Reply to: Plan B

[MarillionFan]

Isn't the garden furniture market already saturated or are the products you are looking to source different to the mainstream?

You're probably thinking large wooden furniture. I'm looking at more your bistro chairs, mosiac tables, metal benches. What we in the trade call 'car boot' furniture (ie. you can stick it in the boot). £120-£180 retail. At the cheapest end of the market the quality is super shiiite! I used to sell shabby chic benches on Ebay at £89-£119, I'd be buying in at £50, the wholesaler was buying in at £25.

They are really difficult to get hold of decent ones & one of the best suppliers just went bust.

[Clippy]

Part of me is thinking of just doing the garden furniture though and contracting the other half of the year.

Isn't the garden furniture market already saturated or are the products you are looking to source different to the mainstream?

[Old Hack]

Having closed down the shops and moving, the missus decided she didn't want to work in the office anymore having had our first child and wished that she had worked in one of the shops we had. So a year after closing them I opened a new one on a 3 year lease so she could run it. 3 months later someone had knocked her up and I landed up working the bloody weekends myself until I hired an experienced manager who was a damn site more expensive. The missus never went back to work.

The second the three years were up I closed it again(last April)

We had 2 kids, at school age, and the wife was contracting as an Oracle DBA. We had three houses, and all was well in our world. We decided to move to the West Country, and took out a rather large mortgage on our current house. Quite literally, the day before we moved in, after exchanging, she felt sick, and now we have a 3rd child, she no longer works and we were a little bit too close to being over-leveraged for my liking. We luckily sold one house, and have found long term tenants in the other two houses. However, we are looking to sell the other two houses, to resolve the mortgage at home, or partially resolve it and buy into a plan B.

I'd not take a Plan B on with the two houses let out, they'd have to go and we'd have to exclude the family home form the business. I am not a gambler by nature and it worried me then being almost held in balance by the economy and nothing else.

[MarillionFan]

, very good. But yes, it's something like that.

I was rather hoping my wife would come back to run it, but she appears to rather like being at home and not contracting. I am of course deeply envious.

Having closed down the shops and moving, the missus decided she didn't want to work in the office anymore having had our first child and wished that she had worked in one of the shops we had. So a year after closing them I opened a new one on a 3 year lease so she could run it. 3 months later someone had knocked her up and I landed up working the bloody weekends myself until I hired an experienced manager who was a damn site more expensive. The missus never went back to work.

The second the three years were up I closed it again(last April)

[Old Hack]

CRB

That's the boy.

Funny enough, I had to have it last year as I helped out at the school triathlon.

[MarillionFan]

CRB

BBC

[Old Hack]

So what actually happens is, you set up a plan B yourself, work in it for a while, come to the conclusion that you should employ someone to do what you're doing so you can go and coin it in elsewhere, hire someone, go off and contract, the person you hire never does it as well as you do, you then have to keep coming back in to give instructions, make changes etc, which effects your contract & your time, you get knackered, drop the contract, replace the staff, bring the business back on track, come to the conclustion that you should employ someone to do what your doing so you can go and coin it in elsewhere .............

I call it the Suity paradigm.

, very good. But yes, it's something like that.

I was rather hoping my wife would come back to run it, but she appears to rather like being at home and not contracting. I am of course deeply envious.

[FiveTimes]

There is a maximum number of children per area of equipment and the people you employ have to be cab'd as such, but outside of the normal H&S not especially so, in our research.

CRB

[MarillionFan]

It's how I am thinking now. Madness really, as you could match the earnings easily, but, well, it just seems to easy to pop out for 40 hours a week and coin it that little bit more. My best man has always said I'll contract until they find me collapsed at my desk. Depressing really, I thought I'd be out of it all by 55. Not to be me thinks...

So what actually happens is, you set up a plan B yourself, work in it for a while, come to the conclusion that you should employ someone to do what you're doing so you can go and coin it in elsewhere, hire someone, go off and contract, the person you hire never does it as well as you do, you then have to keep coming back in to give instructions, make changes etc, which effects your contract & your time, you get knackered, drop the contract, replace the staff, bring the business back on track, come to the conclustion that you should employ someone to do what your doing so you can go and coin it in elsewhere .............

I call it the Suity paradigm.

[Old Hack]

Exactly. Everytime I used to work in my own shops I'd think, I could pay someone cheaper to do this & coin it in elsewhere.

It's how I am thinking now. Madness really, as you could match the earnings easily, but, well, it just seems to easy to pop out for 40 hours a week and coin it that little bit more. My best man has always said I'll contract until they find me collapsed at my desk. Depressing really, I thought I'd be out of it all by 55. Not to be me thinks...

[MarillionFan]

For me, the danger has always been that contracting never goes away, from a contractors mind. I just know if we got a succesful business up and running, my wife would run it, and I can see myself getting back into contracting, as the money is so good. The temptation is just so unavoidable.

Exactly. Everytime I used to work in my own shops I'd think, I could pay someone cheaper to do this & coin it in elsewhere.

[Old Hack]

For me, the danger has always been that contracting never goes away, from a contractors mind. I just know if we got a succesful business up and running, my wife would run it, and I can see myself getting back into contracting, as the money is so good. The temptation is just so unavoidable.

[MarillionFan]

Its a good plan but my concern would be how big is the actual market. Going around ironbridge and the surrounding area during the summer all the shops are selling the same tat because there are so few wholesalers left to buy from.

It could be a brilliant market with too few competitors, it equally well could be a dying one.

Not a dying one. There will always be wholesalers for smaller retailers. The market is getting smaller as supermarkets destroy the retailers but there is always a need for suppliers. The Autumn Fair International 2012 (and spring) is the main gift fair of the year. There is also a furniture fair twice a year at the NEC.

What's interesting(and most people won't have a clue about this) is how wholesaling tends to work in these types of markets. For example as a retailer you put your order in for Xmas goods to wholesalers in February. For Summer goods, you do it in September. From a wholesaling perspective the suppliers who attend the shows in Feb/Spring are showing goods that they do not have.

They have effectively gone to the Spring Fairs in Asia to buy samples/start to design products for the next year, so you have to be a year ahead of the market. Hence when you see all the Xmas goodies in Feb or garden furniture in September the wholesaler doesnt have any stock at all, and more importantly they haven't placed their orders with Asia yet!

At the tradeshows the suppliers then take proforma orders. They then have an idea of how much stock they need at the end of the shows, then place their orders for manufacturing. That tends to take 3/4 months. Then when the stock comes in they want paying, at which point some people change their proforma orders/cancel them etc and any last minute orders at say the Autumn fair for Xmas items. Which as a retailer, when you turn up at the Autumn fair expecting to see shedloads of xmas stuff there never is any(!!!).

Part of me is thinking of just doing the garden furniture though and contracting the other half of the year.

[Old Hack]

Oh, OK. I know that here in NL there are lots of regs about furniture; I know a chap who makes and sells furniture for infant schools and he's rolling in money because the stuff costs about 10 times as much as standard furniture; no sharp edges, no poisonous stuffage in the materials, which is all fairly simple and do-able; the costs go into getting it all tested and approved. But then he makes the money because nobody else wanted to make the huge investment in that market.

Ah, yes, the manufacturers of the equipment have to addhere to all of that, but you'd be buying it with all of that baselined at source. Inside the actual softplay, only what I have mentioned come to the fore. However, as I said, the wife is doing her due diligence as part of the business plan.

[Mich the Tester]

There is a maximum number of children per area of equipment and the people you employ have to be cab'd as such, but outside of the normal H&S not especially so, in our research.

Oh, OK. I know that here in NL there are lots of regs about furniture; I know a chap who makes and sells furniture for infant schools and he's rolling in money because the stuff costs about 10 times as much as standard furniture; no sharp edges, no poisonous stuffage in the materials, which is all fairly simple and do-able; the costs go into getting it all tested and approved. But then he makes the money because nobody else wanted to make the huge investment in that market.