because the graphic's gone squiffy on their website, and have sent an apologetic email to my freight forwarding guy to say don't worry about that order, it's sorted.

Beads, beads, beads!

All the split rings are now bagged, photographed and listed. I've done 20,000 1.5" SP headpins (out of 100,000 - the rest will be tackled once the initial 20,000 have sold) and now I've got Mick (who's off work with a lurgy) bagging 1.5" SP eyepins while I work on 6mm SP filigree beads.

The Peruvian parcel arrived about an hour ago and I'm absolutely delighted with the contents - it looks as if it is the same manufacturer and I'll definitely be going back for more very soon. The little pink pig beads that have arrived are utterly adorable.

Working backwards, I need to start thinking about Christmas pretty soon. If my Christmas rush starts towards the middle/end of September and the Hong Kong supplier takes 3 months from order to delivery, then I need to be getting my Christmas stock order placed in the next 5 weeks or so. Good thing I now have that overdraft, although it's only £5k rather than the £10k I asked for.