Current Mood: Meh

It’s fall, so I figured I’d better add a bit of life to this site.

Summer was…er…a mixed bag. In contrast to the prior post, sales dropped way off in Sept, and while they have increased since then, I figure it won’t be cruisin’ properly until after the election. Election years are a real spikey thing. First there’s the breath-holding & economic tanking (which everyone forgets happens every time there can’t be an incumbent after the election [although this time is unarguably worse than when Clinton had to step aside]). Then, after the election, half or more of the people are glad that whoever wins, did win, so they celebrate–by buying like mad!

So I’m sitting here waiting, with my merchandise…

On a brighter note, I finally bought 50 daffs (and some tulips) for myself AND got them planted. Usually I buy bulbs with the intention of planting them, but end up selling them. Not just for the money, but because planting is w*rk! So it will be nice in the spring to see a new daff patch, bordered by some tulips.

I half-expect that next spring I’ll be thinking, “I should have put those up for sale…”

Current Mood: Ecstatic

Celebrating a new gross-income record at ScalesEtc. this month!

I wouldn’t have expected June to be the month to make the first recordbreak this year (as a fairly new site, ScalesEtc. is due for *many* recordbreakers as it grows). But it’s done it.

What’s more to say, other than:

w00t!!

My geekness! This from a site called JustSayHi:

70% Geek

*Looks at code for that widget*

Unfortunately for them, said geekness level means I also recognize the code for the payday loan link they have hidden in there! Sorry guys, but the only way a business link gets on the Capitalist Chronicle is if it goes to one of my sites, I’m commenting about that particular site, or you pay hard money. And none of the above apply to that link!

*deletes that extra link*

(On another note…hmmm, offering quizzes…there’s a way to get n00bs to spread a link…)

Now some may wonder, even after all this time, how being a geek ever got to be something to brag about. Thank Bill Gates for proving the uberness of Geekdom to the unthinking masses!

Current Mood: Ecstatic

It’s always a joyous day when the FIRST SALE of a new merchant site rolls in! And today, I got another hit of that special joy. I woke up to my first sale from Merchant Site #3!!!

Yes, yes, yes. What is there to say but glorious “YES!!”

Another baby has come to life.

Wholesalers seem to live in some kind of funhouse-mirror world. Not that this is always bad, per se. It’s just weird.

For most of the years I’ve been dealing with wholesalers, the economy’s been pretty good. Excellent housing/real estate market, good empl*yment levels, no real political uncertainty, etc.

For those years, all the wholesalers insisted that I have my credit card on file, they wouldn’t just ship now and bill me, and even with those restrictions some wanted references!

This year, the real-estate market is tanking, there’s been massive layoffs in my state, and the uncertainty of an upcoming election is already starting to loom. And there is hot rhetoric between the US and Iran.

And now places will ship to me first, and bill later. This is *without* running any kind of credit check on me or my companies. One of them was even a place I had never dealt with before! This phenemon isn’t industry-specific, so it’s not just a standard difference in methodology.

What the…?!?

It’s nice, but it doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Current Mood: Cool & Ecstatic

Finally! After what seems like forever!

It’s open!

Cozy Homewares is alive!

Here, have some search-engine food to celebrate.
Fabric Shower Curtains
Shower Curtain Liners

Getting this one open has been the most aggravatingly slow endeavor of the merchant-side yet. From the molasses-like wholesalers (one of which took 3 1/2 weeks to ship my order…and another one JUST got their catalog to me TODAY) to the balky merchant-account (credit-card acceptance) place that I had to pester to keep things moving, things have gone MUCH slower than when I opened the last site. It’s like there’s some kind of formula…speed of B2B service is inversely proportional to profit potential…

But now that’s done. Now to start the advertising!

Overall, the fact that it’s up can be summed up in one word:

YES!

It’s pretty much all set.

Stock’s in, check.
Cart is customized, check.
New business checking account, check.
Googlebot knows the site exists and has spidered, check.
Packaging supplies, on the way.
Merchant account, in progress.

The only real holdup now is the merchant account (I can get packing supplies locally if I have to). I’ve put in my app, it’s all good…just waiting on getting my new Authorize.net login.

And so it begins: The wait that’ll seem like a million years! They tell me it’ll probably be “within 3 business days” which is code for “we run all the apps through on Monday!” I looked at my email archives for my other sites, and they were activated on a Monday. And gee, what’s 3 business days from now (counting today as 1 day)? Monday!

Granted, that does give me time to put the rest of the items on the site, but I would have been happy to blast out ads before I was done with that…

It probably won’t even take another 2 days to get all the items up, so that’ll leave me with the weekend and probably most of Monday to sit here and STEW while trying to alleviate the antsiness by playing Rome.

Not that Rome isn’t cool, but I’d rather be “playing” Merchant! It’s like having put a $1000 token in a slot machine, pulling the lever…and having it come up “Come back in a few days to see if you’ve won!” Augh!

Not to mention the obvious facts that Merchant is FOR REAL and therefore the wins are way more exciting! It’s one of the few things in Reality that isn’t boring as rocks. Not much else in Reality comes complete with conquests and wins like a video game does, other than sports and warfare, and I suck at sports and am a bit too old to head off to a war zone.

Current Mood: Ecstatic & Surprised

And energized enough to bounce through the roof even though I haven’t had any caffeine yet!

It was to my shock that yesterday my order from the first dino-wholesaler showed up! I think it was 2 days after I got back to them with my card number!! Too bad it took 3 or 4 weeks for them to actually pack it…

Anyway, now I am the proud owner of 4 cartons of merchandise. And hopefully, soon to be the proud owner of just ONE ITEM from those cartons–the one I bought for myself. The rest, of course, are to be sold!

This stuff is the same stuff I’ve seen in stores around here. With the professional packaging and everything! How uber is that!!? I love being a merchant!

Maybe I was a weird kid. I used to go to stores and just wish, wish, WISH that I could have those shelves as mine–and all the stuff on them, with its professional packaging and “buy me” colors. Not fake-o kiddie “brands,” but the real deal. Play-store, that never did it. I didn’t want pretend.

And, I got (and still get) no thrill from buying onesies. I wanted the Store. And not out of greed, either (who’d be greedy for 100 copies of an item you only can actually use 1 of?!). The excitement was/is in being the Store, being the one that other people went to to get what THEY need, and the whole excitement of retailing/advertising, and yes the very LOOKS of a fully-stocked store! And to be the one responsible for its existence as well as its goodness, when people say “I love this store and I wouldn’t shop anywhere else!”

Most kids empathize with the line “like a kid in a candy store.” That never did much for me. But one day I thought, “to heck with being IN one for a night. That’s not very exciting; I can’t even begin to eat all the candy in such a store. What’d be really uber would be to OWN the place, and have other kids clamouring to get in…” Then the adrenaline kicked in.

Opening those boxes yesterday took me back to those days, again. I got the same thrill when I got my first shipment of bulbs, and then when I got the first shipment of scales. But this seems a bit more pronounced, even. These items are branded, and with a brand that someone actually may recognize from a big bricks-n-mortar store!

*holds products like they’re a psychological combination of chocolates and gold bars*

I’m sooooo excited about this…my first Recognizable Brand line…I can’t imagine what it’ll be like when I get the BIG brand stuff. JUST LIKE MACY’S and the like have! I think they’ll have to peel me off the ceiling, then. Is it possible to OD on a natural high?? If it is, I am doomed.

Time to start scanning in the product pix. The store should be open by Tues or Wed at the latest. As soon as the merchant account is turned on, it’s a go.

By all this excitement, you’d think this was the culmination of the dream! And while it does fulfill a lot of dreams that required branded items, there is still one left on the burner: Owning a grocery store! But that’s probably a long way in the future. Right now, my energy is going to the latest site, and there’ll probably be more sites after that!

Current Mood: Meh

The other day I got a shock! A dinosaur-era manufacturer finally got my order together! I about fell off my chair when I got the call–I had really figured that they were never going to fill it.

The place I’m talking about is the one I mentioned earlier, who has a way to “order” online but no way to PAY online. So, they had to call for my payment info. After 10 days had passed, I’d figured that they’d decided that my order wasn’t sufficiently ubersized (even though it was way past their stated minimum).

So now all I have to do is wait, wait for their stuff and the other stuff to show up.

On another note, I decided that I may attack a certain supersaturated product line. Usually I avoid saturated stuff like a plague, but I can’t get the thoughts of big profit out of my head. As a small merchant, I have way less overhead than the big sellers–so, I should be able to bid way up on PPC and still have my shirt!

So, I goes over to MegaFamous Small Appliance Company (not their real name…duh) looking for the contact info for their sales/distribution department, and…

NO CONTACT INFO FOR THAT AT ALL!

Just consumer-oriented info! Geez, wtf, don’t they want any more retailers?! Or maybe their CEO gets an ego-thrill out of having people bother to hound out the address for their US headquarters!!?

Ah well. I’ll find ‘em. But I must say, to an internet retailer like me, some of the ways of the old-line companies strike me as completely CRAZY~!

Current Mood: Ecstatic

FINALLY I’ve found some wholesalers who have a clue!!!

It took some thinking outside the box, but it seems that I’ve finally managed to dredge up some clueful wholesalers. One was even clueful enough to advertise on Google!

The first products should be here by next week…then time to turn on the new Authorize.net account and start barraging the Internet with ads.

If I bid enough, I should be able to catch at least some of the Q4 wave for Merchant Site #3!!!

Although I am excited to see progress, I do have to remember: The first months of a new merchant site are a mere whisper of what it can do after being established for a year or 2. People don’t like to beta-test new companies, so things don’t start really cookin’ until there’s some branding built up.

Still, it would have been a crime not to have been able to get any stock this month!