It's been one whole year already since I launched my business, so I figured it would be best to do a review together and recap some of my adventure so far in the world of Small Business!

Officially received my business license on 11/17/2023

Launched with 15 Product Listings

One Collaboration (Luckie.the.catt) <3

14 Pop up Markets

2 Conventions (Including Cat Con!!!)

329 followers (Instagram)

76 Posts (Instagram)

65 followers (Facebook)

69 Mewsletter signups

8 Blog posts (9 if you count this one!)

1 "100+ Followers" Giveaway

3 AMAZING Friends who helped Staff my booths

1 Amazing Bestie who fuels the fire of creativity (@CraftyCutlass : https://craftycutlass.myshopify.com/)

You, my amazing fellow cat family and furriends!!!!

As I look back into the year and review product sales, opportunities, activities, I can't help but feel so grateful for all the support I received from family, friends, and especially you!!!

I figure that it would be fun to see some general data as well. Please see below:

When I started out, I had so much support from my immediate family and friends, however I think I got my first "complete stranger" purchase around the end of January, and I was shocked!

I then started doing pop up markets in March and kinda got hooked! Markets were revitalizing to meet people, see their reactions, and to share cat photos! I fell off doing too much social media (since I'm not really keen on posting, and you can see that my Online Store sales suffered due to the lack of online marketing.) I also was looking into how to manage scaling my handmade products and tried to look into where I could outsource vs do directly myself! I also was putting a lot of effort looking for a full time job to help cover financial needs while working on growing Whisker Dreams!

Cat Con 2024 in early August was such an educational experience on so many levels, and my first month I was able to donate over $100 for helping find a cure for FeLV! You better believe I was telling all my friends and family that September that I was able to break my first target of donating over $100 from the sales of one month!

December is my second strongest month in sales, and I believe that it was not only because of the holidays, but because I was beginning to apply what I had learned from the events leading up to that time!

Looking at this chart, I'm not too surprised that 86% of my business was in person, and it is going to be a goal to adjust this breakdown to bring more Online Transactions in the future. 

I will look to diversify where I can have traffic come to my online store, and SEO will definitely play a part in this as well. Having my sales so strongly dependent on my in person experiences is definitely ok for my first few years as a small business, but I am hoping I can bring the division down so in the off chance I am unable to get key events or become somehow unable to attend events, I won't loose 80% of my business! However I just really enjoy markets a lot and will be attending them when I can so this will probably be skewed towards pop up events for some time to come!

Moving forward into the next year, I hope to keep a steady stream of activities both online and in person, while focusing more on my SEO and site improvements!

 

Top Sellers at in person events:
(In No Particular Order)

Top Sellers Online:
(In No Particular Order)