James Mills is a web developer in the North East of England and founder of Refresh Teesside »
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Deloitte, which has 23 offices across the UK including Newcastle, is among the country's leading professional services firms » 
ClimateNE & Climate Change Schools Project support the move to a low-carbon, resilient economy and help businesses avoid risk and realise commercial opportunities. Posts by Jen Atkinson, Krista McKinzey and Harriet Thew » Two weeks ago myself and the business partner attended the British Craft Trade Fair in Harrogate. Since that time it's been a bit crazy at RPS towers. You see for us, orders are like buses, you wait for ages for one to come along and then three turn up at once.
No complaints on that front, I love "buses", but it has meant a slight re-evaluation of our production methods. Telling stockists that they will have to wait 4-5 weeks to receive their products is not something we think is acceptable, but at the moment, to tell them them anything else would mean dissapointing them come delivery day.
So we find ourselves having to do something we have as yet managed to avoid as a small business.
Forward plan.
We are already thinking of the summer holidays, the build up to Christmas, next year's January lull. What are the sales figures for this time last year, have we increased thm? Doubled them? Is there enough justification for economic outlay at this time to avoid meltdown at peak ordering times?
Having only just started to get back into the black with any kind of definition we are somewhat reluctant to spend our hard earned pennies. Frivolous as we were when we first started we have now become misers, protective of that tiny pot and all that it represents to us.
But we both know that if we want it to get bigger, (which after some umming and ahhing we decide we do) then our current methods of production are going to have to change somewhat. The thing is when your send things to the printers you need to be ordering at least a thousand of whatever it is you're making before it's in any way cost effective for each product. But 1000 x whatever the base cost is, = quite a lot of money and there is always the fear that you won't sell them and you'll be left with 1000's of said product and a great big hole in your bank balance.
That's one risk. But the other is that your buyers can't be doing with waiting 6 weeks for their order and they take their custom and your revenue, elsewhere. Eep!!
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