I Kinda Wanna Sleep Forever
Apr. 20th, 2017 04:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mayalaenI don’t like to brag, but in order to fill you in on everything it’s kinda gonna have to sound like bragging here.
Within the first two years of business, I had put two of the biggest tattoo supply shops in the state out of business.
More recently, we’ve put another three smaller shops out of business and two more that had just opened and were struggling for a few months gave up and closed.
Our current two biggest competitors are struggling at the moment, and one of them has stopped keeping a good backup stock, which is pissing customers off, and they’re coming to me. The other one doesn’t carry nearly as much stuff as I do, and I just started carrying everything they do and also lowered all my prices to undercut them by $0.05 on every single product they sell.
I just learned my biggest online competitor sold the business to someplace called Bunker Hill, and it’s running my competitor into the ground. Bunker Hill is also currently buying out TatSoul, which is the company that makes and sends us our most popular items (and I’m the only one in the state that carries their full line of products). TatSoul is HUGE, and I’m assuming this new company is part of the reason why the TatSoul products have been inferior the last few months.
What does all this mean?
It means Maya's freaking out because I had a timetable, a plan for the next few years which included private labeling (boxing my own items with my own logo and name on them) all these items and slowly shutting down TatSoul and the other larger competitors we have out there, but the buyout means my current two biggest competitors (online + brick and mortar stores) are going to piss everybody off and sell shitty products and probably be out of business within a few months to a year.
My timetable has to step up NOW.
This also comes when we were looking for a new place. Right now I’m in a shop that’s roughly 2200 square feet, and I’m looking at places as large as 6500 square feet. Last night my uncle, mom, and I looked at a place that was 12,000 square feet split into two different buildings for $1.2 million, and it already has paying tenants in 5 of the 7 suites, and if we bought the entire property, we’d be able to take the rent money and expand to a suite over two times the size we’re in now. I doubt we’ll get that place because of zoning issues, but it’s a possibility and my uncle is calling other property owners today and talking with them.
This really freaks me out because it’s huge and fast and I don’t do well with change and fastness and all that. My family is helping because they’re all risk takers and they encourage me to jump when I want to still sit there overthinking things.
But HOLY. SHIT.
If this goes the way I think it’s going, I’ll be moving into a gigantic place, doubling or possibly tripling the amount of tattoo artists we rent space to, and I’ll be selling my own line of tattoo products under my own name (a name I haven’t even come up with yet) and it’ll put EVERY FUCKING MAJOR COMPETITOR I HAVE out of business. Which means I’ll have to open another store, maybe even two and step up the deliveries.
The silliest thing that I’m freaking out the most over? Is that I suck at naming things. Seriously I suck. Every stuffed animal I had when I was little was named what it was -- Elephant (the elephant), Puppy Puppy (the puppy), etc. I gotta come up with a name for products that sounds cool (because tattoo artists are ridiculous) and get it moving now because the place I would order from takes about 8 weeks to get all the printing and boxing done.
I kinda want to go to bed and sleep forever, but I also am really excited and proud of what we’ve managed to accomplish so far with no advertising and all word-of-mouth business.
And I kinda wanna sleep forever because SCARY!!!
Within the first two years of business, I had put two of the biggest tattoo supply shops in the state out of business.
More recently, we’ve put another three smaller shops out of business and two more that had just opened and were struggling for a few months gave up and closed.
Our current two biggest competitors are struggling at the moment, and one of them has stopped keeping a good backup stock, which is pissing customers off, and they’re coming to me. The other one doesn’t carry nearly as much stuff as I do, and I just started carrying everything they do and also lowered all my prices to undercut them by $0.05 on every single product they sell.
I just learned my biggest online competitor sold the business to someplace called Bunker Hill, and it’s running my competitor into the ground. Bunker Hill is also currently buying out TatSoul, which is the company that makes and sends us our most popular items (and I’m the only one in the state that carries their full line of products). TatSoul is HUGE, and I’m assuming this new company is part of the reason why the TatSoul products have been inferior the last few months.
What does all this mean?
It means Maya's freaking out because I had a timetable, a plan for the next few years which included private labeling (boxing my own items with my own logo and name on them) all these items and slowly shutting down TatSoul and the other larger competitors we have out there, but the buyout means my current two biggest competitors (online + brick and mortar stores) are going to piss everybody off and sell shitty products and probably be out of business within a few months to a year.
My timetable has to step up NOW.
This also comes when we were looking for a new place. Right now I’m in a shop that’s roughly 2200 square feet, and I’m looking at places as large as 6500 square feet. Last night my uncle, mom, and I looked at a place that was 12,000 square feet split into two different buildings for $1.2 million, and it already has paying tenants in 5 of the 7 suites, and if we bought the entire property, we’d be able to take the rent money and expand to a suite over two times the size we’re in now. I doubt we’ll get that place because of zoning issues, but it’s a possibility and my uncle is calling other property owners today and talking with them.
This really freaks me out because it’s huge and fast and I don’t do well with change and fastness and all that. My family is helping because they’re all risk takers and they encourage me to jump when I want to still sit there overthinking things.
But HOLY. SHIT.
If this goes the way I think it’s going, I’ll be moving into a gigantic place, doubling or possibly tripling the amount of tattoo artists we rent space to, and I’ll be selling my own line of tattoo products under my own name (a name I haven’t even come up with yet) and it’ll put EVERY FUCKING MAJOR COMPETITOR I HAVE out of business. Which means I’ll have to open another store, maybe even two and step up the deliveries.
The silliest thing that I’m freaking out the most over? Is that I suck at naming things. Seriously I suck. Every stuffed animal I had when I was little was named what it was -- Elephant (the elephant), Puppy Puppy (the puppy), etc. I gotta come up with a name for products that sounds cool (because tattoo artists are ridiculous) and get it moving now because the place I would order from takes about 8 weeks to get all the printing and boxing done.
I kinda want to go to bed and sleep forever, but I also am really excited and proud of what we’ve managed to accomplish so far with no advertising and all word-of-mouth business.
And I kinda wanna sleep forever because SCARY!!!
