Retail business owners

[Dogmum40]

Hi All,

How is everyone’s retail businesses doing right now? We run an online retail business and to say it’s quiet is an understatement, is anyone else struggling like we are? We are lucky to get one or two orders a day which is worrying us a lot at the moment

We were due to get a warehouse next month as we had grown out of our current place but had to pull the plug due to uncertainty, this time of year is quiet for us but this is eerily quiet! Obviously with everything that’s going on we did expect some disruption but we are starting to have a few sleepless nights! So I just wanted to check how are you all finding it and if you are quiet are you at panic stage yet or are you actually busy?

I’ve had to pack in my 2 online retail businesses and get an employed position. Salary is atrocious but still better than my SE earnings this year.

Is that a recent closure due to the current climate or a Covid closure? Either way I’m so so sorry! I’m hoping we can wait it out but we have a lot of money tied up in stock so everyday is a waiting game and hoping we get something, if it doesn’t change in the next month we may have to shut

Mine is quiet. Although it never got the chance to get going properly as my first large order was halted mid production due to Covid and I've struggled on ever since. Definitely quieter than this time last year though.

@theimposter

Mine is quiet. Although it never got the chance to get going properly as my first large order was halted mid production due to Covid and I've struggled on ever since. Definitely quieter than this time last year though.

Yeah, we’re definitely a lot quieter than this time last year which is worrying us!

Busier than 2020 but I would expect to be as I have a much larger stock range now. I don't compare any figures to March 2020 through to present. Sales plummeted in April 2021 when shops reopened and have never really recovered. I had a good Christmas, but having spent everything I had just surviving last year, it wasn't enough and what I made over Christmas covered my tax bill and now I have nothing to fall back on. I'm in a constant state of panic over it all, especially with rising costs of living and DH currently being unemployed after redundancy. I have been trading for over ten years but this is by far the worst time I've experienced, and it's the first year where my profits have gone down compared to the previous year.

@DelilahBucket

Busier than 2020 but I would expect to be as I have a much larger stock range now. I don't compare any figures to March 2020 through to present. Sales plummeted in April 2021 when shops reopened and have never really recovered. I had a good Christmas, but having spent everything I had just surviving last year, it wasn't enough and what I made over Christmas covered my tax bill and now I have nothing to fall back on. I'm in a constant state of panic over it all, especially with rising costs of living and DH currently being unemployed after redundancy. I have been trading for over ten years but this is by far the worst time I've experienced, and it's the first year where my profits have gone down compared to the previous year.

This is by far the worst year I have had during all my years of business, I count myself lucky that my husband has another income stream but that doesn’t help my sleepless nights, It’s nice to talk to others who are struggling too! Thank you for being honest

@Dogmum40

Is that a recent closure due to the current climate or a Covid closure? Either way I’m so so sorry! I’m hoping we can wait it out but we have a lot of money tied up in stock so everyday is a waiting game and hoping we get something, if it doesn’t change in the next month we may have to shut

Things went very quiet during the lockdowns, as my business was based in the wedding industry. I tried to diversify a bit and did manage to keep afloat with the self employed assistance payments, but it hasn’t really recovered.

And as a single parent I rely on whatever I can earn to keep my family afloat, so I can’t sustain it any longer

Reading your reply I really feel genuinely sorry for you! We run our retail business but my husband has a full time job, the retail business is mine, he does help me out when it gets busy but our bills are getting paid thanks to his salary!

How your coping on your own must be absolutely terrifying especially running a wedding business during the last two years! Well done for diversifying your business and keeping going without falling apart!

I’m panicking but feeling very grateful for another salary going into my home, other people like yourself clearly have it a lot worse than me it just didn’t feel like it until I posted on here and saw what your going through, thank you for your post,

Ah well I’m glad to have helped in some small way . There’s always someone worse off isn’t there. I know that I’m lucky to have got this far doing something I love, so although it’s hard having to let it go, I know that things are always changing and I’ll see what this year brings.

What’s your business? Or if it’s too outing, what sort of industry?

I’ve actually just started a new thread about any struggling business as you never know it there might be more than just 5 of us, so your welcome to keep posting on here or on there if you fancy keeping in touch with someone else who can’t sell 😆 I sell toys ! Your welcome to PM me and I’ll send you the link to my website if you fancy a nosey!

Should add, I sell Collectables not teddies and board games etc..

Things have been understandably quiet since news of the war and also cost of living increases. My market is definitely non essential and I ordered lots of stock as we had a busy January. Eek. I'm still working full time (employed) thankfully so will hope to stick it out.

Yeah we are non essential too and at the moment a lot of people are having to decide between eat and heat so until things calm time we are hoping to see if we can ride it out

Same here. We sell second hand books. Sales are dire compared to this time last year. I keep telling myself at least our stock is non-perishable.

@OneInEight

Same here. We sell second hand books. Sales are dire compared to this time last year. I keep telling myself at least our stock is non-perishable.

So sorry your also going through it, we used to sell around 20th items a day ( they are Collectables so not mainstream stuff so 20ish a day was fantastic) but now we sold one in March and 3 so far for April, it’s worrying but as you said we aren’t essential so we will just ride it out if we can

Oh gosh that sounds even worse than us. Where do you sell? We have an ebay shop but am thinking whether I should take the time during the lull as worth setting up my own website or whether this would be a waste of effort and money.

@OneInEight

Oh gosh that sounds even worse than us. Where do you sell? We have an ebay shop but am thinking whether I should take the time during the lull as worth setting up my own website or whether this would be a waste of effort and money.

We have our own website plus we sell on Amazon too, we use godaddy for our website and it’s quite cheap to set up, if you dm me I can send you the link but to be honest everyone bits on Amazon these days so we get more sales through that, we do Google shopping as part of our website which helps but obviously both are ridiculously quiet at the mo

Buys not bits* 😆

Watching with interest as I'm about to launch an on-line non-essential business (and thinking this is a really bad time to do it but it has been planned for a while).

I should imagine it would be difficult to get people to look at your website Oneineight. I'm no expert in this and it might be worth starting another thread relating to this for some more advice. I intend to use an established site initially but I think you are a bit further along in your selling business.

How do the large book companies like World of Books impact you? They seem to sell books so cheaply. I try to buy from smaller independent sellers where I can. It sounds like you had good sales during lockdown...is this part of the reason why sales have slowed? I know I ordered quite a few books on-line during this time.

Thank you Dogsmum . GoDaddy looks a bit simpler to set up (& cheaper) than the couple I've looked at so far.

TheDarkLantern. We have been running since before lockdown & sales were not that much impacted I think. Infact more of an impact was the greater difficulty of getting in good stock during this period. We can not compete by price with worldofbooks type sellers of the pile them high and sell them cheap model (we would lose money if we sold at their prices) so we aim more to specialise in rarer items and make sure our descriptions are detailed so customers actually have a better idea what they are getting.

The getting the site visible is what concerns me about having our own website. We did try and sell on a book specific platform but sales were much lower than on ebay so it wasn't worth continuing. I think their algorithims favoured the larger stores.

Good luck with your new venture.

@Thedarklantern

Watching with interest as I'm about to launch an on-line non-essential business (and thinking this is a really bad time to do it but it has been planned for a while).

I should imagine it would be difficult to get people to look at your website Oneineight. I'm no expert in this and it might be worth starting another thread relating to this for some more advice. I intend to use an established site initially but I think you are a bit further along in your selling business.

How do the large book companies like World of Books impact you? They seem to sell books so cheaply. I try to buy from smaller independent sellers where I can. It sounds like you had good sales during lockdown...is this part of the reason why sales have slowed? I know I ordered quite a few books on-line during this time.

Awww good luck! I won’t lie, I’ve had more sleepless nights this last couple of months that all the years I’ve run my own business, even our regular customers have rung up to cancel orders as they’re finding things tough, they have asked if we can hold stock for them for a few months until they are ok again and I’ve said yes as we aren’t really selling anyway!

I hope your new business goes well, we found doing social media competitions a big hit at the moment so if you can afford to give up a popular item of stock that would sell well anywhere else and offer it out as a freebie if people follow and comment your social media then that’s a really good starting block for likes and followers, marketing is our downfall really as both myself and husband are crap at it so we are thinking of phoning around some marketing companies to see what they can do for us and hiring them if we find a suitable solution, I’m not thrilled at the idea of spending money at the moment but we are stuck for ideas on what to do and how to move forward

My business is dire at the moment. We only sell online, on marketplaces, but the sales are less than a quarter what they would normally be.

For this 4 day weekend, we had less sales than we would have on a quiet normal 2 day weekend.

As ours is non-essential we're hoping it's the current climate and not something we're doing wrong. We're also praying it picks back up

@AutumnDragon

My business is dire at the moment. We only sell online, on marketplaces, but the sales are less than a quarter what they would normally be.

For this 4 day weekend, we had less sales than we would have on a quiet normal 2 day weekend.

As ours is non-essential we're hoping it's the current climate and not something we're doing wrong. We're also praying it picks back up

Fingers crossed you pick up to! It would be great if there was a way for us retail owners who are struggling to keep in touch and let each other know how they are getting on, I started this thread as I’m genuinely worried about the businesses future at the moment and thought I was on my own but I realise now a lot of us are in the same boat, if anyone wants to DM me I’ll happily keep in touch through messages and see if there’s a way we can set up some kind of business support group