Volume 003: When Life Throws a Curve ball – How I Realised Our Business Model Had To Change

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Our current business model…

Since growing the business to employ a team of 4, (just at the point of a cost of living crisis), the pressure to constantly deliver new products, to drive new sales, is higher than ever.

The routine that we have settled into has been a new product launch focus every month, along with our quarterly and monthly subscriptions. Nearly 100% of our turnover is direct to consumer, mostly via our own website, with a small amount via Etsy and Amazon.

Each route to customer has its upsides and downsides, there is a balance between profit margin, time demand and potential customer base. If you’d like to know more about how they compare in terms of costs vs benefits let me know below and I’ll put together a blog!

Something had to give!

I get bored easily and have more ideas than time to implement them, so the fact that we turn around product quickly works perfectly for me. The problem comes when something happens outside of the business that puts demands on my time.

Earlier this year, my mum had an emergency appendectomy. Something that, in itself, was very stressful and involved a whole night of us sat in A&E reception waiting to see a doctor.

Thankfully the surgery was a success, they managed to remove the naughty appendix via keyhole surgery and mum was discharged to recuperate at home.

Two weeks later, just when we thought the whole drama was behind us, Mum was called back to the hospital for a non-routine “follow up”. She was asked to bring someone with her, which of course made us fear the worst. As you can imagine we spent two days doom spiralling about what this news could be, and as we were called into the room with a consultant, a nurse and a macmillan volunteer, our fears were confirmed. (Apparently they call this sort of consult a “breaking bad news meeting”… You would seriously think they could find a new name for it!).

On analysis of mums appendix, they found a Neuroendocrine tumour. Something that is incredibly uncommon and often only found when an appendix is removed. Because of the unusual nature of the tumour, and because it had been cut up in order to remove it via the keyhole route, it required follow up scans and referral to a specialist centre to decide the best course of action.

Mum and Dad are separated and as my brother doesn’t drive, (and that I very much prefer to be involved in all medical situations), I was needed to drive mum to her appointments. The huge plus of running your own business is that I didn’t need to ask permission to take the time to do this. I was able to be present for Mum and just made sure the work got sorted at other times.

After a stressful couple of weeks we went back to see the consultant and got the fantastic news that removing the appendix had removed the cancer and that no further treatment was necessary. I can’t tell you how relieved we all were.

I would also like to add, that in start contrast to our recent experience of the NHS with my Grandmother, after the first incredibly long night in A&E, our experience with the multi-disciplinary team at our local hospital, and subsequent referral to the Royal Free, was excellent. It renewed my faith in the NHS, and while there are no doubt huge issues with the system, we really are so lucky to have them when we need them.

But what if things had been different?

I couldn’t help thinking about what would have happened if we hadn’t been so lucky? I have been told by a therapist on multiple occasions, is that I am already “at capacity”. What happens when something happens that demands my time?

The fact that I am a single person, that my mortgage is paid by solely me, and that I am the founder of a business that employs three other people is pretty scary… If something were to happen that meant I wasn’t able to work ,it wouldn’t be long before there were pretty significant issues with cash flow.

It’s time to switch things up a bit so that there is a back up plan in times of stress!

What is the solution??

I love creating new products, and developing new ideas, so that won’t change. But it would be good to have a more “passive” revenue streams that we can rely on to “keep the lights on” if needed.

Passive revenue… Sounds like a dream?

There are a huge number of avenues available when it comes to passive (or semi-passive) revenue. A quick search on the internet will bring you a million ways that you can make money quick with little effort… If only that were true!

Passive, or semi-passive revenue streams still require a lot of work, generally this work is front loaded. You do the work, create the designs etc and then let it tick away in the background, with less maintenance or input needed on a daily basis.

What could this look like for Oops a Daisy?

I have been thinking a lot recently about the huge number of designs we create for both shop and subscription products, and how we can use these designs in different ways.

Passive streams could include digital items, courses, downloads, print on demand, Amazon and Amazon KDP (i’ll come back to that later).

In addition, a focus on growing our current subscription products would generate a more semi-passive revenue stream for us. While the subscriptions definitely requires time input on a regular basis, they do not require the same level of marketing/photography/website work every month in order to generate income.

What’s the plan?

As this is all relatively new to us, we will need to experiment with a few different options until we see what works for us.

1. Growing our subscriptions – Our subscription products are bloody good. We create our own unique designs, we have great customer retention. With a few tweaks and a real focus on marketing, I believe we could grow our numbers. You may already have seen the change of our monthly sub to Themebox. A big driver for this is to create a product that is less complicated to market than having Daisy Says/Mini One/Monthly Combo.
2. Amazon KDP – A print on demand service for books. This involves uploading a design and customers buying direct from Amazon. This could be used for notebooks, planners, colouring books and scrapbook paper books. The profit margin is very low on this, (around £1 per book sold,) however there is no risk or upfront payment and we have a lot of designs ready to go!
3. Print on Demand – This involves using our designs and cute characters on a whole range of products, such as t-shirts, sweatshirts, phone cases and mugs. Again the profit margin is low, but we already have the designs and it would integrate with our existing Etsy store (meaning no addition stress for tax accounting!). You can see what we have created already here.
4. Amazon – We already have an Amazon store, which was a steep learning curve. After a lot of experimentation, I have been surprised to see that our Grid Guides and stencils have sold well (actually better than the journals, as the competition in this field is so high). Its now time to optimise these listings to increase the footfall and reduce the advertising costs needed to get sales!

As you can see, there are a lot of areas we can work on, and no doubt some will fail, but its all about experimentation and learning what routes will work for us!

Pivoting the business slightly to give us a margin for life’s inevitable curve balls, seems like the right direction for us right now. It will also mean that we can slow down and spend some time improving and updating existing areas (like our font stencil overhaul!)

Want to know more? Pop me a question in the comments below!

Big Love
Jo xx (aka @oopsadaisyuk)

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