08:10 – Barbara’s dad is still in the hospital, and probably will be for the next couple of days. Barbara said he’d lost about four pounds (~ two kilos), all of which was water weight. They’ll continue to dry him out and then have some other tests they want to run.
I spent much of yesterday costing out the forensic science kits. I had to do that before the book is finalized, because I didn’t want the kit to end up having to be priced at $300 or $400. The goal is $200 or less. Eyeballing it, it looks like we’ll be able to do that. Based on the amount of stuff that’ll be in the kit, it looks like we may have to go to a large flat-rate box rather than a regional-rate box B, which puts the shipping cost at about $15, versus an average of maybe $10 on the chemistry and biology kits, but that’s doable. One way or another, we’ll still bundle in free shipping because people hate to have shipping charges separate from the product price.
Geez. By 0800 this morning, I’d already shipped two kits, one chemistry and one biology. This is making me nervous. We get a nice batch of kits ready. They’re sitting there, all stacked up nice and pretty. And then people go and order them, and we watch our stock dwindle. Oh, well. I guess I’d better get used to it. From now until maybe October, we’ll be shipping a lot of kits. We can rest then.
10:34 – I love how some vendors try to encourage people to upgrade from the free shipping option. I ordered a case of 10 mL oral syringes on Tuesday, and chose the free shipping option with 7 to 10 day delivery. I wasn’t in a huge hurry, so I decided that was fine. I just got a notification from the vendor with a UPS tracking number. The shipment is scheduled to arrive tomorrow.
“Free” shipping used to be an inducement to increase order size and prevent abandoned shopping carts, but it’s come to be expected and just another cost of doing business. LL Bean’s new free shipping policy may be the final nail in the coffin of charging for shipping separately. Bean now ships essentially all orders for free, regardless of number of items or price. I can order one $3 item and Bean ships it for free.
I never had any intention of charging separately for shipping. Fortunately, that’s easy for us because our minimum order is currently $160, the price of one chemistry kit. The only small orders we receive are replacement orders for spilled chemicals, broken glassware, and so on. On those orders, of which we’ve received exactly one in the last year, we may end up breaking even or worse, but again I consider that just a cost of doing business.
“From now until maybe October, we’ll be shipping a lot of kits. We can rest then.”
But you won’t. You’re one of the most extreme workaholics I’ve ever seen.
I’ve suggested this before, but why not employ a smart high school senior, or sociology PhD, to do this?
What Greg said. Take a chill pill, Bob, and start off-loading some of that stuff. Go out and smell the flowers. Take the mutt out for much longer exercise. Etc.
As I’ve said before, I really, really don’t want to hire any employees until it’s impossible to avoid doing so. Same thing for renting space. I’ve seen too many small businesses fail because they grew too fast. And the culprits are almost always employee costs and space rental.
The other thing is that this business is extremely seasonal. At a guess, we might do 70% of our sales for the year in August through mid-October.
May I suggest that the manual labor in question is beneath a Sociology PhD?
Can’t you just hire someone at piece rate? Say $5 per kit assembled? Surely your time is worth more than that.
Inventory turnover and cash flow, you’re doing it right.
Too bad the burdensome Government Regulations ruin the opportunity for some young person to legally earn some money.
re: Barbara’s dad.
My uncle went into a hospital for cracked ribs last year (fell off a ladder cleaning gutters at 85yo) and never came out – hospital pneumonia. Unless they are doing really serious stuff that a home health aide can’t, he’s probably better off way the hell away from there.
My 2 cents of unasked for advice.
Oh, I agree completely. Hospitals are a horrible place for anyone to be, let alone elderly people. What’s worse is that Barbara’s mom and dad *volunteer* at the hospital. They have something like 30,000 hours each in the 30 or so years since Barbara’s dad retired.
I’ve talked to Barbara about it, and she’s tried talking to her parents to no avail.
My suggestion would be that Barbara should discretely mention to the doctor that her parents are still volunteering. Do to privacy laws, the doctor may not be able to say anything about her parent’s health to Barabara. There is nothing that says the doctor can’t listen to Barbara and take relevant actions. Parents listen to doctors more than they do their children.
My mom had pneumonia one Christmas, so bad she didn’t come to Christmas dinner at our place. My wife and I headed over to visit her after the other guests left. We tried to talk her into going to the Emergency Room. We left, called my sister in law the nurse asked her opinion, went back and talked to my mom again, and she still wouldn’t go to the Emergency Room. She called the doctor’s office Monday Morning and they told her to go to the emergency room. After the doctor’s office told her, she finally called an ambulance which took her to the ER and she was admitted to the hospital.
RBT, I agree that you should avoid employees as long as you possibly can. Perhaps NC is not quite as onerous as NY, but taxes and regulations regarding employees is what killed my latest business.
In fact, NC is guaranteed to be less onerous than NY on account of NY being #50 out of the 50 (or 57 or however many states the US has) in terms of friendliness to business. Regardless, the rules change and the taxes go up when your business gets its first non-family employee.
Which is why, thanks to one of my NY blogging pals, NY is otherwise known as The Vampire State.
North Carolina, New York and Vermont rank 3, 26 and 44 respectively here:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/41666602/
Vermont is bad mainly because of flatlander imports from more southern parts of Megalopolis, a huge influx of shyster lawyers who couldn’t hack their gigs anywhere else and gravitated to state gummint and lobbying here, and a prevailing ethos of neo-Marxist ideology in the Burlap to Montpeculiar Corridor and the college towns. These bastards seem to enjoy punishing businesses and driving them out, and thus also killing the geese that lay the golden eggs like our national gummint does, and screws over their own children for jobs in a rotten economy and thus presents many of them with the choice of going into eternal debt for more neo-Marxist brainwashing at college, running the Slurpee machine at the local 7-11, or signing up to kill brown and yellow humans for Uncle Sugar all over the globe.
Hey, what about Oz and NZ???
RBT, well, see, you’re coming up with a halfway reasonable justification for your number. I was simply mocking the notmyPresident. Because that’s the kind of guy I am.
OFD, the numbers you report are greatly different than what I usually see. Looking at the details, I find that’s because they take into account things like availability of educated workers and to material goods. Reasonable, but I was referring solely to tax rate, non-tax government fees and fines, and regulatory burden. California is working hard to take the #1 spot, but for now I’m pretty sure NY has a lock on it.
OFD wrote: Hey, what about Oz and NZ???
Not a chance. We wouldn’t want NZ to become part of the US because then we’d have to share all the bonza NZ chicks with you sex-crazed Yanks.
I’ve suggested splitting up the US in the past: part to Mexico, part to Canada, part to the UK and part to us, as I’m sure we could run the place better.
Ya know, Greg, I would take ya up on that, because judging by the assorted nimrods that have been running this place for the past century or so, I say why not let the Aussies or Kiwis give it a shot? Or any random citizen of Madagascar, Kuala Lumpur, Uttar Pradesh, the dark side of the Moon, or one of those newly discovered giant squids from the Marianas Trench….
Oh, geez, you had to bring up the giant squids. Now Moochelle is going to get all excited about giant tentacle monsters. You just know she doesn’t get any from her husband, not unless she dresses up as an adolescent Indonesian boy. (NTTAWWT, but the lies and hypocrisy rankle.)
As for running the country, if there were some way to reliably identify people who want to run it, whether for base reasons or the most lofty, we could set up a draft lottery for public office, eliminating those who want public office. “Well, shit. Start packing, Betty Lou. I’ve gotta be the gall-darn President for the next four years.”
Send Mooch down with Jimmy Cameron on his next deep dive.
Please.
Then somebody cut the frigging line on them both.