There’s a tornado watch tonight, and my son won’t come out of the basement bathroom. Such is the life of one in the midwest. As an East coaster who has relocated, this is officially my least favorite part of Michigan. I’ll take a hurricane in Maine any day over the tornado threats of the Midwest.

Anyway..Business has been good. We have been going back and forth on what to do for order management software. I think we’ve decided that StoneEdge may be it. This particular piece of software interfaces with Quickbooks and Synchro, and holds the inventory info, and basically takes some of the negative things we are facing with Quickbooks, and Synchro, and “deals” with it. We aren’t constrained by the Quickbooks 15000 item limitation anymore. Our products can have attributes (i.e. a purple shirt can come in 4 sizes, and I only create one product with 4 attributes.) The price tag is also a bit steeper than we’d like, but I think this is a good fit and probably worth the money.

Miva Synchro is supposedly quite buggy. But here’s the thing..I’m not willing to move out of what we have right now. Miva suits us just fine, and I feel like I’m finally getting it, pretty well, actually. So we’ll stay with our current server, and Miva, and stay the course for a while. As soon as we officially purchase the new software and relevant plug ins, I’ll blog about it. This is a bit out of my realm..because I hate anything to do with inventory and bookkeeping, so I may enlist my partner Lee Ann to “guest blog”.

It’s really funny that we may be approaching a time in our business where we need to make a big “growth” leap. ie. get warehouse space, hire “others” to come help us, the list goes on. Lee Ann and I talked about it and both agreed that since our business is primarily focused on email marketing that we hold the cards to the volume of business we pump in. In other words, to some degree, we can control the growth. Unlike many, we don’t want too much too fast. We may not even want “too much”. Time may resolve all of that as the kids grow and don’t need us quite as much..sob, sniffle…and we need more to occupy us. This is an interesting issue because I think 95% of businesses in our shoes would just gear up and grow. One day at a time, right?

Until next time, folks! It’s time to put on my mommy hat and get my boy out of that bathroom…

Looks like a very cool product, but possibly we aren’t quite ready for it. The monthly fee far exceeds what we are paying now, and although we may be there eventually, it’s set up more for the company who does more than just ecommerce.

When I spoke to the sales rep he indicated that there may be a level more suited to just ecommerce sites coming. He indicated he may be able to work with me on this. So I’ll let you know.

In the meantime, business has eased up just a little, which I have to admit, is nice because it give us perspective. In other words it’s important to research and know our options as far as what we need to do to grow, but not jump too fast.?Ǭ? We also checked out Nexternal, which looks interesting, but again, a big price jump.

We’ve had three of the slowest days we’ve had in months. It’s very curious. The only thing I’ve changed is adding error pages for my error 400 codes. I know this sounds crazy, but could I have inadvertantly done something with that that would affect my direct email customers? Also, Can anyone tell me what a 304 NOT MODIFIED code means? I called my server, because under my statistics, that number is always quite high. My server guy said it’s nothing, and not to worry about it, but that sounds curious, doesn’t it? There’s a bit of a language barrier and it can be really frustrating when you can’t understand your tech support folk!

We are reviewing the software suggested by Kerry in my last blog. I am also loving the idea of NetSuite because it would be something that Lee Ann and I could use together. As it stands right now, all bookkeeping functions, etc, resides at Lee Ann’s home, all web, design, product postings are handled by me. This would force us to see the whole picture and the reality of the inventory, etc.

The order management software seems pretty cool, but it’s clearly not as comprehensive, and it doesn’t solve our bookkeeping software issue. I’d like to have something that grows with us. Quickbooks will not, so we are still looking. And hey, after three slow days, we are not feeling so amazing! The momentum you gain from great sales is unreal, but when it slows and you can’t figure why, it’s humbling!

It’s Sunday morning and no one is awake yet. I have my first cup of coffee, this is my favorite time of the day. But I don’t expect for it to last long..so let me get to it.

Yesterday we met with our consultant who is helping us streamline our business a bit. We hired him to help us “sync” Miva with Quickbooks, and what we’ve now realized is that we are quickly outgrowing the capabilities of Quickbooks, and Miva. He talked about many things yesterday regarding inventory control, what Quickbooks is capable of doing, and more specifically what it is NOT capable of doing, it left Lee Ann and I pretty overwhelmed. We run our business out of our homes, and we love that we do, and we really want to continue to run it like it is. We have little kids, and want to be around for them. But as we get busier, and summer approaches, I find myself shopping for summer camps to allow for more business time, and less mommy time. It’s not quite what I expected.

Did anyone know that Quickbooks can’t track size and color on products? And that it can’t allow you to backorder anything? We are also needing to update our own business computers. I am desperate to replace my aging Mac, and even in the short term, Lee Ann’s pc needs more juice.

We are now shopping for an all encompassing piece of software, that preferably sits on someone else’s server, and has accounting functions, maintains customer lists, and controls our inventory. Sounds expensive, right? Any ideas. I was told to go check out Net Suite, but haven’t had the time yet. I am open to ideas, and recommendations. And can someone tell me exactly what this whole setup is called? Suggest away…

You always hear about how a small business fails because of things like cash flow, and growing too fast. I’d prefer not to do that. I love this business. I would also give my left arm for a night of sleep, instead of wild dreams about purple dresses and red hats suffocating me. Oh, and to add to all of the anxiety, my house goes on the market in a week. I need to be sedated..

What is with these crazy casino entries in my blog? It’s like some little casino hacker crawls the web all night and day looking for places to deposit it’s information. I have tried to block them, but it’s just not working.

My blog used to offer a feature where my bloggers would have to enter a code to post, this would stop them. However, this service isn’t offered anymore. I’m thinking of switching to Blogger, and I’m hoping I’ll have more success getting my blog indexed on the Search Engines. Plus, I have more control over the way it looks in Blogger, because it lets me alter the html.

There must be a way to transfer my files over without copy and pasting, right…Brian? hmm?

Our sales are going very well, and the Tell A friend feature is fantastic. It really lets us know what they are excited about. I have been really surprised to see my customers showing some of our product that I didn’t know was so interesting to them. In other words, they are sharing it, but no one is buying it. This is great because it tells me I might have to reevaluate my pricing, or sizing. I’m also playing a lot with upselling on these products. For instance, a scarf may not sell alone, but if I show a related product like a cool rhinestone pin on the same page, it’s suddenly a must have. It’s all trial and error, but it’s kind of a game.

That’s it for now, it’s late for me…