Holiday Sales

I raised prices in my Etsy shop. Not by too much, just $0.50 a collar. It's the middle of the crazy season for me. From Halloween through Christmas, I'm inundated with orders. I can't keep anything in stock for very long. So I raised prices thinking that might slow the flood.

It didn't.

To give you an idea of the numbers, I managed to get my to-do list down to zero on Sunday. I was printing labels to put on packages (14 packages), and I got 4 more orders. I took the rest of the day off, doing homework and shopping. By Sunday night, my to-do list had 15 collars, plus two that were awaiting payment.

There are days when that's fun, and days when it's not.

I'm starting to think I need a better way to manage business. In the spare minutes I have, I've been looking into software to organize a small business like mine. Maybe something to manage inventory, keep track of expenses, revenue, and profit. Stuff like that. I'm using Excel right now and it's time consuming.

I never have a great idea of how much material I have left, especially in this crazy season when I sell out of everything within a week. Taking two days off to wait for more d-rings means my to-do list accumulates to 30 orders or more. It would be nice to know how much I make off each collar exactly, instead of the ballpark estimate I have in my mind.

I don't do it for the money though. It started off as a way to help rescues; I donate 10% of my sales to a monthly rescue. Whatever was left I put back into supplies. I got a LOT of supplies. Then a funny thing happened. With the more material I bought, the more collar styles I offered, the more sales I got, and now I'm in a weird place. It's taking more time than I wanted to dedicate to it. Let's face it, collar sales are not going to pay the mortgage. They help with other household expenses, but I'm not sure it's worth me spending 1-2 hours each day at the sewing machine.

So here's the choice: I could cut back on the amount of styles to  reduce orders. Or I could expand again and possibly hire help.

There are reasons why I don't want to expand.

1. I have a full time job already. It pays well. 
2. I have a family, dog, and other hobbies.
3. I don't want to deal with payroll and taxes.
4. I don't want to coordinate with an employee. 
5. An employee doesn't necessarily free up my time. I still have supplies, expenses, Etsy, and Facebook to manage. 
6. I'm hardly organized as it is. 

So it sounds crazy, but I think I will start to cut back on the amount of collar styles for sale. Possibly even raise prices again in January. Seems like a shame to purposely cut business, but I wish things were different. I really do.