Accountability Journal: Sept 20

September 20, 2015: Progress to date

  • Last 30 days: $23.5K (promo + a coupon accident…so real number probably around $22K)
  • Etsy: $1.6K
  • Knot Theory website (just the rings): $0.6K
  • Overview:
      1. Knot Theory Silicone Wedding Rings
        • Men’s: Most of the income right now. Launching a new design in ~3 weeks.
        • Women’s: Launched two weeks ago. Now on page 2 for “silicone wedding ring”, page 1 for “silicone wedding ring women”
        • Adding more colours and sizes. Currently have 24 live SKUs, and 45+ more coming. (Sounds like a lot. It’s because each colour comes in up to 6 sizes!)
      2. Period Panties
        • Just got competitor’s panties and holy sh*t they are built like indestructible cell phone cases (Otterbox)! They could call theirs Beaverbriefs 🙂
        • I dislike their products after trying them out, and have lots of ideas for improvement….but this will take time and money to research and prototype.
      3. Umbrellas
        • Inspired by one of Clement’s finds. That woman you dislike, Clement, I’ll bring her down! Haha.
        • Will start ordering samples and competitors’ products
        • Want to explore collaborating with artists to create high art (printed on the inside of black umbrellas), high quality umbrellas. Though, I just discovered that MoMA does a bit of that already.
      4. Cashmere scarves
        • I really just want to use up my 500 expensive (~$3K) Knot Theory boxes originally made for neckties.
        • They take up so much space in my room and I hate sleeping with them next to me lol.
        • Sales appear low on Amazon right now, but it’s not quite winter yet.
      5. Quick Dry Towels
        • Tried out competitor’s product. Already great, have no big way of improving it further other than slightly better branding.
        • Fairly competitive niche. Seems like many people are thinking to do it too.
        • Will find out more about MOQ and margins before deciding if I want to proceed. Low MOQ also means low barrier of entry though.
      6. Rain Boots (will drop)
        • Someone is attracted to water repelling/absorbing products it seems lol.
        • Just discovered that ranking #94 in Shoes means 59 sales a month. Not profitable at all.
  • Business Goals for 2016:
    • Hire 1 VA to delegate tasks to; focus more on developing new brands and scaling the businesses
    • Achieve 150 product sales a day average for year 2016; estimated 5~8 product lines needed to achieve this.
  • Milestone Celebration
    • Will celebrate when my total monthly profit reaches $25K! Current profit ~$15K including bow tie sales.
    • Not sure how to celebrate. 6 years after quitting my job as a software engineer and making way less than all my ex-coworkers for most of those years, I think I’m finally making on par with my friends who are now at Google. Prefer to keep a low profile always, but will be harder to celebrate milestones with friends.
    • Will probably celebrate by hiring my photographer friends, paying them real money for once. I do want good bald pics of myself. It’s a personal mission to re-brand alopecia as attractive, raise awareness, and encourage confidence. Maybe for future milestones I’ll fund other alopecians’ shoots, to help build their confidence 🙂
  • This week’s goals for accountability:
    1. Edit and Publish the youtube video I homemade to promote rings
    2. Women’s ring SEO – cover the basics (blog articles, pinterest posts, instagram, etc)
    3. Contact 10 bloggers for giveaways and/or holiday gift guide inclusion