Why I’m happy turning away business

I’m not sure when exactly I decided to stop people becoming members of Snapdragon Studio, to turn away business, but I guess that it was about the same time as the night sweats began.

In May I launched a membership aspect to my website — while you could continue to buy my designs conventionally, you could also choose to pay a monthly membership fee and buy at cost price. There are other advantages — free downloads, behind the scenes access, free samples — but the 50% discount was an obvious draw.

We hit our membership targets within a couple of days of launch and have lost very few members since. I had visions of the membership growing slowly, steadily, organically at a pace we could adapt to gradually. It could be a practical experiment.

But then I kept meeting people who said ‘Oh I am so excited about your membership — I’m going to join in December when I have lots of gifts to buy’ or ‘Your membership is going to be so handy for Christmas — remind me to join’

And I began to panic.

You see the main problem that retailers face, the thing that causes the most sleepless nights, is seasonal fluctuations in sales. You might hope that orders will increase before Christmas (or Father’s Day or Valentines Day) but you have no way of knowing when, by how much or what people will buy.

The narrow space between too few and too many orders, the way that we have gradually trained customers to order as late as they can (just in case there is a discount), the compromises that need to be made with staff training, workspace comfort, working hours. These are the things that haunt the nights of online retailers.

Retail sales seem to be governed by the same kinds of mysterious rhythms that guide migratory birds — one day your field is empty, the next there are tens of thousands of Canada Geese chomping away on the grass.

In the same way you can be steadily making and sending out 50 orders a day, and then wake to 500 orders overnight.

Who knows what sets it off: a pre-Christmas pay day, the John Lewis tv advert, a particularly cheery picture on the advent calendar. It seems different every year and it arrives on a different day.

This order jump effects every business in the chain — suddenly the cardboard boxes that have been on 24 hour delivery all year have a 4 day lead time, the printing ink is out of stock, courier companies stop guaranteeing delivery dates.

With customers expecting increasingly fast service . . . the days turn become a frantic whirl of one problem after another.

Staff are brought in to help, but — however amazing they are - they are starting from scratch, they need time consuming, on-job training.

For 10–15 days, a workspace built for 5 houses 20 and all comfort disappears. Extra shifts are added, I work all the time. It isn’t enough. It isn’t nearly enough. We start to cut corners, postcards are no longer hand written, gift wrapping stops. All that matters is the core product, making it, packing it up, getting it into the mail van. There is no time for anything else.

And as a business owner — especially a business owner in the fragile retail market, with staff and promises to keep — there is an oscillation between elation at the orders coming in and a fear of everything that could go wrong and disappoint our customers.

Of course some business owners thrive on this — this tightrope performance is their adrenaline, they take orders up to the line and in many cases they pull it off. When they don’t, the orders that fall are an acceptable cost. It is their business.

I cannot be like that. I need a large margin to play with, especially so with the people who have supported me by becoming members. The friendly, generous, attentive atmosphere we strive to create is valuable to me.

I do not want to be struggling, or being evasive, as orders are thrown into the post van slightly late. I want to be able to add in a personal note or a special personally chosen gift.

In some ways this seems even more important at Christmas.

My aim with Snapdragon Studio is to be the best we can be. I want to be in it for the long haul. I want to be making connections with everyone who wants to be a member — and I’m quite happy to make less short term money in order to build the kind of business that I am proud of.

So that is why, tomorrow (5th September), we stop taking new members into Snapdragon Studio, and instead people can join a waiting list, to join when we have space.

I’m just crossing my fingers that they do.

I may even be waking up tonight in a sweat about it all.

I hope you enjoyed this post — I am designer, and chief cheerleader for Snapdragon, an online membership shopping site. If you enjoyed this, please press the hands icon on the left to help other people find me.

You can find out more about the membership and our handmade gifts over at www.snapdragononline.co.uk. I would love to see you over there.

Thanks for reading, Jane x