Behind the Scenes - 7/30/24

 

Dear Friends,

So my leave has been progressing as expected. I'm off, but also not. It's a balance I'm ok with though and my wife is too. Part of that is due to the fact that the little one is doing well, sleeping, eating, etc. and since it's our third we know a lot more of what to expect. We developed a pattern with the last one that worked well. The kids would be put down for bed at their normal time (around 7) and then the little one would be fed, changed, burped, and I would wear them in the wrap for 3 hours (or however long they could go for before getting hungry) and he would sleep being actively rocked or bounced to keep him down. Leah would sleep during that time, and then about 11 she would take the now hungry baby and I would sleep. She would put the little one back down to bed in its crib or bassinet and then she would manage any wakings until morning.

This works well for us and it has allowed both of us to get a sufficient amount of sleep to keep sane (or as sane as we started) for these early weeks. The other children are conspiring to cause mayhem. As I said to Leah the first week that the little one was born, "our second couldn't be causing more trouble if she had a blowtorch in one hand and a bottle of kerosene in the other". So suffice to say, things are quite mad around here. I am enjoying it immensely.

Things at the company are progressing. The Stone leather launch was a big hit, with most of our stock selling quickly. We do have some left for those that are interested. Our catalog has generated some sales (the catalogs are being put into the orders that are going out, but haven't been mailed out yet) which is a win considering how limited their exposure has been. There have been some changes to the website, specifically in the area of our cross sell and upsell endeavors. That hasn't been fully rolled out as there was some technical issues that Meryle is diligently working on correcting before its full launch.

There has been one very interesting phenomenon that has happened this month that has me looking at a complete redesign of our marketing strategy going forward.

During the early days when we knew we would be out of Americano for a month, we decided to slash our marketing spend to 1/7th of its usual spend and only leave a small amount spending on landing page views (which is pretty inexpensive). This is on Meta so we have some history with their algorithm, and its possible that there was some trailing sales that came from the higher prior ad spend that was delayed, but after the slash in our marketing spend we saw an INCREASE in our sales on average.

If you take the handful of bulk orders out of the month (many of which have been very divinely timed) our daily average was slightly above our new lower break even, and was statistically significantly above our daily average sales at the beginning of the month before we slashed ad spend.

Now this may be a fluke, and there hasn't been a single day in the last 6 that we have been over break even, but its still a fascinating result. Perhaps our Stone launch made the major difference, but even with that taken into account, you would expect the marketing results to be much worse in light of the dramatic shift.

Due to my absence, I haven't been as good at getting emails out. That, combined with the passing of time has meant some of our momentum has been lost. Still with Americano coming back in stock shortly, and more mills of all our colors coming within two weeks, I will be curious to see how the ads run with all the usual suspects in play.

If we see this new lower ads spend with all the colors back in stock, and me working harder at the marketing grindstone lead to sales over break even, especially if they are even a little bit more than break even I will let the current status quo ride for a little longer. I think there is some small gains we can eek out of this by edging up the ad spend slowly, but time will tell.

Thank you to all of you who have come out and bought Americano, knowing about the wait, but willing to be patient to support the company. It has been a help during this time, and it looks like we will make it. We really do have the best community.

I have a special podcast treat coming up as soon as I can finish getting it all edited, so stay tuned to your email for that announcement.

Stay tuned for more letters on Thursdays in the coming weeks and be sure to go subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you like and watch the videos it helps us get promoted more by the algorithm to people who may never have heard of us.

Ever your servant,

Colin MurdyCEO/Owner

Murdy Creative Co.

Cell: 414-434-9001

MurdyCreative.Co 

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