Adventures with Corndog: Corndog's Fish Store

Jysin_sl said:

Let me first say, congrats on successfully starting your own business! I kind of stumbled across this thread and read it from start to finish. I find it interesting and thank you for your open sharing of your experience.

If I may, I would like to just point out a couple things as an outsider looking in. You do say you are aiming to target the high-end clients? You want a more upscale / quality service driven business am I correct? The big glaring issue for me would be that as of today, your store has been open for exactly 4 months (from March 22). It took quite a while to get your sign up and if I am reading this thread correctly, you still are only 60% complete on construction in-store? I dont know about everyone else, but I would really question the image you are pushing if I have been a customer from the beginning and 4 months down the road still walk back into a construction site. You said you had mentioned an issue with your builder, fair enough. But please keep in mind, first impressions are everything. I think you should really drive to get the place finished up. You dont want months of half-assed looking shop to go on like this.

My 2c.

Anyway, please keep us updated. I really hope you have continued success.

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I understand your concerns. From reading the thread it probably seems that way. But in reality the construction is behind closed doors etc. When I mention to customers, I'll be installing another 150 tanks, they go oh really? Wow I thought you had a lot already.

I think my main success is that I actually follow up with customers. I bring in the fish they request the week before. I ship fish to them etc. I'd say I'm hitting my target market. I can't keep discus in stock, which my competitor stores don't bring in because they can't sell them. I actually have the problem of right now, i'm kicking ass and all my competitors are doing badly. This makes it hard for me to get stuff. Because the wholesalers are reluctant to bring in the high end stuff cause I'm the only one selling it and I'm the new guy on the block.

Rumors are flying around all over the place, there have been 3 different rumors now that I've partnered up with different wholesalers because there is no way I could be doing this alone.

The sign thing was just me being a dumbass really. Now I'm all about promotion. I've got window stickers, t-shirts, and buttons to hand out/sell. I've since picked up a graphic designer that can return the work I need in less than a day etc. Instead of waiting days for a draft to get back to me. I'm at a point now where time is money. A concept I had never needed before in my life. Literally 1 day waiting on something to ship to me could cost me a few hundred dollars. I'm in a weird spot. I don't quite have enough money to backstock as much product as I need, but I sell product really fast. So on like LED lighting. I'll place an order for $2k or so. That'll last me a week to 10 days, after about 5 days I place the next 2k order. In a perfect world I'd have enough lights sitting there, but the product line is split into so many different sizes/types of lights that I have no idea what each week will sell. I have 3 of every type on the shelf now. Which is about 2k worth. I probably need about 6k worth to never have a customer have to wait a couple of days for a fixture. The problem is, sometimes someone walks in and buys 3 30 inch lights... a really slow moving size... and the next 3 weeks I don't sell a single one.

My spouse still works. I'm sure I could get a line of credit. I just would rather not. A lot of decisions have panned out much better by slowing things down. When the cash flow is sitting right there, it's so easy to just order it and then regret it. If I got to the point where I was strapped I probably would. I just like having cash on hand in the bank and spending slow. Call me oldschool, but if I was to go under tomorrow. I'd walk away without any debt as that's how I've structured this whole business so far. I like buying things with cash instead of credit.

Unidin_sl said:

I have lots of business customers tell me the same thing then they hit a rough patch and go under because of cash flow. In fact most businesses fail, not because of a bad idea, but because of cash flow. Just because you have it doesn't mean you need to use it all the time.

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I think it's a case of relativity. A business with lots of employees, high cost equipment repairs etc is more likely to die to cash flow. My store I can literally run the thing off of 36k for an entire year never selling a single thing, and I'd still be taking home a salary and all bills be paid for the store.

When I had more cash sitting in the bank, I bought lots of stuff I didn't need because it was a good deal. I still have that stuff, but it's still not needed. I've seen a lot of small businesses get trapped under bad decisions. Investing too much money into something that doesn't pan out. So right now I'm running tight on LED lighting. What happens if that company falls out of favor, or produces a bad run of lights after I've really stocked up on them? Corndog goes out of business. What happens if I sell on average 2 LED lights of a certain size each week and this week I sell 3 and could have sold a 4th? Most of the time they double back 3-5 days later when the next shipment of them is arriving.

In my line of work I watch a lot of stores expand. They build a bigger store or even a second store. They always come crumbling down 2 years later, barely holding up that first store. When all along that first store was the money making machine to build the second store or expand. More is not always better.

I know this sounds crazy, but in fish. I think it's better to sell out of something than always have it in stock. If it's always there, people say oh I'll get it next time. When you run out of items they have the urge to buy now. At least once a day a customers asks me about an item, do you have this all the time? If I say no, they buy it. If I say yes, they say oh good I'll get that next pay day etc.

checkyeah_sl said:

Are there any supplies/inventory that you have to next-day air in to maintain operations? Have you run into this problem yet?

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Nope. The only thing close to that is paying for 2 day delivery on live plants right now because the weather is so hot. So my margin is less on plants during the heat. When it's cooler I can ship them normal priority for about half the cost.

Last month is in the books. Highest grossing month so far. $14,435.11

This weekend has been insane too. I'm 4 days into the month and have done. $3,493.87 Lots of LED light sales, has left my shelf looking empty. I now have an email to the company about rushing the order out as I don't want to chance them not arriving by next weekend. I sold 10 fixtures between Friday and Saturday. Much higher than average for me.Typically I've been selling 7 or 8 in an entire week. Not 10 in 2 days. So now I'm going to order more additional lights than normal, and try to rush them out.

On plants I had a run also. Lighting and plants go hand in hand. Better lighting makes people want to buy more aquarium plants. I could have sold probably another 12 plants at least if I had had them. In the past if I stocked too many people would say, oh you've got a bunch I'll come back and get that. Now I only stock 6, and a guy will come in and buy 4 of that type and the next person buys me out... So I just need to store more plants in the back of the store to create "scarcity".

Just wanted to give a little update on the sign waving thing. It's absolute gold for gaining new customers. I swear it nets me 1 customer every hour someone is out there. It's really hard for people to grind out long stretches on the sign... So I have my current employee hitting some hot spots. Rush hour traffic on the drive home and lunch hour.

Most people come in a few days later, but there are people that come in straight away. So while it may appear to be "ghetto" the numbers don't lie. 13.7k so far this month and there are still 10 more days in the month. For anyone who has been watching this thread, you know that this month will be a new sales record for me.