the hundred dollar business

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Well, so much for “go to sleep by midnight!” I guess that part of the experiment failed, because not only did I stay up all night Friday night, but I had a one-hour nap at 1:30 p.m. Saturday and kept going until–yep!–midnight last night.

But, enough of that–we are at the mall now, and things are going fantastic!

On Friday night, we got the go-ahead from the mall to move in our inventory and set up shop. Kelly Anderson from Sweet & Charming and I were up, punchy as all get out as we loaded the inventory onto the kiosk– we’ll be adding pictures to our Hundred Dollar Business Flickr account soon, so stay tuned!

By 5 a.m. the kiosk was set up with Kelly’s princess/castle retail items for children, so I headed over to Channing’s Bundt Cake Factory to pick up her cakes for the kiosk. I will tell you that when I buy a Baby Bundt cake (small personal size), I usually eat the whole thing ASAP because they are sooooo good. And guess what– we have them at our kiosk!

The mall opened at 7 a.m. For the first hour or so, I was there, and I was nervous! Because all of a sudden I realized, I have no retail experience! None! Rachelle Anderson joined me at the kiosk a little after 8 a.m., and we were so excited! I think we probably frightened our first customer, Julie. (Picture to come!)

She works at another kiosk selling cosmetics, and purchased some of Kelly’s princess items as gifts for her nieces. We took pictures with her, and it took about 10 minutes for us to figure out how to process her credit card– eek! Luckily, we got better at that as the day went on. Thanks, Julie!

Our second customer was a big surprise– my friends from my church, the Daniels. They were shopping at the mall and happened to see us! They have a number of grandchildren, and got the sweetest tutu sets for them. We took pictures of them also– look for that later, as well!

Within a few hours of the mall being opened, we had over $100 in sales! It was really exciting, especially because when we were doing the planning for the business, the ultimate priority was “what will make sales as quickly as possible?”

Something to note is that even though we are making sales, it doesn’t mean we have made a profit yet. I know that may be a simple statement, but it is only something that really hit me as I crunched the numbers at the end of the day.  For one thing, even though we haven’t spent any money to get the business started, we will have some obligations to the mall lease at the end of the month, though we will pay off as soon as possible, because this is a “no-debt, no-overhead-killing-us ” kind of endeavor.

For another thing, the items we sell are on different consignment/commission arrangements with the vendors, so they will be paid first, expenses (taxes, employee compensation, lease, other obligations, etc.) paid next, and then the actual “profit” of the business will show up as dead last. I think that’s important to note, because it means that if I want the business to do well, then I need to plan for that with the whole picture in mind.

I left for a few hours to take care of some bank account/lease matters, and Rachelle and Kelly manned the booth for a few hours. When I came back, things were going great and we were getting a steady stream of traffic and business!

Four additional things that were interesting to experience throughout the day:

1. Inventory

We are not at full capacity yet– in fact, we still need to order and pickup product from 5 other vendors. Part of why this hasn’t happened yet is because of the busy-ness of getting everything set up this week. Another reason is that we wanted to see how business would go.

Since we know now that it is busy, we can plan what to order. In the meantime, we may have lost opportunities to sell, simply because we don’t have the inventory available yet– so that is priority one for Monday morning!

2. Salesmanship

We noticed that each kiosk salesperson has their own style of manning the kiosk and trying to make sales. The main difference was that those who are employees were bored, waited for customers to walk up, show interest, and ask questions before engaging them in the sales process, whereas the owners are proactive, setting up special events for the booth, handing out marketing materials to other kiosk owners, stopping mall traffic to give them deal coupons, etc.

Since I’m an owner– you better believe I am setting up ideas and approaches that are proactive! We want to do well, and we want all of our vendors to feel that their investment and the opportunity has been a great success. If you have any suggestions, definitely e-mail those to us at hundreddollarbusiness@gmail.com or post a comment here!

3. Financial Processes

In the course of one day, we had to learn how to use the cash register, a knuckle-buster credit card scanner, take an accounting of inventory as it was sold, for which vendor, sales tax info, cashing out the register, setting up the business bank account, how to get a money order or cashier’s checks, and how much in change/coins to start the till with.

Because we are taking the approach from E-Myth, to “franchise” the business with organized systems, it was a LOT less crazy than it could have been. Even so, we did make a couple of errors, which we will prevent by having a training with all of us who man the kiosk. 

4. Presentation of Products

The products that sold well were the ones that were displayed really well, that were easily accesible & obvious to the rushed customer walking by. By late afternoon, we realized that some products had barely sold, and it was because of the visual setup.

We are fixing that over the next day or two, and will also be have some sample trays and special events to help customers experience the product, both in a visual and tactile manner. Remember– if a customer can pick up an item or otherwise get attached to it, they are more likely to purchase. It was great to realize that right away and correct it, and we expect to see a dramatic increase in sales for those products over the next few days.

And now, it’s time to get back to the mall! For more info about products we will be supplying by Tuesday, check out this post. We will have Nutty Guys nut trays, Santa hats, and holiday books and games, including Max Lucado storybooks.

Come by and see us, anytime– we’re at the Provo Towne Centre mall in South Provo! If you mention this blog, you’ll get an extra big smile and a special treat!