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Then I persuaded the food buyer of a major department store to meet me. When I looked around their food hall I could see they were already selling everything I hoped to supply them with, and my heart sank. But then the buyer said that they felt they were overdependent on their existing supplier, and had decided to do something about it. So that's where I came in. It seems your original strategy, of offering everything from toys to jewellery didn't produce the volume of sales, or profit, you needed. I'd imagined that by selling lots of different lines I'd get a good spread of customers, but it didn't really work out like that. Now I'm increasing my turnover by concentrating on just a few lines that I can sell to customers in the same sector. And with food, there are plenty of retailers out there, of all sizes, just waiting for me to come and sell to them, so I've dropped everything else. How do you see the next 12 months? I'd like to say I'll be hiring someone to handle existing customers, while I concentrate on drumming up new business, and that I want to move into export as well as import. To be realistic, that'll have to wait until I've built up my customer base and turnover quite significantly. Paul, how do you feel about your first year? It's been great. I wish I'd started years ago. |
