Ordering not what I want, but what I need.

I've managed to make moderate orders at Pegasus Books all year long.  Seems simple enough, but I've never managed to accomplish this goal before for this length of time.  Ordering not what I want, but what I need.

I'm reminded every summer how much business I do with out-of-towners.  Instead of 90% of the product needing to be reordered, like it is most of the year, suddenly only about half the product needs to be reordered.  This, even more than the increased sales, allows me to make a profit in the summer.

I have a target in mind that I need to reach to pay taxes.  Anything over that target and I'm going to spend it on product.  Probably won't be much.  But the best time to restock the store -- counter-intuitively -- is in the slow months, not the busy months.

I've treated the store as a mature business this year, not as a start-up that constantly needs to be built up for the future.  (Yeah, 33 years is a little long to be a start-up, but I really only started rebuilding this store back up about 10 years ago, after spending a decade limping along paying off debt...)

I'm tempted every day.  Deal, deals, deals.  But the store is stocked.   I need to maintain a good level and a good flow, but I don't need to keep building it, stockpiling it, squirreling away resources.

It is time to let the store function, which means not falling into debt and recovery patterns over and over again.  I'd like to turn that around, which means first I have to catch up, then hopefully I reverse the pattern and have profits that I can then spend forward.  I'm half a year into that process and it's very possible by the end of the year I will have turned the cycle around.

Sales are down slightly for the year, and profits are up slightly.  That's the trade-off.

I make the joke with people when they ask how I'm doing:  "Well, the store is 33 years old and even the stupidest person can learn how to do it if they have that long to learn."  (Not that dangers and mistakes don't forever lurk...)