I’ve been wanting to quit my business for years! There are so many unfixable things wrong with it but recently one thing has completely outdone all the others combined – it doesn’t make any money!
In the last 6 weeks I have made a gross profit of £915. That is my the product profit minus the cost of advertising. Once I deduct my wages, NI, rent etc, it’s a huge loss. In the same 6 week period last year I made just under £10,000.
The decline started at the beginning of April and I think the decline has to be down to my customer base. My customers are places that employ people, often on minimum wage. Hotels, pubs, bars, cafes, restaurants etc. I think the recent increase in minimum wage and National Insurance has just seem them cut all spending or sourcing cheaper products. From the small amount of sales I am receiving the AOV is massively down.
There is a slight relief to this finality of it. Last year I wanted to start a new business but I was making £2–2.5k a week. It’s very hard to walk away from that and focus on something else, especially when your Girlfriend is pregnant and you have quite a hefty amount of credit card debt to pay off. While it’s nice to think about starting a new business, the customer and the orders and the money always came first. It would be nice to have a big buffer to be able to work on something new, for me I could never really manage it.
If I look at the reasons in the past of why I wanted to quit my business, although they are serious, they were never enough to actually shut down and focus on something new:
My manufacturer:
- Sells direct to the public for cheaper
- Has completely useless staff – the only competent one is currently on leave
- Has only one courier who can deliver the product
- Prioritises their own direct sale
I also have other issues:
- I can only advertise via Google Ads
- Google keep messing with how Ads are displayed, sometimes massively reducing clicks
- I can’t scale
- I can’t add value
I just wanted to get this down in writing to look back on.
Future posts will be sporadic, especially for the next few weeks. Since starting this blog I keep feeling I should post and keepm thinking about what I can post, but really I need to focus on my actual business and get started. Future posts may be sparse but this challenge in ongoing.