On Eggs and Baskets

I've never liked the thought of relying on just a couple of sources of income for my little jewelry business.  This means that I am forever analyzing (some would say over-analyzing) my business.  I study my sales trends, my pricing, my expenses.  You name it, I study it.  One of the statistics that I find most interesting is how my sales pie is divided between wholesale, consignment, retail shows and etsy.
  

Here's some data showing how my sales are divvied up:

                                2007            2008           2009

Retail Shows             58 %           49 %           46 % 
Consignment             25 %           25 %           25 %
Wholesale                 15 %          12 %            10 %
Etsy                           2 %           14 %            19 %

What information can I glean from this little chart?  First of all, I like the trends in general.  My retail shows are becoming a bit less critical to the success of my business, while etsy grows some in importance.  Retail shows are tons of work and as I get older, they're becoming more taxing on me.  Some day, I'd like to not do any at all.  Of course this won't happen until I'm ready to abandon the Bad Girls of the North business.  I don't anticipate this happening in the next few years!

I like the consistency of the consignment percentage over the past 3 years.  The wholesale number is a little disturbing, but completely understandable.  One of my main wholesale accounts is a gift shop in Denali Park and is driven almost 100% by the tourism trade.  Tourism in Alaska was way down in 2009 and this account did not even place an order with me last year.  I did pick up 4 new wholesale accounts, but their initial orders were small.  This too is understandable.  I was an unknown to them and 2009 was a sort of "test run" for my work.  I fully anticipate my wholesale numbers to be back around the 15% mark, or close to it, in 2010.

I'm glad I have my eggs spread around in many baskets.  One never knows when one source of income will fail to materialize in any given year.

This photo is courtesy of EggArt.

*This post was updated on 4/1/10 to correct an error in the 2009 numbers.