Creating Success In This Economy!

My purpose for this post is not so much that you should know some of our important financial decisions here at Firstinlinesoap.com, but as encouragement for us all to do whatever it takes to stay in business in this economy.

It's been awhile since I've posted and things have changed here at First In Line Soap. In April I made the decision to close our retail store, our direct selling portion of Soapier and to regroup.

We've moved our manufacturing back to an at home business again (that's how we started out) and we've also taken some very hard looks at some of our expenses.

Here's a list of expenses we were able to cut.

Rent for the store which was not only a small retail space but most of it was dedicated to manufacturing.

Electric.

Cable/phone I've maintained a cable internet for my home and then one at the store. Now I'll just use the one from my home. I'll use my cell phone as my contact phone number.

Web site shopping cart for all of our web sites. Previously I used a service for three of our sites that cost $60 a month. We decided to go with Mal's Shopping Cart which you can get for free. You can click here for their web site. This is a basic secure shopping cart which is all that we need.

We've stopped our daily pick up with UPS. That cost was anywhere from $8.00-$16.00 per week just for them to pick up. Now we'll use FedEx and drive your purchases over to a FedEx drop off.

I've also discontinued my relationship with our credit card company thru Quickbooks and have decided to use Paypal exclusively This allows us to save the monthly statement fees and the percentage rate and cost per transaction is almost the same.

With the above changes I anticipate a saving of $12,000 each year

This economy has me looking over where I can save whether it's for my personally or business finances and if you are not doing this now then you should be, it could make the difference in whether you can stay in business or fold.

Linda Nigro
www.firstinlinesoap.com