August Report — The Business is Growing
Sales grew over 30% from July which means I have been a lot busier. I had this question in my mind about how much business do I really think I can handle over the course of a month and I’m beginning to be able to answer that question.
My outsourcing has become more frequent but I’m still doing as much of the laundry as I can myself. I have been overwhelmed with orders a few times now. What I love about this business is the lack of urgency. Customers are usually flexible on the turn around time because laundry is rarely an urgent matter. I’m able to coordinate with regular customers and space out the deliveries to give myself enough time to do the laundry.
But this increase in business is not without concern. I simply do not have enough time to work on the business because I’m spending all my time working for the business. This will change. It has to. But for now I’m letting it evolve organically and getting a good feel for it. I’m focusing my effort on the most important and urgent things, which often pushes writing this blog to the back burner.
I failed to achieve some of the marketing goals I set for August so I’m punting them past September. Part of the reason these tasks are being postponed is the urgent need to focus on getting commercial real estate so I can begin working more efficiently. Finding a good spot takes tremendous effort, much more than I had planned on giving. So for September I really only have 1 goal, find and secure a location.
Milestones
In August I hit a major milestone of 100 customers. My next milestone is to secure a commercial location. As stated above, all of my effort will go into this project for the next couple of months. I don’t have a deadline but I hope to be fully operational at a retail location by the end of this year.
Sales
Sales were much better than expected in August and I’m already booked through the first weekend of September. The ultimate milestone is still profitability and I’m still less than half way there. But you gotta admit this graph is starting to look pretty. I have a feeling maintaining this trajectory is going to be a bit difficult. I’ll be damned if I don’t try though.
Marketing
Early on in the month when I began to get overwhelmed I turned off the Instagram ads and kept the Google ads running. Customer retention has been pretty consistently above 30%.
New customers are also coming in at a steady pace as is evident by the increase in the number of transactions per month.
Each month I grow more confident that there is a great market opportunity here and I’m pretty excited about taking advantage of it, as soon as I can lock down a store front of course. For September, marketing will have to take a back seat while I put all my effort towards commercial real estate.
Cash Flow
Despite the increase in sales the company is still bleeding cash. Cash is oxygen, and at this pace the business will suffocate in 6 months or less. I’m making serious efforts to keep costs down, including ending all of the promotions.
Nonetheless just one day into the new month and I had to make a huge order of supplies. That order is going to make September look abysmal. Another infusion of cash is looking inevitable, but the longer I can put it off the better deal I can get whether it’s a loan or an investment.
Profit and Loss
Realistically, I feel like I could make this thing profitable in 4 months if I forgo a commercial location. With roughly 8 months of runway I would be in the clear. But I’m playing the long game. I want to build something scalable. For that I need to build a process which requires a professional facility.
That commercial location will cost at minimum $5k to move into, leaving me less than 2 months runway. That’s why another infusion of cash is inevitable. But I will cross that bridge when I get to it. Right now it’s important to get this operation out of the house.
This story is part of a series documenting the journey of a 2016 Dallas startup called Feather. For your reference here is the Table of Contents for the series.
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