Business Is Booming

I am done with sales for the year. I can say that with confidence because I am almost entirely out of merchandise. So confident, in fact, that I sat down the other day and did my Utah sales tax return.

Business has picked up considerably right before Christmas. I've had as many orders from my new website since I installed it than I ever had from my old website in the year and a half or so that it's been in operation! The orders were larger, too, and I got my very first wholesale order! I sent it COD and everything, and I just got the check back in the mail. And I got completely bought out of just about everything organic and green, especially the soap holders. I even had to make extra soap holders, just to meet the Christmas demand. People bought them by the dozens to give as gifts.

I am getting together with my soapmaker friend and we are going to write our business plans for 2006. I started writing mine already. It's really been helpful and made progress seem possible. It's also made it clear that if I'm to expand the business, I'm going to have to start hiring contractors again, and I'm going to have to raise my retail prices. The contractors I can handle, but the price increase scares me. Everyone agrees my stuff is way underpriced-- except, of course, the people buying it, who seem to have different opinions on that topic. I've taught business calculus enough times that I know what happens mathematically when you increase prices-- demand drops but revenues can increase, depending on many factors-- but it just scares the crap out of me to raise the prices for some reason.