The purpose of showing them was to see their reaction, to see what happens if I show them to these before I order them.
I used to only tell their most senior buyer these things and show her before I order, but these time I did it with them.
Might or might not be a good move. I don't know.
What I do know is I probably came across as a really naive guy, or worse, an idiot.
I shouldn't have showed them, on hindsight.
That's not a really bad mistake though. These designs I showed them were edited versions of those I noticed elsewhere, therefore they weren't original ideas in the first place.
Letting them steal my ideas would be perfectly acceptable to me. Even if they don't, I'm coming up with new stuff anyway. In fact, since the day I sent the orders for these samples, I've already saved a number of new ideas ready for another order.
The more senior one even told me to email her the photos of these sweaters in case she forgets about them by the time they arrive (I honestly told them these were meant for the end of the year). There was no way I could have politely refused her request, so I'm going to do it on Monday.
Obviously I'm going to see these on their racks soon... and they won't be mine.
Which means I'm not going to tell the manufacturer to produce these exactly.
More work, but the thought of making a profit from my own designs gives me a feeling that I don't get from selling my mum's old stuff.
In other words, I'm only slightly annoyed at this.
The more major mistake was telling them the cost prices. That was probably a huge thing.
I'm so glad my mum instructed me to absolutely never reveal the actual prices, regardless of who is asking, so all the numbers I said were instinctively jacked up.
Nevertheless I'm rather pissed that I did that at all because those numbers can still give them a price range that's too close to the truth for comfort.
I was talking so fast I didn't even realize it was a bad idea until one of them told me I didn't have to tell them the cost, just the selling prices I had in mind.
le sigh
On the whole, logically speaking, these are probably (and hopefully) inconsequential. Now they probably have the impression that I'm way too honest and I didn't really lose anything (again, hopefully) in the process. I say hopefully because I know I'm not particularly smart and therefore I'm unlikely to have thought of all the possible consequences of my actions today.
Also, showing clients the stuff and asking for advice before ordering them is not standard practice. I'm just taking full advantage of my "noob" status to test the water. Right now anything I do wrong, I can say, "Sorry, I didn't know."
I won't be able to do this all the time next year.
People don't do that because it's easy to steal ideas, especially when small-time players like myself can't fight the big companies. In my case, they knew my mother so I'm betting on their sympathy to keep them honest to some degree and give me real feedback on how to improve on the designs before I get them manufactured.
Running a business with the barest minimum of basic knowledge, I need all the help I can get if I'm to survive over the long term, by hook or by crook.
It's dishonest, I know, but it's not like it's going to harm anyone except myself. In fact under normal circumstances, anyone else doing what I did would have to be extremely stupid.
As for my income, holy crap this month is terrible!
I had thought that traffic would pick up when the Great Singapore Sale began but the only thing that's going up right now is the Chinese Yuan.
The GSS isn't working and apparently never did!
Not for my industry anyway.
More people need to visit Australia! >:(
And I'm sooooo reluctant to pay that supplier in China for the latest batch of pants right now.
1SGD = 4.929 RMB
What.
It was like 4.98 just a couple months ago the last time I made a payment.
Meanwhile nobody is ordering much from me. I can totally understand what my staff is saying when they complain about having to dig through the stock to take out merely one piece of clothing. It feels almost like a total waste of time and effort TBH.
Before I visited the buyers, the original main goal was to gauge their traffic. When I arrived, it was clear to me they weren't lying when they told me they weren't getting much business during this period. The traffic was really no different from previous months.
Same with another store that I visited on a separate occasion.
Been reading up on savings accounts ever since my bro signed up for one at Citibank and it's got some nice benefits over our DBS accounts, like a free chequebook and a slightly better debit card than my Visa debit card.
During the process, I've also been looking at the few lower level private banking services of some of the major banks here in Singapore that I qualify for. A lot of them are simple to join - just have enough money there and they will automatically enroll you into whatever you qualify for.
For example, the HSBC Advance Account only requires S$20k in any combination of deposits, insurance and investment or a loan of S$100k.
This is like the lowest I can find so far, if it can even be considered as private banking, and its privileges are proportionally poor.
However, I don't see how I can use most of the services offered by the banks. They mostly provide advice on investments and give nice discounts on a lot of things.
The problem is that I can't take risks. Heck, I've got plenty of risks right here in my office ever since I signed the 5-year contract with the landlord. That's the biggest investment in my portfolio ever and contains risks I'd rather not think about often.
Not interested.
Other than that, you usually get nice cards, sometimes for free, filled with better privileges and reward programmes. For a person with my kind of spending habits, this can be completely ignored, leaving me with practically no benefit that I can get from their services.
In any case, when I said I qualify for some of these, I mean I would have to throw in every cent I have. Well, except for the HSBC Advance, but that's pretty much pointless.
I mean, their rates for everything are just far too shitty for me to even consider considering. For example, 0.19% for a 12-month SGD time deposit? Are you kidding me?
In the end, I remain in favour of the Citibank Maxisave account.
I may just transfer most of my cash from DBS to Citibank if it's worth it. Probably not. The card's just a flat 1% cashback (with min. spending of $500 a month) compared to the 0.3% of my current card and the chequebook is useless.
The downside is that Citibank branches aren't as conveniently located as DBS and POSB branches. With internet and mobile banking, this isn't really a big issue at all.
The decision can then be boiled down to convenience of physical branch locations versus the 0.2-0.7% increase in cashback. Two almost negligible issues.
Hard decision.
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