Start Up Kids Line

Stay on CPSIA testing, increasing sales and selling out

January 31st, 2009

Oh crazy first month of 2009, I love you! This month was incredibly stressful scurrying to figure out CPSIA compliance, taking in some of our biggest orders to-date, and going on the roller coaster of having a best-selling product sell out (this is a fabric availability issue).

Ah, the CPSC has issued a one year stay on testing regulations for certain products. This was the news as of yesterday. Here is a link to the press release. Anyhow, what this does is let us go ahead with the testing we are doing and go ahead and keep selling the blankets. I think it’s important to note that you still have to comply  – you can’t sell products with lead over the limits, but it seems you can decide how you’re going to do your due diligence and test your products, or accept certifications from suppliers (such as Michael Miller recently declaring all of their fabrics are CPSIA compliant).

We have new organic onesie designs and they are selling like mad. There was finally a noticable pick-up in January. We’ve seen so many boutiques go out of business in the last year, that it seems (cautiously optimistic) that those that have managed to stay in business are finally picking up some of the customer’s from the boutiques that are no longer around. For example, one boutique in the center of town just placed their biggest b*Fab order yet – they have watched no less than six competing boutiques go out of business in the last eight months (most of those were our customers too). At some point, even if all those businesses had less customers, one out of seven boutiques should now have more customers. This pendulum has to start swinging this way at some point, right? It seems to be for us.

We had a cute little poncho featured in the January issue of Pregnancy & Newborn magazine and that sucker sold out almost immediately. Between the boutiques that managed to place  wholesale orders and the online sales, it wasn’t even in stock for two weeks. The reason I’m bringing this up is because I ran into the good old fabric is now out-of-stock issue again. This time, we wanted to do another production run – it’s selling like mad, it will sell well through the Spring – but the fabric is no longer available. So, instead of being able to keep it available on the site, we are scurrying to replace the print fabric. The bright side is that now I know more about our potential and that informs me for ordering increased yardage and supplies for the next go round.

I can honestly say we’ve never worked as hard as we did in January. This could well be the year of the 16 hour days, but we’re up for it, because the business is growing up to it. I don’t let myself watch much news anymore either, it is seriously too depressing. I get it. I’m proceeding with more caution than I ever have before, I’ve learned a lot of lessons from the economy hitting the skids. But I have to focus on the positive and how I’m going to keep us going through this. It’s nice to be bringing in a great flow of business again – that definitely helps to see the bright side of things.

Here’s to the launch of a great February. And for me, a happy weekend when we’re actually doing some painting around the house.

          

Entry Filed under: Sales & Marketing,Shipping & Fulfillment,Sourcing,The Startup Phase