Fun with stats.

What if I were to tell you that Pegasus Books has seen double digit growth so far this year? Sounds good, doesn't it? Especially for a business in it's 27th year of operation. Especially following four other years of double digit growth.

Ah, yes, but what if I were to tell you our sales were down 1.4% in the third quarter? Not a disaster by any means, especially for a small store. 1.4% could be as simple as having a couple of big customers go on vacation.

As the Proprietor, I have a much more nuanced view of all this. The double digit growth was all but purchased by me through extra inventory. That is, I spent so much money that growth in sales was all but inevitable. I established two new product lines, new books and board games, since last summer, starting from scratch. I filled in fully every other product line, to the point that my store simply ran out of room.

So, starting in April, I cut back. Excess material continued to flow into the store over the next 3 months; indeed, some material is still showing up. Back in the salad days of March, I somehow got it into my head that it would fun to buy an expensive raygun for the store. A 700.00 toy, which is showing up this week. Just goes to show what my thinking was like back then.

Scratch under the surface a little more, and some other stats emerge. Most of the dropoff in sales began in the middle of August. Almost exactly the same week as the credit crisis surfaced in the national news. At the time, I mentioned that I didn't think the drop was attributable to that, but from a distance, it looks much more suspicious. Especially since slow sales continued on. That factored in to my decision not to open a second store, along with the problems with timing I had with the landlord. It looks like I may have dodged a bullet there....more like a bazooka shell.

Meanwhile, I've continued to moderate my spending, so the 1.4% drop is meaningless. It turned out we needed another 5k to pay off our federal taxes (Linda had mixed up the employee taxes and our own taxes in her preliminary record keeping, so she hadn't paid as much as we thought.) We paid it off in full through our cash flow, which is a pretty good indication of health. (In years past, I probably would've made a payment schedule with the I.R.S., or at the least, would've had to dip into savings.)

I've thought about this post for about a week. How upfront can and should I be? But since the store is doing well overall, I thought it wouldn't hurt to be candid.

However -- I only tell you this because of my manly manlyness ,(that is, the fundamental stability of my business), that sales over the last 3 months are down 7.5% (July's sales were so good, they pretty much brought the whole quarter up.) That I don't like.
That requires some mid-course corrections. I usually won't change my policies until I see a full quarter under my belt, but the last week of August was so bad, I jumped the gun and started cutting my November pre-orders. That will start coming into effect next week. Good timing.

Still, even these stats are somewhat misleading. I made the most net profit in my store's entire history in August, even though sales were down. By cutting back on the extra inventory. We have Christmas coming up, and I'm fairly certain I can go into next year with zero balances in my credit cards and lines of credit, and still have the savings I started the summer with intact.

Not the huge extra flow of cash I was hoping for. But we are above the original daily sales goal I set out to reach 3 years ago, relatively low on debt, and have a fairly large cushion to cover overhead.

I'm looking out the window and seeing empty parking spots, my customers seem to want to cut down on their comic lists, and Monday's and Tuesday's are turning into morgue.

Just like the old days. Kind of like an old, familiar but unwanted friend.