In the interest of being an honest entrepreneur 👀 I just wanted to be clear about something.
The article in The Sun on the 22nd August talks about how we’re turning over £500k per year.
This is turn over. Turn over = the total amount of money that sales have bought in to the business.
Out of that money, we have to pay for:
Rent: over £5k
Bills/overheads inc electric, water, heating etc. £2k approx
Business insurance £6k
Intellectual property and legal advice (always in excess of £20k a year)
Safety testing (always over £8k per year)
New product development, in excess of £50k pr year
New production runs of current product, over £250 pr year
Marketing: 36k pr year
Trade and consumer shows: Over 20k per year
Wages (when there was 6 of us) 60k pr year
Profit: approx £40k, which then goes back into growing the business.
These figures are also from the last published set of accounts, the most recent set are not yet published but they will be quite a bit lower than £500k.
Gummee has really been struggling lately, and it is now run by just Steve (AKA Gummee Daddee) and Me, and we’ve had to completely re-strategise the whole business.
This time last month, this post could have been entirely different, as we were convinced we were not going to survive.
The last 6 months or so have been the most instensely stressful, gut wrenching, heart breaking time of our lives, and we didn’t think we would be able to rescue the business. We’ve had to do things we never ever wanted to do, and we didn’t know how we would ever explain it to people.
All our hopes and dreams felt like they were literally crashing down around us.
We’ve stripped everything right back, and it honestly feels like we’re starting again from scratch.
We can see light at the end of the tunnel now, although it is a pin prick…..but it is there.
Numerous things happened at once that made our situation almost impossible. The massive influx of competing and copycat mittens all over Amazon and eBay, Facebook preventing businesses from being seen very much in the newsfeed, and summer being our quietest time….it almost killed us. Almost.
We’re big believers in kindness and karma, and we help others when ever and where ever we can. That help has come back to us in karma, BIG TIME, after a really emotional status I shared on the Gummee Facebook page on the evening of July 8th, while I dribbled snot and tears all over myself and Steve filled out an application form for a job.
Family, friends, Followers, stockists, distributors, consultants, industry friends, solicitors, brand reps, other small businesses, journalist friends, PR companies and even people we did not know got in touch to offer help where ever they could, in so many different ways.
I shared the post on Instagram too, and it pretty much went viral.
Sales increased, I guess due to massive brand awareness after my post and it had a knock on effect as stockists started ordering more than they usually do.
Every day is still a stomach flipping, anxiety ridden, nail biting event….will we make it through this month….? Etc.
But thank goodness for lovely, kind wonderful people.
So you see, we’re not rich….not financially. Not by a long way, not yet 👀 After bills, I get £4 a week. Yep. £4!!! That’s £16 a month. Just about enough to pay National Trust (So that we get family days out on the cheap) and Netflix.
I know I don’t have to share this much, or explain myself/ourselves, but I WANT to, and I always have been an over sharer anyway, especially re the Gummee journey.
I like being honest.
And I don’t want people thinking we’re loaded, that’s not why I did the article. It was to inspire young people and get exposure for Gummee.
Everyone reading this is probably earning more than us 🤣
But we are RICH in happiness, family, friends, each other, freedom and work life balance!
And who knows, maybe we’ll make it back and THEN some, and then we’ll sell up and flippin’ retire!
God we need a rest! Haha.
Sorry for the long post.
I needed to get that off my chest! 💜
PS *Shameless plug* our Link N Teethe is currently on promotion on Amazon at 20% off 🙌🏻
(Link below)
jodineboothby.com 